Photoshop Make Any Drawing Line Art

Line art drawings are used as the base for a digital painting or colored drawing. They're built, as the name suggests, from lines, and they should have lines only, without any background.

When you draw line art digitally, you can use a separate layer for this. But what if you used the Undo command one time too many and Photoshop, according to its weird habit, switched you to the background layer, and you didn't notice it until it was too late? Or what if you drew your line art traditionally, on a white sheet of paper, and now you need to remove it without redrawing the lines with a tablet?

In this short transparent line art tutorial, I'll show you two methods of getting the lines back—a popular one and a professional one.

If you don't have any line art to use at the moment, feel free to download the attachment and follow me. Or you can draw your own line art using a pencil brush Photoshop kit from Envato Elements.

line art white background tutorial result — What You'll Be Creating

Watch How to Remove a Background From a Line Drawing in Photoshop

Do you prefer to watch tutorials? You can learn how to remove a background from a line drawing in Photoshop by watching this video. If you enjoy these videos, visit our Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel for more!

1. How to Use a Quick Method

Let's begin this line art transparent background tutorial. Place your scan/line art in a new file. Set its Blend Mode to Multiply.

This mode makes every white part of the layer transparent, leaving black intact. So this is what we wanted, right?

photoshop line art multiply how it works

The problem may occur if you wanted to use the line art directly. For example, if you changed the Blend Mode to Overlay, the dark lines would get a darker version of the color below. It works great in cel shading! However, here we can't change the Blend Mode, because only Multiply makes white transparent. If we used Overlay, the lines would get a darker color, but the white around would "absorb" all the rest of the colors.

This method doesn't really give you line art without a background. It only pretends there's no background, but you're not really allowed to use the lines or the illusion disappears.

2. How to Use a More Professional Method

There's another way to get line art with a white background. It's more complicated than simply selecting an item on the list, but also far more effective. This line art transparent background method will give us our dark lines—instead of pretending that there is no background, we will remove it for real. Don't let the number of steps scare you—there aren't so many, but I made it as detailed as possible for you!

Step 1

To make sure there is only black and white in the picture, go to Image > Mode > Grayscale. Select Don't Merge and then Discard.

Step 2

Select the whole picture with Control-A. Copy it.

photoshop line art select all line art white background

Step 3

Go to the Channels panel. You can find it next to Layers, and if it's not there, simply open it with Window > Channels.

Step 4

Click Create New Channel.

A new "layer" should appear on the list. This is an alpha channel—it knows only two colors: black (transparent) and white (opaque). For now it's black, so there's nothing there.

Step 5

Paste the selection to this layer. Deselect (Control-D).

photoshop line art paste image into alpha channel

Step 6

Click Load Channel as Selection.

photoshop line art load channel as selection

Step 7

A selection should appear on the picture. As I said before, for an alpha channel, white is opaque and black is transparent. When we loaded the selection, only the opaque parts were selected—the white parts.

If you Invert the selection now (Control-Shift-I), you'll get the opposite selected—only black parts. Only the line art.

Step 8

Select the Gray channel again.

Step 9

Create a New Layer.

Step 10

Fill the selection with black using the Paint Bucket Tool (G).

Step 11

If you deselect (Control-D) now, you'll see that the line art became twice as dark. It's because we've got two sets of lines!

Remove the scan to fix the problem.

Step 12

If you hide the background layer, you'll see only the line art on a transparent background. Just what we wanted, without any pretending!

photoshop line art how to make transparent lines only

You can now safely use any Blend Mode on this layer—Multiply doesn't block you anymore. Just don't forget to switch back toImage > Mode > RGB Color.

photoshop line art other mode than multiply

You can also use all the Blending Options on the lines, for example Gradient Overlay:

photoshop line art blending options gradient

What about more traditional-looking sketches, with a lot of grays instead of black? That's no problem! Just make sure you've cleaned up the scan first, and then you can use the same trick.

photoshop line art sketch scan how to remove background

That's All! Your Transparent Line Art Is Done

Now you know how to turn an image into a line drawing in Photoshop. As you can see, a piece of line art drawn by accident on a white layer isn't lost to you, and sketches drawn traditionally aren't really bound to their background for eternity. Alpha channels also have other applications—I hope that my explanation will help you find them when you need them!

photoshop how to remove white background

Want to learn more about line art? Check out this article on the line art design trend to see how designers are using line art in their projects.

Discover Photoshop Brushes and Resources From Envato Elements

Looking for more great resources? Then head on over to Envato Elements. You'll find hundreds of Photoshop brushes, add-ons, and other creative assets for your drawing needs. Check out one of our favorite pencil brush Photoshop kits below!

Pencil Brush Photoshop Set (ABR)

If you love to do digital drawings in Photoshop, you need a pencil brush Photoshop kit like this one. This set includes 25 brushes for all your needs. You'll get the whole pack of lead pencils: hard and soft, made as sketching and stippling-ready ones. Use this pencil brush Photoshop kit for your transparent line art projects!

Explore More Drawing Tutorials and Resources

I hope you liked this transparent line art tutorial. You've seen how to turn an image into a line drawing in Photoshop. You also know where to find the best Photoshop brushes and add-ons. But if you're looking for more drawing resources, check these out:

Editorial Note: This post has been updated with contributions from Maria Villanueva. Maria is the Associate Editor of the Tuts+ Design channel.

Photoshop Make Any Drawing Line Art

Source: https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quick-tip-remove-the-white-background-from-line-art-in-adobe-photoshop--cms-24361