using fill on paint programs (scanned image)

[Scuzling]

hi i am handrawing my backgrounds, black & white & then scanning them on computer to colour them in using photoplus 5 but when i try to fill in an area it doesnt really work because its not pure white some white areas are darker then others, is there a way i can get fill to work in photoplus or maybe change something before i scan them on?

[Gilbert]

I'm not familiar with PS but I think you can set the fuzziness higher to make it better.

Though IMO I'll first tune the scanned a bit which the simplest way is to increase the constrast of it (works with most proggies).

[TheYak]

There are a couple tutorials that you could check out (I'm sure there are more out there, these are just the ones I've familiar with):

http://www.sylpher.com/kafka/tutorials/curves.htm
http://www.sylpher.com/kafka/tutorials/chartut.htm

Both deal a bit with your question.  As far as specifics..  I've had the best luck by 1) inking over pencil sketches and erasing the pencil-lines, making for crisper, higher-contrast line-drawings 2) scanning as line-art (though this can produce some weird line artifacts that need cleaning, I've found it to be the best for my purposes) and 3) juggling brightness/contrast controls to slowly phaze the image into B&W.  If the paint program has it, you can often also choose the range that the fill tool will affect.  For instance, if set to zero, you'll only fill with blue the areas that are 100% white.  If set to 20, it'll allow a range of 20 so that very light greys are affected also.