how do you smooth out lines in Photoshop CS5

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
February 3, 2012
1 reply
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I have some black and white line art drawings. The lines are not smooth and sharp, and instead have tiny jagged edges. I tried using the smudge tool, and that does smooth out the lines but it also makes the lines a little sloppy. That's probably how the Smudge Tool got its name. Is there a way to use this incredible software to create smooth lines? I've learned how to create paths, but I can't figure out how to use the paths to change the line art. Maybe this is what I'm looking for?

How to

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Correct answer Noel Carboni

PEC (or anyone), is there a good way to use a Path then add a Stroke style, so that it remains editable? I've done it where I've used a fill layer and set the Fill to 0%, but that seems to depend on the path being closed. I don't do path work often enough in my photo editing to be too terribly familiar with it.

-Noel

Example using a closed shape:

-Noel

Noel Carboni

Legend

Well, you could trace all the lines with paths, edit / smooth them as desired, then stroke the paths - essentially recreating your drawing. That could be time consuming but it would give you ultimate control. People sometimes do this with signatures.

But you might be able to manipulate the scanned pixels to smooth things out some... Try experimenting with the the Filter - Noise - Median feature as one possibility.

Post a crop of a part of a sample image and you might get more specific suggestions.

-Noel

T

terry lee martinAuthor

Inspiring

Noel, thank you for the information, and I have no problems with tracing all the lines over again. I have used Photoshop for many years but mostly on Photo images. Paths, until today, were news to me. I attempted to do as you recommended. I traced over the lines in my simple drawing. They are just Arrow shapes. Here is one. As you can see, the line is quite jagged. I did as you reccommended and traced over the lines of the arrow, and then in the paths palette area of Photoshop I hit the default button at the lower left bottom of the Paths palette. It filled in the center section of my arrow. I didn't want it to do that, I just wanted to smooth out the lines themselves. What am I doing wrong?

PECourtejoie

Community Expert

Hello!

To smooth out lines, especially from a scan, one can use the old technique of gaussian blur, then levels, and bringing the white and black sliders towards the center: http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/gimp/KPT/KPT4/KPT4.html

But it might not smooth too well shaky thin lines, it rather works with larger areas.

As for your problem with the path panel, you need to select the stroke a path, not fill a path option, it is the second one in the panel. ( No need to go to the panel, draw the path, then right-click and select stroke path...)

before drawing over, create a new layer, so that your tracing will be separated from the background.

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