Inking scanned lineart digitally

This tutorial will teach you a way how to ink a picture digitally in Photoshop. The advantage is that you don't need a graphics tablet, I did all art in this tutorial with the mouse. It's especially useful if you have a dirty scanned picture or need clean, high-detail lines.

The pencil sketch. You'll use the pen tool to draw a vector path along the lines and then stroke it with a normal drawing tool.

Two tips before you start

Make sure you work with a new empty layer so that you can color it later in an underlying layer if you choose to. It's a good idea to lock the layers you don't work with and hide those you don't need. It happened to me more than once that after working 15 mins or so I found out i drew into a wrong layer.

You can duplicate the background layer containing the scan and add a pure white layer (opaque) at the bottom. Then you can reduce the opacity of the scan layer and keep the important layers clearly visible.

Step 1. Creating the path

Use the Pen tool to draw paths, the Direct selection tool to edit individual points.

The amount of anchors and length of the handles depends on the amount of detail and smoothness you need. Generally, the shorter you make the handles the sharper will be the line.

There can be anchors which you need to change from smooth to a sharp edge. For this, use the Convert point tool .

Step 2. Stroking

When finished with the path, right-click and choose Stroke path from the quick menu. Next, you choose the tool which will be used to stroke the path, i use a 3 pixels wide, pure black paintbrush. The program will stroke the vector path with a bitmap brush, the result will be placed into the active layer so don't forget to check that youre in the right one.
For stroking, I used a 3 pixels-wide paintbrush. The image size was around 2300x2300, I reduced it to 25% after finishing the lineart. This way the lines are sharp and crisp.

The image after finishing the paths.

Step 3. Removing the paths

If you want to delete the path (you won't be able to stroke it again later) simply right-click and choose Delete path. This will delete the vector path and leave only the bitmap stroke.

If you want to keep the paths, remember that the path isn't saved automatically when saving the artwork. Closing the file results in loosing all unsaved paths. To save a path, make the work path active and choose Save Path from the path menu in the Paths window.

The picture after stroking and removing the paths

Step 4. Weightening the lines

Next, you make some parts of the lines lighter.This will look as if they change widths as long as they are thin enough. You don't have to do this, some artists like to keep lines with same widths, but I think weightened lines look clean and flowing. You might want to do it especially for ends of thin hair, inner lines and where light hits the material.

You might use the eraser to do this, but I like to add a layer mask so you can always revert to full lines if you change your mind later. When working in a mask, you draw as usual, the only difference is that darker colors (black) hide and light colors (white) reveal the layer which is masked.

After changing the opacity of the lines (weightened lines).

Step 5. Filling in large areas

If there are any filled areas of solid color in your pic, you can fill them out using a path. You create the path the same way as before, but this time make sure that the path is enclosing the area. Right-click and choose "Fill path".

The inked lineart is finished and ready for coloring.