I'm looking for absolute beginner type stuff. How to separate the line art from a black and white image, how to remove color from a previously colored image. The way I do it is obviously not the best way: blow up the image and use the magic wand to clear, then the eraser and pen tools to touch up where I butchered it, then make a new layer...this takes HOURS...probably longer than it would take to just redraw the image.

F'r instance...I'm on this kick with messing around recoloring random Uncle Scrooge panels.
Here's the hack job I did, which screws up the lines and makes it look all aliased and messy. At this point I'm not concerned about any kind of background coloring, I can do that easily with a new layer later.
Sadly, this is about the best I've ever done so far, besides my Skrull Batman avatar I'm using now, which turned out pretty well, although I really didn't have to recolor very much on it.

What program are you using?

While you're answering that, I can help with the first part - separating the coloring from the black lines (this works in Photoshop and Gimp).

Open your image. Make sure the Mode is set to RGB. Then do a duplicate layer. Delete the original layer. Then choose Multiply, then New Layer. Then go to your paintbucket and choose white paint, and click on the image. It'll go blank, but don't freak out. Drag that layer below the first layer. Then, with the white layer selected, click New Layer. Color whatever you want on that layer. For each additional color, click on the white layer (it should always be on the bottom), then choose New Layer. You'll be able to color without worrying about coloring over the previous colors, or the black lines.

That's how I do it, anyway.

Photoshop 7. Sorry, I thought I'd put that in my post. Knowing that would make it easier to help I suspect.

I'll try this out tonight. Thanks. You know, looking at Mr. McDuck with a less critical eye this morning, he doesn't look too bad, except around the bill.

Here's a quick n' dirty way to extract black lineart from printed comics:

First, scan the picture at a decent resolution - 300dpi or higher.

If you are just working with images from the web at 72dpi...I'd find a new hobby. Or at least just re-draw the lines by hand. Yes, it will be a lot faster.

Okay, presuming you've got the image set up, use your 'eyedropper' tool to select the colour of the lineart - you will find it isn't really black, but some combination of colours.

Then, go to the 'color range' (note the spelling ) window (I believe it is under the 'select' pull-down menu - I don't have Photoshop open right now, so I'm just trying ot remember how I do it). You will get a window where Photoshop is trying to select all the examples of that particular colour on the image.

Play with the settings - specifically the 'fuzziness'. The more you increase the fuzziness, the more lineart it will select.

When you get a decent amount of the original lineart selected, hit 'OK' - you will now have a selection loaded.

Save that selection as a channel.

If you do this a few times, selecting different portions of the lineart, you will have several channels that, together, represent a pretty good approximation of the original lineart.

Now, combine the channels that you like into a new 'master' channel (really, just select and fill a few times) and clean it up.

Play around a bit with the 'gaussian blur' tool a bit. Then the 'dodge' and 'burn' tools to clean everything up.

You will have to watch out for certain colours - photoshop tends to think that browns are actually black, and can be tricky to clean up.

....You know, this looks pretty complex, now that I've written it all out. I also don't know how familiar you are with channels, so all of this might just be too difficult to get across over the internet.

By the way - a lot of the DC archives books are collections and recolouring of books that no longer have original artwork. Not only did the colouring have to be redone to match the original books, but scans of those comic books were used to get the lineart from. And cleaning up several hundred pages of 70 year old comic book artwork is a bit of a pain.

To put it mildly.

I've done far too much of it

Glad to be away from the day job, Ian?

Thank you Ian, much obliged! I'm typically working with large scans I've made or received from other sources, so this will help a lot. Really appreciate it. Now if I could only find that spare time I seemed to have loads of a couple of weeks ago...

There were lots of things I loved about working at Digital Chameleon, and I even made a bit of a name for my self doing this digital reconstruction of funnybook pages...but, yeah, I'm in no rush to do more of it. I had to do quite a bit of it for the new Valiant a while ago, and am not particularily looking forward to doing any more anytime soon.

No problem - I'd like to see what you come up with!

Reconstructing line art from scanning the pages? Yuck! I reconstructed one logo that way and it was a pain.