How to draw smooth lines in Photoshop

Hi,

I'm having some problems in Photoshop and I hope someone can help me out!

Let's say I have a line drawing done in pencil, which is scanned and loaded into Photoshop. First of all, when zooming in on the lines, it's evident that they aren't 'smooth'- that they contain several hundred shades of black/gray, and are actually very choppy when looking at them in close. Is there a way to make these lines 100% smooth- by this I mean, having the lines in black pixels only, and aliased in with surrounding colours (when they're added)? I tried reducing the image mode to 2 colours (black and white) before colouring in the drawing, but the lines still become extremely choppy (I guess because you can't alias the image with just black and white).

Also, once this is accomplished, how would I be able to colour in the drawing, ensuring that every single pixel is filled in with colour? If I colour in a line drawing right now, when I zoom in close, there are thousands and thousands of pixels which weren't filled with colour (especially near the outlines) - I realize that the feather option can help this, but it doesn't get it perfect.

I know that it 'can' be perfect, because I have lots of sample drawings from other artists on the net who have accomplished this. Basically- smooth, black outlines of a drawing, and filled in with colours- very smooth lines, no pixels left uncoloured around the edges of the outlines.

Thanks in advance,


Rob

Hi,

For starters, the AA:
Yes, you're right, you cannot use AA in just 2 colors. AA is a function which uses interpolation to 'estimate' the colors in order to make that perfect line. So, in b/w-mode your missing LOTS of colors, though PS needs other colors as well. This results is choppyness.

For your other questions:
Why would you wanna use a couple of lines, then fill it? I don't know what you're drawing, but I can be sure that there's another way than just lines.
For starters, use PATHS! Paths are just working lines which you can 'stroke' as well. First draw a path, adjust them to get nice round edges and then stroke it using the pencil tool. Leave AA on but set pencil width to 1px. See what it does and adjust if until you're satisfied with it

If you really want to learn good photoshop, look the for tutorials by 'lynda.com' they're videotutorials.

hf gl,
- SevenTh

Photoshop is kinda rough for even doing that. Do you ahve a copy of illustrator?