I've been sketching on paper then trying to color digitally, but scanning and getting the linework clean enough is taking forever. I'm using a basic HP scanner and Photoshop. Is there a faster workflow I'm missing or should I just start drawing directly on my tablet?
I've been messing around with digital art on the side and honestly the scanner route with basic equipment is just brutal - the cleaning up takes way longer than the actual coloring.
Your best bet is probably bumping up the contrast and levels in Photoshop after scanning, then using the Threshold tool to get those lines crisp, but if you're already frustrated it might just be worth grabbing a cheap drawing tablet instead since you'd skip that whole cleanup stage entirely.
Drawing directly on something like a Wacom One or even an iPad would let you get straight to coloring without the scanning headache, though there's definitely a learning curve with the pen feel being different from paper.
scanning paper sketches with basic hardware really does eat up your editing time - the threshold/levels adjustments alone can kill an hour per page.
one thing that actually saves time: shoot your sketch with your phone camera under good lighting instead, then run it through Photoshop's camera raw filter before you touch levels. the raw processing is way faster than scanner cleanup since you're working with color data that's already more forgiving. you lose some detail compared to a flatbed scan but honestly for coloring work where you're gonna paint over the lines anyway it's maybe 80% as clean with half the hassle.
if you're doing this regularly though a tablet's the move - even a mid range Wacom or iPad gets you drawing to print without that whole scan-to-clean pipeline.
The scanner cleanup really isn't as brutal as it sounds if you nail the capture itself - shoot your sketches under decent lighting (even natural window light works) with your phone camera instead, then use Photoshop's Auto Tone or bump the Levels/Curves aggressively to separate the pencil lines from the paper. A tablet's honestly worth it down the line, but you don't need to jump ship yet since your current bottleneck is the scanning process, not the coloring. If you're already in Photoshop, just set that scan layer to Multiply blend mode and you'll skip half the cleanup work - the white paper disappears and your lines stay clean for painting underneath.
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