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Is there a way to lighten up a drawing for coloring without redoing linework?
Okay, so I was drawing away, and in the end I flattened the entire picture and kept working on that layer until I was finished. But now I don't fully know how to get it lightened up to color it without losing the progress I had on the lines and such. Does anyone have any helpful ideas? Here's some before and after images, and the PSD just to see if I can help speed along a solution. Thank you, guys!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3UgY2683qdSbnRsb1hPV2l1VDg




I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "lightened up to color it," but you can use the technique Kienan uses that he calls "sketch lifting" which separates any value off of a white background. I recommend going back to one of his videos where he covers it.
Here's the file
So I took your file and did what I think you're trying to do. Let me explain the steps I used.
1) I wasn't sure if you wanted to use the gray background, but if you do you probably want it separate from the lines. So I just copied your main layer for a backup, and later if you want you can paint over the lines on that layer and use it as your background.
2) I selected the two grays on your background, went to Selection->Expand selection by about 3 pixels to push the selection lines just into your line art, and then used adjusted Levels to make the whole background white.
3) Next to your Layers tab is the Channels tab (if it's not there, go to Window->Channels). At the bottom of that tab is a dotted circle. Clicking it will select all of the white in the image. Now go back to your layers tab, make a new layer, invert your selection (shift-control-i or just use the menus), and fill with black or any dark color.
4) Now you have everything that was not white as different transparencies of black, and you will be able to color underneath it like Kienan does.
So I wasn't sure if you wanted to the skin and shirt to still have the light gray...it would mean later you'd have to do more work to color those "lines" so whatever color you put underneath doesn't get muddied up by having a thin layer of black on top. So, I did this whole process above ^^ once like you had it, and another time after I'd adjusted your image so the skin and the light stripes in the shirt were white. Both of those layers are in a folder on top, and you can choose whichever one you'd like. I left all the layers I used in the file, just turned off, so you can see what I did.
THANK YOU! ; u; I was so lost in getting to that point! You're a life safer!!