That's MISTER Doctor Wizard, if you don't mind.

So I got all scientific this morning on the question of what constitutes non-photo blue. I decided to find out how dark a blue I could print out for inking over. I printed a "bluescale" on a slightly grubby piece of bristol and scanned it as lineart/bitmap to see what was the highest concentration of blue I could have on a page without risking it scanning as black. The grainy black in the image is the bluescale turned into a bitmap. As you see, the answer is: a little over 60% cyan is the darkest blue you should print on the page. The more purely cyan the blue is, the better, except a little bit of yellow doesn't hurt. A little bit of black naturally would present a problem--too likely to scan as dirt.

So from now on when I convert a grayscale scan of pencils into blue for inking, I use Photoshop to convert it to CMYK, then select Image> Adjustments> Hue/Saturation. In that dialog box, check the box called "Colorize." Then set the Hue to 178-180, Saturation to 100. If you leave the Info palette on top, you get a continuous readout of the concentration of colors where your cursor is, even when you are in the Hue/Sat dialog. Just put the Lightness slider to where the darkest area in your art is a little over 60% cyan. Then hit OK and git ta printin'.

(Don't forget: always scan your inked art as lineart/bitmap, with a high resolution: 800ppi or more.)

It's the optimum combo of "readability" and scannability!! You'll thank me in your heart. It's really helped me in inking Tony Talbert's incredible pages on this pitch we're doing. If you're real nice, I'll show you one of these times!

JH

P.S.: Read DRAW! Magazine Editor Mike's alternate method in the comment below. Thanks, Mike)