Coloring in Photoshop
Submitted by DaDoc on April 12, 2004 - 20:07
What is the best way to color in photoshop? I've been trying to color my comic, but everything I do ends up looking pretty horrible. Any ideas or suggestions?
- Array
Submitted by DaDoc on April 12, 2004 - 20:07
What is the best way to color in photoshop? I've been trying to color my comic, but everything I do ends up looking pretty horrible. Any ideas or suggestions?
Coloring in Photoshop
by DaDoc - 04/12/2004 - 20:07
What is the best way to color in photoshop? I've been trying to color my comic, but everything I do ends up looking pretty horrible. Any ideas or suggestions?
by Townie - 04/12/2004 - 22:36
Well, you should probably give some examples and more specific questions about what it is you're having trouble with. Is it a technical thing with Photoshop itself, or are you having artistic trouble like color theory?
- Ben
by UrsulaV - 04/13/2004 - 09:24
This is like asking the best way to color with paint--the answer REALLY depends on what effect you want. Do you want it to look like watercolor? Oils? Crayon? Do you want lines to show, or no lines? Do you want flat cel coloring or cel coloring with a lot of airbrushing and backlighting on every single surface or no cel coloring whatsoever? Should it look like a portrait by a Flemish old master or a vectorized slickness?
There are ways to do all kinds of thing, with various investments of time, but you gotta figure out what you want the style to look like, first and foremost.
by Phalanx - 04/14/2004 - 12:14
It all depends on your art style, really.
Some art styles, IMHO should remain Black and white, because they were drawn with black and white in mind. If you want to colour a comic, you have to draw with colour in mind to achieve the best results.
I do all my comics in full colour :) . Currently the comics showing on Graphic Smash = my old stuff, but in the later stuff I think I've hit (finally) upon a colouring style that goes with my drawing style: a result that currently looks like a mix between pastels, charcoal and acrylic.
But to get there I had to try a multitude of different styles first, until to put it in the words of one of my readers: "You begin to wish she'd pick a style and stick with it".
So erm... guess what I'm trying to say is don't be afraid to experiment. You'll know what you want when you hit it.
by William Beckerson - 04/14/2004 - 23:56
[quote:6a291d6ac6="Phalanx"]Some art styles, IMHO should remain Black and white, because they were drawn with black and white in mind. If you want to colour a comic, you have to draw with colour in mind to achieve the best results.
This is true. I've slightly changed the way I do my comics since I started coloring. Basically, if you want color, you need to have backgrounds, so that means no "vast empty panels showing the emotional state of the character like they do in Japan" type panels for you.
by William Beckerson - 04/15/2004 - 15:28
Here's the short attention span version of how I do it-
1. Scan inks as bitmap at 200dpi... though I hear 300dpi seems to be standard.
2. Clean up unwanted lines.
3. Convert to RGB. Keep at large size.
4. Duplicate the background layer
5. Remove the "white" from the background layer.
6. Using a combination of the paintbrush, and paintbucket tools(lovely paintbucket) as well as my own ninja-like mad skillz, and add color to the background layer.
7. Flatten image.
I use a flat coloring style, so that's the end of the process for me. I then scale down to my final image size, which gets rid of the anti-aliasing "white dots" when it resamples the image, and add text. Even though the programs are different, I've pretty much follwed the same steps whether I was using Photoshop or Gimp.
My good pal Shaun Henderson uses his wacom tablet to hand color the highlights and shadows onto his images. And I think Derek Kirk Kim uses three tail- hairs of a Tibeten yak to color everything by hand... but that may be simply urban legend.
What I'm saying is that there are a number of ways to do it, and there are a number of tutorials on the web that you can find with a Google search.
by Anonymous - 04/15/2004 - 19:41
I've got a couple tutorials coming up that deal with this. As a matter of fact, it should be posted on the 'Pedia soon if Damonk ever leaves happy married land for a second! :) what a jerk.
--_Frodo
onlinecomic.net
by pablowapsi - 04/18/2004 - 11:02
There's no "best" way to color in Photoshop. I'll just add my style to the list and it's up to you to pick what works best for you. :D :wink:
My illustration process
by eveninghawk - 04/18/2004 - 19:26
I'm definitely with William Beckson on the coloring technique. I keep trying other ways to "shorten" the process, but I find that this works better with my brain. well, and I screw up and have to re-do much less.
by eldritchmonkey - 04/19/2004 - 17:33
You can always skip having lines all together and work directly in Photoshop like I do. Pencil drawings and inking are for wussies!
by Phalanx - 04/19/2004 - 20:31
[quote:863322693e="eldritchmonkey"]You can always skip having lines all together and work directly in Photoshop like I do. Pencil drawings and inking are for pussies!
*joking*
Judging by your banner sig, I can tell ;)
But seriously, variety is the spice of life. There's is no one way to do something. Hell, if every comic out there looked exactly like Mac Hall, I think I'd stop reading comics after a while out of the feeling of eternal sameness.
Like I said, all depends on what you're trying to convey.
by Anonymous - 04/19/2004 - 21:46
[quote:64e0c7dac0="eldritchmonkey"]You can always skip having lines all together and work directly in Photoshop like I do. Pencil drawings and inking are for wussies!
You only say that because you couldn't defeat the Shaolin Masters in order to get your membership in the Masonic Order Of Inkers
by eldritchmonkey - 04/19/2004 - 23:05
Those clowns? They were no match for my Napping Lizard fighting technique.
by eveninghawk - 05/02/2004 - 01:42
*chuckles*
Hey.,.. but it's fun walking around greased up to my writsts in colored ink... people think I do tattoos or something.
by DaDoc - 05/03/2004 - 19:45
Thanks for your help in spite of my lack of clarity. I think I've managed to find something that I like, though I would appreciate it if some people could take a look at the last few of my comics to see what you think. Thanks again.