Make your illustrations transparent - the right way

Frankly I’m not sure what to call this. A “fully transparent .png”? A “clean transparent linework”? “Drawing with paper removed”?Whatever it’s called, I’ll show you how to do it. You can make your illustration into a fully transparent .png overlay using this photoshop trick.

In this guide I’ll walk you through how I make my ballpoint illustrations into fully transparent pngs.

See how the option on the left has a bit of white background? Most artists know how to create a cutout of their drawings, or know how to select just the blacks to be left with linework. However, you can end up losing a lot of detail or tone ranges, especially if you are working in pencil or ballpoint.

With the method I’m about to show you all the grayscale values are converted into black with different levels of opacity, kind of like how a “multiply” or “overlay” blend mode would function. This methods works best for drawings on paper without color.

Why make your illustrations transparent?

This method will be helpful if you’re…

• selling your drawings as illustrations on stock sites or as design assets 

• using your illustrations for a PoD service on different color items. 

• creating photoshop brushes

• Creating textures, patterns or overlays
  

! Generally it is better to use vector than .png if you are using illustrations as design assets or for print-on-demand products. However, for some types of illustrations converting them to vector just doesn’t look as good, and working with a high resolution .png can produce better results.

Depending on the project, I will include these as a deliverable in my illustration assignments. Especially when the drawings will be used by someone who is not a designer. They might want the option of easily playing around with the illustration in canva as an overlay.

Using your illustrations as overlays and assets in Canva becomes super easy after this.

Before starting we want a clean slate to work off of. Whatever you do in these steps dictate what the final image looks like. I personally like doing the brunt of my editing in Lightroom before importing the drawing to Photoshop to do the final retouching.

If you’re editing using PS, you can use the curves, levels, liquify, highlight and dodge tool to fine-tune your drawing.

How to turn your drawings into transparent linework

Here’s the juice.

Do what I’m about to tell you once, create a photoshop action for it, and never have to do it it again. Unless you decide to write a tutorial, in which case you might have to relearn it  🤡

1. Convert to grayscale

Make sure your tidy drawing is on one layer, and is rasterized.

Go to Image > Mode > Grayscale

You’ll get a popup asking if you want to merge your layers - click NO. You want your image layer separate. 

2. Set selection in the channels panel, this will select your image

Next to “layers” click on Channels then on the little dotted line circle at the bottom. Voila, you selected all the info in the image.

3. Make a fill layer (black) 

With the selection, click down by layer > new solid color > choose your color in the color picker

BAM, you have your image inverted on the solid color. It will look a bit funky at the moment, but fear not.

4. Invert your mask

Wow! Now it’s looking like something. In fact, it should look just like your image, but darker.

5. Hide/delete all other layers

Click the little eye on the layers tab.

6. Export as png

Ta-da! 🎉 A clean, transparent overlay .png of your illustration. Easy peasy, squeeze lemons and all that jazz.