Unable to use the Light Table on imported images

[emmaringo]

Hello all! I'm new here and this is my first post so please forgive me if I make any mistakes.

I'm an aspiring 2D animator and here is my dilemma: I have a few pencil drawings of keyframes on a white background in JPG format. I would like to import them to TVPaint and draw the in-betweens myself. Now I can import them without any problems, but when I turn on the Light Table (Onion Skin) in order to be able to draw the in-betweens,it does not show the onion skin drawings of the frames before and after.

While struggling to rectify this I discovered that obviously this would not work as the images are JPGs and TVPaint sees the whole image (the pencil drawing and the white background) as one image and so turning on the Light Table is only going to create a partially transparent square.

So then I thought about using PNGs of these keyframes with a transparent background. This time, even though the Light Box shows the semi-transparent drawings of the previous and next frame, the drawings themselves have weird and ugly pixels all around them.

So I was hoping someone could guide me on how to achieve this. Should I use a different format? Is there a TVPaint setting/option that I am not using? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[neonnoodle]

Look into the Scan Cleaner FX. That will get you where you want to be.

[Animark]

You can also set the lightable settings to "Image Color" at the top left and top right corner of the settings panel. But most of time you like to remove the white of the drawings anyway and the scan cleaner is your friend.

[emmaringo]

You can also set the lightable settings to "Image Color" at the top left and top right corner of the settings panel. But most of time you like to remove the white of the drawings anyway and the scan cleaner is your friend.

Look into the Scan Cleaner FX. That will get you where you want to be.

I am using TVPaint 10. I can't seem to find the Scan Cleaner FX. I'm guessing that's a feature introduced in version 11?

Is there anything else I can do? Like modify the image in Photoshop so that I get only the pencil lines when I import it in TVPaint? So that the image behaves like it was drawn in TVPaint and I would then be able to use the Light Table. Please, any help would really be appreciated.

[slowtiger]

Image / Scan Cleaner.

[emmaringo]

@neonnoodle @Animark @slowtiger - After reading all of your suggestions, I did a little more digging about "Scan Cleaner" in TVPaint 10 and I found it under Effects -> Color. I applied it and that did the trick! Thank you SO MUCH all three of you for helping me! I'm very grateful.