User blog:Wolfram the Lone Warlock/Importing your Sketches without a Scanner: The Master Warlock's Way

LW:  Muhahahahahaha... It is a pleasure to find you within my realm once again! I see that something ails you once again. But fret not! I have the remedy just right here! But first, a little background for this topic...

Introduction
LW: When you're reading a scanlated manga, have you ever considered how do the scanlators made raws like the left side into the right side?

LW: Back then, on my days as a asistant on a basic graphic editing class, the new ones were given a test where they have to recolor a scanned image from a really, really old book in short amount of time. Of course, they should make the image as clear as possible first before doing any coloring to the image since the raw scanned image looks messy and weathered.

LW: Most of the newbs used Paintbucket or Magic Wand to remove the brown antique color from the scanned image. Though some of them nailed the correct tolerance for the said picture they still have. But this method is very inefficient and time-consuming. Most of them didn't finished in time. While those who did still have some parts of it neglected.

LW: In the end, the instructor taught them the proper method to deal with this. And this same method is used on raw manga scanlations. It is called the Levels Command.

Levels is a tool in image editing programs which can move and stretch the brightness levels of an image histogram. It has the power to adjust brightness, contrast, and tonal range by specifying the location of complete black, complete white, and midtones in a histogram.[1]

LW: This command lets you brighten the parts that is bright enough and darken the parts that is dark enough. With proper and balanced adjustment, any scanned image can be cleaned enough as if it was drawn digitally.

Materials
LW: For starters, here's the things you might want to get first:
 * 1)  The sketch you'll be importing (no s*hit, Sherlock!)
 * 2)  A trusty camera (It's up to you what kind of camera you're going to use as long as you can transfer the image to your PC)
 * 3)  An Image editing program (Photoshop, GIMP, PAINT.NET, it's up to you again as long as it has Levels command)

Proceedures
LW: First, you might want to get that sketch drawn first, if you haven't, that is. Having the lines drawn over with pens first is recommended, but it will work with pencils as well. You might want to make sure that it is clean from specks of dust or stray lines as well. You'll see what I mean later in this guide.

Also in this guide, I'll be using this image from Kaizawarako as a reference. (many gratitudes, Yuka-tan)

LW: After you managed to get yourself a sketch to import, you might want to take a picture of it with your camera. Mind the proper angle and lighting before you take a picture of it. I also don't recommend using flash or shutter for this. Also take more that one picture for the sketch just to be sure.

LW: Now that you took a set of pictures, time to transfer the image of your choice to your PC and start editing away!

LW: Before starting editing anything, make sure that the image is fully grayscaled or monochromed. On your App, look for the Levels Command. For PAINT.NET, it is A djustments>Layers...

LW: Slide down the upper knob to make things brighter and slide up the lower knob to make things darker. Note that is should be balanced properly.

LW: If some unneeded dark parts still retained after the leveling erase it or brush it with white.

LW: At this point, this is already good enough if you're not going to color the image you're editting.

LW: Continue along if you're going to put colors on your sketch.

LW: But before going crazy with your paintbuckets, you might want to close any open space on your image. You dont want to flood your picture with some wierd colors, no?

LW: Although difficult, manually drawing an outline is also encouraged.

LW: And after a few paintbuckets here's the finished product.

LW: Now good luck and happy editing! Any questions, clarification, or violent reactions? Feel free to comment and I'll try to respond as much as I can.