Coloring a Drawing on Photoshop

[roymbrog]

Ah, it's more my admiration of people who can do it. xD I think I've managed to complete one image using a mouse, and it wasn't very good. You definitely have a lot more practice and patience with one than I do.

[Anacybele]

Heh, I see. And yeah, most probably. :P

[peener weener]

this is a comment reserved for your real life face honestly

gotta call the firefighters for this right here house-sized burn

[Mew]

I'm kind of against the suggestion of using the dodge/burn tools, those give a really obvious, plastic-y effect and don't teach you anything about color, not to mention all they do affect a single color, there's no reflective shadows, makes it flat and boring. :< They're for editing photos yo, not for making digital art.

Setting your brush to multiply is an awesome way to generate colors if you don't feel confident using the color picker, it's less deadening, using black and white for shadows/highlights is pretty much a no-no in art and that's pretty much exactly what dodge/burn does. Uhh tablet is pretty important also.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Mewiyev

[Anacybele]

Well, I never said he HAD to use the dodge/burn tools. I merely said it's how I do it. :P

I don't mind the way they look either. It really depends on how you use them, imo.

[Sundus64]

so, i took the liberty to mess around with your picture a bit, hope you don't mind. This is how I do my coloring, done on gimp which is a free software.

like i said, impose a 3D art on it. put it on 50% opacity so you can see how it fits with your pic. it's kinda cheating, but eh.

That is such a cool idea! You should like make a video and post it on youtube, and no I don't mind if you mess around with my pic I like learning from others!

[Prax]

You wanted it to look something like this, right?

I did this on my laptop with a TRACKPAD (like finger painting!) instead of a mouse, so hopefully you have an easier and time than me and will make your drawing less messy!

That is how I basically shade.

I am going to give you the EASIEST STEPS I CAN:

1. For your picture: Take a better picture in BRIGHT LIGHT. Open it in Photoshop.

2. You don't need to outline it on the computer, but your lines will look kind of rough and messy.

But it's still ok. Just use the brightness/contrast tool:

MENU => IMAGE => ADJUSTMENTS => BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST...

[if there is a USE LEGACY checkbox, make sure it's ON/checked]

+ 20 brightness

+ 30 contrast (you might need to go to 40)

That should be good enough.

3. DOUBLE CLICK on the LAYER so it "promotes" to a "new layer" Layer 0. You can rename it to LINEART.

4. Change the MODE of the LINEART layer to MULTIPLY. This means that anything UNDER this layer will get darker from the linart layer (white will look invisble, graininess on your paper will make the colours under slightly darker--you might want this effect for your picture).

5. MAKE A NEW LAYER. (you can go to the layer menu on the top or click on the button on the bottom). Name it "BASE COLORS" or something like that. Leave the layer mode on NORMAL.

6. DRAG the BASE COLORS layer so it is UNDER your LINEART layer. Now put basic colours on the BASE COLORS LAYER. NO SHADING! Use a brush with 100% hardness on 100% opacity. Change the sizes to get into small spaces. I assume you know how to do this.

You will notice that the dark lines on the LINEART layer stay on top and your colours "show through" all the white parts. Colour each section carefully.

7. WHEN YOU ARE DONE: MAKE A NEW LAYER and name it "SHADING" or something like that. Put the layer mode to MULTIPLY. It should automatically be ON TOP of your FLAT COLOURS layer. If it's not, DRAG IT UP.

8. CHOOSE A SOFTER BRUSH. You can put it on 50% hardness and 30% opacity. (I am kind of choosing random numbers, but they should work!). Choose a GREY-RED or GREY-ORANGE (BROWNISH) colour. NOW START SHADING. You don't have to be that careful. Just start making blobs with your brush in the areas you want and build it up darker and darker. It will be harder with a mouse, but it's not impossible.

Learn how to shade. I am not going to be able to teach you, but you should have some idea of where shadows go. Look at some pictures for reference.

(If you want to get fancy, choose a light grey-purple first to do all the shadows, then a darker grey-brown second to do darker shadows).

You should notice the MULTIPLY effect making the colours of the image darker.

9. WHEN YOU ARE DONE: MAKE A NEW LAYER and name it "HIGHLIGHTS" or something like that. Put it on SCREEN. Use the COLOR PICKER to pick your BASE COLORS for the part you want to SHINE (like metal, shinies in hair, shinies in eyes). You can make your brush harder and higher opacity, but gently brush over that area with the same colour on the HIGHLIGHTS layer and it should BRIGHTEN all the colours below it (the brighter the colour you pick, the brighter the colour underneath will be). You can also DRAG the HIGHLIGHTS layer above your LINEART layer to make the areas looks extra glowy (it will make your lines brighter too, but if you don't know what you're doing, it will cover your lines and make it look bad!).

10. FINISHING TOUCH: grab a piece of cardboard and take a picture of it. Maybe you can google a cardboard texture. Anyway, COPY AND PASTE that in and name it "PAPER" or something. Set the mode to OVERLAY. This will give your whole image a nice PAPERY/almost watercoloury texture. You can fiddle with the layer opacity to make it lower if it looks too harsh.

11. SAVE. YOU NOW HAVE A FINISHED PICTURE!

======================================================

SUMMARY: Your layers should look like this in this order in the layer list:

- PAPER [OVERLAY] 25% - 100% opacity depending on your taste

gives a paper texture to image. It's optional.

- LINEART [MULTIPLY]

this is your linework. Use brightness/contrast to make them cleaner looking.

- HIGHLIGHTS [sCREEN]

this is all the places you want shiny. Use base colours and lighten those as needed.

This can be on top of the LINEART layer if you know what you're doing.

- SHADING [MULTIPLY]

this is where you do all your shading. Use light grey-browns or light grey-purples.

- BASE COLORS [NORMAL]

this is where you put all the basic colours of your image.

=======================================================

Below are examples of my steps of: SKETCH => OUTLINE => BASE COLOURS (I call them "flats") => SHADING

This is all using a tablet. If you want to get serious with drawing on the computer a lot, invest in a tablet--it's like a mouse in the shape of a pen and it can detect how hard you press on the top, so your brush size can get lighter or darker, smaller or wider. It could be a Wacom Bamboo or Monoprice one. Both are serviceable an feel much more natural than using a mouse,

Also, if you can't follow my steps, too bad. lol You need to play a lot more with Photoshop and gain some experience with it.

Edited December 2, 2012 by Prax

[Thor Odinson]

I'm kind of against the suggestion of using the dodge/burn tools, those give a really obvious, plastic-y effect.

I agree with this.

A lot.

I can't force you to use anything else if you're really set on using them, but they make your stuff look really cheap and is about as far from professional as you can possibly get. Just looks bad IMO. There are only a few instances where it doesn't look terrible but unless you have a lot or experience already I'd steer away from touching them at all.

Also this isn't a tip for OP in particular but for people who are experienced oil/acrylic painters:

Other than mixing colours or if you're the kind that does palette knife type of art (which I can't help you since I've never done it), PS works like a really smooth canvas so you can treat it like a canvas with separable layers. It's perfectly fine if you all do it on one layer or use many, but if you use many layers and don't have a very powerful computer, I suggest you merge often since Photoshop is very memory-intensive and merging at least saves some memory on your computer.

Edited December 2, 2012 by Zhuge Liang

[Anacybele]

Well yeah, if you don't know how to properly use the dodge and burn tools, of course the shading is going to look plasticy and terrible. That's why I said to experiment. That's how I learned and gained a lot of experience in using them.

I've tried shading using brushing, but that has never worked out. It always ends up looking too cartoony and flat. I only do it this way if I absolutely have to.

[Thor Odinson]

Maybe you should learn how to properly shade with brushes, then. Study a bit of color theory can go a long way, and play with opacity a bit on them. Dodge and Burn should at most be used to bring out a few well-placed highlights on high-contrast materials (and even then it's unnecessary if you paint properly, and in addition you can play with layer effects and it'd come out better), and that's about it.

Gonna be a bit blunt here, but your work isn't really the best example to tell people what to aspire to, especially the colouring.

[Anacybele]

Maybe you should learn how to properly shade with brushes, then. Study a bit of color theory can go a long way, and play with opacity a bit on them. Dodge and Burn should at most be used to bring out a few well-placed highlights on high-contrast materials (and even then it's unnecessary if you paint properly, and in addition you can play with layer effects and it'd come out better), and that's about it.

Maybe you should learn to use the dodge and burn tools better. You CAN change their settings, you know. Knowing when to use highlight, shadow, or midtone and on what opacity can go a long way. Also, I said I use the smudge tool as well, not JUST the dodge and burn tools.

Gonna be a bit blunt here, but your work isn't really the best example to tell people what to aspire to, especially the colouring.

A lot of people would disagree with you. Also, I can try to aspire people if I damn well please, thank you.

Edited December 3, 2012 by Anacybele

[Nanami Touko]

loling

rimu leave the delusional girl alone we don't want to derail the topic trying to convince someone of the truth. spend your time on something better.

as for the OP, i've also heard that dodge and burn is a tool you should avoid entirely, so you may want to learn brush shading. art takes time to get right! practice makes more practice!

[Anacybele]

rimu leave the delusional girl alone we don't want to derail the topic trying to convince someone of the truth. spend your time on something better.

lol, me, delusional. Insulting me won't exactly help either, you know.

[CT075]

modesty is a quality generally smiled upon

[Freohr Datia]

Well Ana I think nobody said anything about smudging because it's more understandable...

If anything I think it'd at least look prettier and more "alive"(?) if shading with painting is used over dodge/burn ^~^

Edited December 3, 2012 by Freohr Datia

[Anacybele]

Doesn't mean they're allowed to go insulting me and my way of coloring, which I still think is perfectly fine. Just because they don't know how to do it the way I do doesn't make it wrong.

I never said using brushing was wrong, it just doesn't work for me. Different artists have different methods and those different methods work better for them than others.

Edited December 3, 2012 by Anacybele

[Nanami Touko]

rimu knows more about art than it seems you ever will, and even if you prefer it, dodge/burn is a terrible tool that will never look as good to any professional compared to actual brush shading. this isn't an opinion.

8]

Edited December 3, 2012 by seph1212

[Inactive Account]

I think this is the bit where I be the pedantic nerd and explain exactly what the tools do (and why this makes them suboptimal for shading)?

So yeah. Burn and dodge tools are photo retouching tools; their names come from the practice of over- or under-exposing parts of a photo to light in the development process to make a photo lighter or darker. So that's what the PS tools do; they lighten or darken bits of the image. However, the problem is that they do so indiscriminately, and afford you very little control over the way they affect color (resulting in the plastic-y effect Mew mentioned.) Depending on the setting, they can oversaturate or desaturate an area of light or shade, and suchlike. And if you're trying to go for a certain color of lighting in your piece, burn and dodge aren't going to help you at all.

You mentioned brush shading seeming "flat". I'm not really sure how that would happen unless you're literally doing flat shading; with properly managed brush settings, you should be able to get full shading going on just fine. With a tablet, you can link Transfer (opacity) to pen pressure; without one, you can still set the brush to a lighter opacity, so that strokes layer over each other to result in full shading. If it's the sharp edges you don't like, you can of course decrease the hardness of the brush.

Using the brush tool, you can put your hilights and shadows on different layers with different blending modes (I usually use the Linear Burn and Linear Dodge blend modes, but you can of course experiment; Multiply and Screen are also used a lot), and have full control of your light/shadow colors.

Back on topic (lol like that's actually gonna do anything), OP, another thing occurred to me that's useful for grabbing lineart out of scans. You can actually get the lineart onto its own layer without the white of the paper if you want.

Directions for doing this in Photoshop:

--Get a nice bright scan with as little grey shadow on the paper as possible.

--Open in Photoshop. If it's not in greyscale mode already, go to Image->Mode and change it into greyscale. (This will get changed back later.)

--Look for the Channels tab (it's next to Layers). There'll be one channel (Grey), and a little dashed circle icon at the bottom of the Channels box for "Load channel as selection". Hit that.

--Make a new layer, and paintbucket your desired line color into the resultant selection. Or brush tool it in, if you're feeling fancy or have extra marks you don't want to fill in.

--Change the image mode to RGB again.

Now you can put your color on a layer below the ink. I'd note, though, that whether or not pen-on-paper lineart looks good with digital ink will depend on art style; most of the time I just digitally ink.

[roymbrog]

I'm taking preemptive measures.

I am not sure what this whole fuss about preserving the dignity of the burn tool is. I can say from experience using both burn&dodge and shading with the brush tool that the later usually looks a lot better. The only advantage dodge and burn have is that they're faster and probably easier to use with a mouse. If one gets a tablet I do really encourage learning how to use the brush tool, it's a lot more flexible and you can do so much more with it.

When one wants to improve (as I think we all should strive to) it's always helpful to try new things~

For a visual comparison I have examples, if that helps put this issue to rest.

[spoiler=Burn&Dodge]

VS

[spoiler=shading]

[Anacybele]

I...see hardly any difference other than that on the dodge/burn one, the artist used too much highlight, making it look a bit glassy.

[Ohnonono]

Something reminds me about the "take a photo and impose it on the drawing" and blah, whatever it is called... since I am in the middle of doing texturing for my 3D assignments...

Y'know, you might want to get good doing that in order to do UV mappings when you're doing 3D rendering, but for digital painting... it's a different thing already.

Edited December 3, 2012 by Ohnonono

[roymbrog]

I...see hardly any difference other than that on the dodge/burn one, the artist used too much highlight, making it look a bit glassy.

Eh, the differences I saw were that the first one looked flat and pasty. The shading was uneven and didn't reach the edges of the colored area. The problems I encountered painting it were also very annoying, because the burn tool burns indiscriminately. If I burned over an area that was lightened it just washed the color out and looked kinda yuck. Maybe I could've overcome these issues if I'd worked with the tools long enough, but I'd been coloring this way for over a year at this point and this is probably the best piece from that era. The second one was done less than a year later after I'd discovered the wonders of SAI (awesome program, as I've mentioned before.)

Anyway, to each their own. I can't stop you from using the burn tool, and I don't really see why I'd want to, but I do encourage you to learn other methods of shading as well. Even if you do still prefer to burn&dodge in the end you'll have a lot more options for different styles of paintings should you want to experiment one day. Knowledge only helps~

[Anacybele]

If I burned over an area that was lightened it just washed the color out and looked kinda yuck.

Oh, yes, this I agree with. You should NEVER use the burn tool on an already lightened area. Though chances are, that area is meant to be lightened in the first place, so you shouldn't need to darken it anyway. If I have to, though, that's when I do use brushing to fix the error. As for the shading reaching all the way to the edges, that's what I use the smudge tool for. I also use it to make the shading blend better too.

I do agree that using the dodge and burn tools JUST BY THEMSELVES for shading is not the answer. Using them along with OTHER TOOLS, however, works.

Anyway, to each their own. I can't stop you from using the burn tool, and I don't really see why I'd want to, but I do encourage you to learn other methods of shading as well. Even if you do still prefer to burn&dodge in the end you'll have a lot more options for different styles of paintings should you want to experiment one day. Knowledge only helps~

Agreed, to each their own. And I don't want to stop or discourage anyone from using brushing. As I said, there are different ways to shade and different methods work better for different artists.

And actually, I do use different styles sometimes. I've done My Little Pony style, chibi style, and other styles too. In the case of things like My Little Pony, if they require any shading, I do use brushing then, because I'm actually going for that flat, cartoony look. MLP, however, requires very little, so yeah.

[Inactive Account]

Something reminds me about the "take a photo and impose it on the drawing" and blah, whatever it is called... since I am in the middle of doing texturing for my 3D assignments...

Y'know, you might want to get good doing that in order to do UV mappings when you're doing 3D rendering, but for digital painting... it's a different thing already.

i have to reply to this aside simply because fjkalfjklafsjk;lsadfj;kldfjkl fuck UV mapping forever (said by someone who's curently having to deal with that for work) biggest pain in the ass yes

also it is INCREDIBLY EASY to do brush shading and not have it be flat AS I ALREADY EXPLAINED but I would have to make the guess that my last post just went unread entirely, not even surprised

[Anacybele]

also it is INCREDIBLY EASY to do brush shading and not have it be flat AS I ALREADY EXPLAINED but I would have to make the guess that my last post just went unread entirely, not even surprised

Oh, snap, I didn't even know it was up there. My bad. >_<

Anyway, thanks, but I'm going to stick with my method for now, and I haven't really felt like drawing anything lately anyway.