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If you have a scanner, do these instructions first. If you have a digital camera, click here.

Scan your sketch/drawing into your computer, and make sure that it's a nice, crisp picture.

Save it to a convenient spot on your computer.

Now, click here for the next instructions.

DIGITAL CAMERA

Lay your picture out on a flat surface, and make sure you have good lighting.

Zoom in on the picture so that all you want to have to work on is on the camera's screen.

Take the picture.

Download it into your computer, and make sure it looks just as you want it too.

Now, let's get started on this. Even if your picture doesn't look that good now, trust me-- it will be a masterpiece by the time we're done!

File>Open

Browse to where the file is located, and then open it.

If the picture is on its side, read on. If it's right-side-up, click here.

Look at the icon on the upper-left hand corner of the toolbar. See that little icon that has the dotted lines? Click on that, and then select the Rectangular Marquee Tool.

Make a selection of the whole entire picture, and press Ctrl+C, or Edit>Copy.

File>New.

Now, look at the numbers on the Width and Height. Now, if the height is a higher number than the Width, put the height number in the width box, so it's now in both boxes. If the Width is larger than the Height, put the Width number in the Height box, so that they have the same number.

EXAMPLE:

Width: 56 Pixels

Height: 230 Pixels

Then, change the Width to 230 Pixels.

Ctrl+V, or Edit>Paste.

Now, look in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. There should be a platte that has the tabs "Layers", "Channels" and "Paths". Make sure that you are on the Layers tab by clicking on it. Now, there will be 2 layers: Background, and Layer 1. Ctrl+Click on Layer 1 to select your image.

Edit>Transform>Rotate 90° CW

PHEW!!! Now that that's out of the way, let's move on.

Now, let's turn this thing into a black and white image and back. Even if your sketch is black and white, there is a chance that it scanned in some color pixels, or the camera threw some color pixels in there.

Image>Mode>Grayscale

If it asks you to flatten layers, say NO!

Now that the image is black and white, we are going to put it back in color mode so that you can make it all colored in later on.

Image>Mode>RGB Color

We will now create a "working" layer.

Layer>New>Layer

Here's the settings:

Name: Outline

Group with previous layer- UNCHECKED

Color: None

Mode: Normal

Opacity: 100%

Now, be sure to stay on this layer.

Press B on the keyboard to turn on the paintbrush.

Here's the settings at the top:

Brush: Now this depends on how thick you want all the ink to be. If there are some parts that you want to have thicker, you can always adjust this. But what I did was clicked the round arrow button at the upper-right hand corner of the brushes menu, and clicked on Square Brushes.abr (it's at the very bottom.) It will ask you a question-- click Append.

Mode: Normal

Opacity: 100%

Wet edges: UNCHECKED

Now, you're ready to start outlining!

Make SURE you're on the layer Outline.

In the upper right-hand corner, there should be a platte that has the tabs "Navigator" and "Info". Click Navigator.

You will see a thumbnail of your picture, and at the bottom, there will be a little selection thing-- drag the arrow to the right, and it will zoom in. Make it zoom in to a spot where you are most comfortable at for painting in outlines.

You will see that on the thumbnail view, there is a little red box. Click anywhere on the thumbnail to drag the box around and to navigate on your picture. Navigate it to a good starting spot.

Start outlining your picture. If you make a mistake, just hit Ctrl+Z. This will undo your last move. If you make a few mistakes in a row, there is another platte on the middle-right hand side of the screen. It has the tabs "History" and "Actions". As you click on the icons in history, you can see what you added last, and if you didn't like what you added, just click on the little trash bin on the lower right-hand corner.

After you finish outlining, grab the Magic Wand tool by hitting W on the keyboard. Make sure that you are zoomed in on your project. Now, on the right-hand side of the screen, there is yet ANOTHER platte which has the tabs "Color", "Swatches", and "Styles". Click on the color tab.

There are two big boxes that have a color in them each-- one is stacked on top of the other. Select the upmost box, or click it twice to bring up the color-choosing menu.

Select a color for a part on your picture that you want to have filled in. Click OK.

Using the magic Wand, click inside the area on the layer Outline that you wish to have that colorfilled in. If you have multiple places that you wish to have this color, hold Shift and select all of them.

Edit>Fill

SELECT:

Use: Foreground Color

Mode: Normal (unless you wish for it to have an effect, you can choose something else,)

Opacity: 100%

Preserve Transparency: UNCHECKED

Now, continue and do this to all the places that need to be coloored in. This will indeed take some time.

Once this is all finished, your picture should look great. On the Layers menu, click the eyeball by the layer Layer 1. This will turn that layer "off".

Well, you can always go on to add some special effects to your project. I higly reccomend this!

Click on the layer Background, and go Layer>New>Layer.

Now, create a background for your project. To make things easier, click on the eyeball by the layer Outline to hide that layer. You may now wor on any layers under this layer to create a cool background.

Happy with the background? Click the spot wich where the eyeball was on the Outline layer. This will turn that layer "on" again, and you can see how it looks with the background.

If you had other drawings on the original Layer 1 layer, and want to give it an even cooler background, read on. If not, skip the next step.

Click on Layer 1 and on the Layers menu, you will see in the upper-right hand corner an option that says Opacity:. Click on the arrow by the 100%, and drag the arrow down to 50%, or to a place which looks really good with the background and drawing.

Want to make your picture look more 3-D? (reccomended!) Click on the Outline layer.

Layer>Layer Style> Drop Shadow

A new box will pop up. Select all these options:

Blend Mode: Multiply [make sure the box next to this has the color black in it.]

Opacity: 75%

Angle: 120, Use Global Lighting: CHECKED

Distance: 5 px

Spread: 0 %

Size: 5 px

Contour: Linear

Anti-Aliased: UNCHECKED

Layer Knocks out Drop Shadow: CHECKED

Now, on the left menu, click Outer Glow.

Match the picture:

On the left menu, click Bevel and Emboss.

Match the picture again:

Select Contour under the Bevel and Emboss button on the left menu.

Options:

Contour: Linear, Anti-Aliased: CHECKED

Range: 50%

If you want, you can also add cool text effects.

PHEW!!!!!! You're done! Well, hopefully it looks nice! Here's something that I created with this whole technique: (please note that I have cropped out some sides of Layer 1, and did some more stuff to it than this tutorial mentions. Please see my Fire tutorial on how to create the awesome fire effect that I used in the background!)

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By the way, here's the original: