Happy Wednesday. I did something different this time around. When I draw on paper, I don’t erase pencil lines. They’re typically using a blue lead that should be non-photo/non-repro blue, meaning they don’t scan. Kinda like green screen (it used to be blue screen) but with pencils. They’re not see-through on the paper, they just don’t (or shouldn’t) show up on the paper. Well, the pencils DO show up, but it’s no biggie to digitally edit them on an old art program I have on my old computer.

But, it’s a matter of firing up that old computer, which is too slow to attach to the internet, and sometimes doesn’t allow that art program to start up, and then I have to reboot it. The power supply died about 5 years ago, which I replaced, and then the computer didn’t recognize one of my drives (which I managed to salvage most of the material from). So I have to scan on my new computer, save to an external hard drive, plug that ext-drive to my old computer which I start up, have to wait to rest (when the Amazon MP3 downloader starts up, that’s when I know it’s done booting up), and the start my art program. The same art program that is very expensive these days with its monthly fees and supposedly difficult to cancel subscription.

I think you know that I have a tablet now, which I struggle adjusting to, at least with creating new comics. I’ve said it before: it’s just EASIER for me to draw, scan on faster new computer, then edit on old computer, than it is to fire up new computer and super fancy tablet and draw from scratch on that tablet. I love Krita and it came in super handy on my tablet to re-work many of the “Spiders Are Helpful!” strips. Recently on facebook, someone was asking about an alternative to Expensive Art Program because they were tired of fees. “Get an old computer like mine” isn’t the answer. Someone else said “Photopea” and I was curious, and tried it out with this strip, Mort 386.

Along with Krita, there’s a learning curve. A lot of people recommend GIMP which I’ve used in the past and it was a struggle to add text, delete all the “noise” without making it look pixelated even at 300 dpi, and save the file. Photopea is practically advertised as being just like Expensive Art Program. I found a few things difficult to navigate, like just navigating the image – but that may be because Photopea is a homage to newer versions of Expensive Art Program and its constant updates, whereas I have a much older version…that I still get quite a lot done on.

With Photopea, I was able to use its Eraser tool – I used the Background and Magic Eraser to eliminate those remaining blue pencil lines. I had written alternate text for panels 2 & 3 in the margins, which I was able to move over the previous text. I was able to rotate the canvas and rotate some of the lettering to make it more horizontal. I used its Magic Wand tool to select a blank section, “select similar” for all the white space and “Modify – Contract” 1 pixel so that when I delete all the white space along with the “noise” like other pencil grease lines and any paper texture (to use Magic Wand on it would take too much time). Afterward, I flattened the image, and it looks like it does above. Like GIMP, you can’t save it as a png or jpg – you have to Export As.

The final problem I had? There’s no converting the file (scanned as RGB so you can see the blue pencil as blue) to Grayscale, as far as I can tell. I looked up some answers to that scenario and other than some messing with a color option, it’s still technically an RGB file, and much larger. So I opened it in Krita and changed the file there to Grayscale, and saved it.

It will take more tweaking – and getting used to. One big barrier is that on my tablet, about 1/7 of the program (which you use on your browser!) is taken up by a vertical ad on the right. Then another 1/7 of the screen is the History and Layers listing, and then the next vertical column that you might have to open will have a “navigator” window so you can see where you’re looking at on your file when you zoom in on the main window to work on any part of the image. It ends up being half the window. There’s no bars at the top or left of the image to move the view of what you’re looking at, you have to go back to this navigator.

The above is the product of messing around with Photopea. I drew the bars of the cage on the bird in panel 2 because what I had drawn in a gray pen were deleted by the program when I did the select-select similar “noise”-deleting trick, because the magic wand tool ended up picking up on the light gray along with the white space. Oops. But, I was able to draw in Photopea with my tablet!

I opened the program again while typing, and it also froze up and then crashed. Oops. I’d have to have something open and it happens like that again. :S

I will have to do more experimenting. I’m set in my ways, and admitted to myself that creating comic strips directly on the table might not be for me, but with Krita it has been a great tool to edit and experiment (the covers to Robots With Coffee #5 and Spiders Are Helpful! were both colored in on Krita). If I can figure out the nuance of Photopea, which seems simpler than the old version of Expensive Art Program but updated in ways like its new version, it might save me some time and also help me bid farewell to the nearly 20 year old desktop computer I’ve been working on.

Also I hope you like the comic strip.