Digital Screentoning tutorial

DIGITAL SCREENTONE TUTORIAL

In this tutorial you'll learn how to screentone in manga style. A basic tip before we start, always remember that LESS IS MORE, so my suggestion is that you only use the necessary screentones for your pic; do not overload your drawing with lots of tones in an attempt to make it "look better", sometimes this won't work and will just make your drawing look too saturated and hence, loose its appeal.

IMPORTANT: Remember screentones are used in manga as just a solution to add more volume and life to characters, backgrounds and the overall page, not to actually tone the whole thing; you can do manga without using screentones at all. A good toned manga page/drawing in my opinion is the one that uses little screentones, but efficiently ^_^

WHAT I USED:

Inked drawing
Photoshop CS2 + Powertone3 plug-in (you can use Comicworks too, but also you can apply my techniques to traditional screentoning, since they are similar processes; if you want to use screentone patterns in Photoshop, make sure they are in a 300 dpi resolution and LOOK CRISP ENOUGH).
Manhattan 6 x 8 in. digital tablet

PREPARING INKED DRAWING

	Scanning at 300 dpi: Scan your drawing at 300 dpi at least, and in the 1 bit black/white mode. This will make your drawing look pretty sharp, even ugly. Don't worry, when printed, the lines will look crisp and clean. Note: the pic at the left is reduced from the original one, but the lines will look more or less like this in your computer program. Usually, 300 dpi 1bit b/w drawings are A LOT BIGGER than this (a manga page is aprox. 3000 pixels in height).
	Inking digitally: After scanning the sketch, or drawing it directly in the computer with a tablet, proceed to ink it at 300 dpi with your favorite painting program. After doing this, open your drawing in Photoshop. Always remember to have the resolution at 300 dpi, no less. Using available inked drawing: You can also use a previously scanned drawing; if you already have an inked drawing in greyscale mode and want to tone it, then follow the next step:
	Converting to bitmap : You can convert your inked drawing to a 1 bit b/w bitmap. Follow the path in the pic at the left, choosing the "bitmap..." option. A window like the one below will appear: As you may notice here, the input is 300 dpi, and the output should be 300, no less. The method you will choose is 50% threshold, this is the best way to convert your drawing to a 1 bit b/w bitmap; it will choose the right contrast between black and white. Your drawing will become from this to this: >> Notice how the lines in the second example look sharper. Again, you don't have to worry about the quality of it when printing, it will look nice and clean ^_~
This is the original size of the b/w drawing I chose. Not too big, but big enough for this tutorial XP. For the curious ones, I used a Yamah inked drawing which I later converted to a 1 bit b/w image. Onto the screentoning now!
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