Help with making outlines in Photoshop (Elements)

[DizzyStar]

Hi,so

I'm having a pretty noobish problem >_> I hand-draw all of my stuff, ink it in black, then scan it into my computer. I use photoshop to clean it up because I don't like how over pixely photoshop makes it if I use it to trace the pencil sketch. (If... that's even how you do it. I don't know how other people do it ;_;)

Now my DILEMMA is this: I want to color these outlines. I use the magic want to delete the white outside of the outline, then color.

HOWEVER: there are always gray bits surrounding the black of the lines. How can I stop this?

Here's a picture of one of the times this happened: http://sheezyart.com/art/view/2389085/

See the white "coating" on each black line? I want to get rid of that ;_;

Thank you very much, and if you have any other tips, PLEASE let me know. I admit I know nothing XD Wisdom is so appreciated. Thank you again!

[Lotus]

One way you can color in your lines is really simple, just set that layer to multiply and do the actual coloring on a layer underneath. I'm not sure of other ways to color in lineart in PS, I use Gimp most of the time nowadays. Sorry :c

[MaiMai]

What Lotus said. You set your lineart layer to Multiply and then make other layers underneath to color.

If you want to specifically color the lines, after you finish your lineart on separate layer, you lock that layer and use a regular brush to color the lines (or Paint bucket)

[Auro-Cyanide]

The magic wand tool is always going to do that. You could try shifting the tolerance values up, but you will still end up with patches that are not coloured where white is changing to black. You either have to fill in the spaces manually or use a selection tool like polygon lasso to select the area right up to the lines and then fill. If you are trying to make sprites you will need the lineart on a separate layer so that the background remains transparent. You will also need to do this if you wanted to colour your lineart. I am not sure if this works exactly the same in Photoshop Elements, but the way I do it is:
1.Clean up the lineart with levels.
2. Go into the Channels and Ctrl click any layer. This will select all the white in your image.
3. Go back to the layers and create a new one. Select the inverse of the selection.
4. Right click and select Fill>Black
Hopefully that will fill your lineart with black on a new layer, so now you can hide your original lineart. Colour underneath the lineart.

[DizzyStar]

Sorry this took so long, but thank you so so so so much!

I'll try all of these things XD

[Melkoshi]

One thing I do is create a mask using the lineart image.

you fill the top most layer in pure black, then use the lineart image as a mask template, so that when the mask is created it'll be just the lineart showing. it'll make transparent the white and avoid that gray mess on the lines. and then it's really easy to color the lines if you perfer none black line art by locking the layer's transparency and painting.