Art Archive The OFFICIAL Tools and Techniques Thread Ver. 2.0

Does anybody here know how to color with Photoshop?

 

I do. Here's my technique (as stated previously in my art thread):


1. Open file you want to color in Photoshop
2. Duplicate the layer twice (so you now have three layers) and delete the original layer
3. Select the upper layer and decrease the opacity to around 35%
4. Select the lower layer and color on that one only. Note: when thinking of a color, select one that is a much darker shade due to the opacity level of the upper layer
5. Color away
6. Once the picture (don't worry about the background just yet) is colored, feel free to mess around with the opacity level of the upper layer. Don't do this until you've completely colored the picture.
7. Flatten the image
8. Color the background on the layer you have, or if you're unsure of what you're doing or just want to mess around, make a new layer.
9. Have fun and remember that Ctrl+Z is your friend

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me about it and good luck.

 

We lost the original? Too bad--and commendations to our vigilant moderator HanSolo29 for resurrecting this thread. Hope we can collect together a good reference thread for everyone here!

And for anyone interested in the manual drawing techniques I've learned and use myself, I'm happy to share those, too (as far as digital, though, I'm useless! )!

FF

 

HS29- If you're looking to colour over actual drawing pictures and make it look real, (and not muddy like paint!) then I tend to use Guassian Blur on the colour layers. Make a separate layer for each colour, and then play around with the toolbar and opacity levels until you have a desired effect.
If it's HAIR (oh the dreaded one...) then there are a few brushes you can download (or I can attempt to upload them somewhere) so that you don't have to colour each strand individually... For hair it's good to have at least 5 layers, so you have one basic colour, then midtones, highlights and lowlights and one for shadowing... Yet again, just play around with opacity levels... I tend to find around 45% opacity with Burn or Overlay works nice on pictures meant to look realistic...
If you need anymore help, I'm working on a few tutorials for a small website, so I'll link you up to the tutorials if anyone needs 'em!

 

I could need some hints on digital inking in Corel Painter... I've got a Wacom Volito2, now, and I'd love to put it to best use Especially important would be to know what brush to use.

Thanks in advance!

 

With Photoshop, my friend actually had me do Select->color range and duplicate the pencil lines from the original scan onto a transparent layer and then delete teh original, but I'm not sure as to how to achieve the effects. The problem is that I've a hard time touching up stuff like this: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/38746094/?qo=3&q=by%3Asilsolo+in%3Ascraps+sort%3Atime

I want to make it look 3D, sorta like http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/31214347/

I'm also wondering how I'm supposed to animate stuff on Photoshop, because I know that I should be able to do it from a comp in my school's multimedia lab, which has version 9.

As for traditional drawing techniques, I'm pretty limited to what I learned in the four semesters of drawing that I took in my freshman and sophomore years and what I've learned from my gel pens.

 

Okies, the tutorial I am making (which is VERRRYY simple) should be finished relatively soon!
I'm no master at it, but I'm hoping it'll give people a level up or so!
I'll try and find the sites of the brushes, because I haven't got a zipping tool to make them a smaller file size...
Guassian Blur? Off the top of my head, it should be in Effects... On the top bar...
But I re-arranged my toolbars quite some time ago to make it easier for me... (I'm SO lazy!)

 

How do I add sparkles to a picture?

 

I don't remember where I found this link, so it might be from the old Tools and techniques thread. But anyway, for those who haven't seen it here's a whole bunch of useful tutorials: http://chaosshattered.deviantart.com/journal/6836628/

 

Ah, sorry for doubleposting but I just remembered NeonDragons tutorials: http://neondragonart.com/dp/tutorials/ Among others there's several good about coloring in photoshop, so maybe this could be of help HS29.

 

Does any one know how to get a good saber glow effect in Photoshop for some reason I can't get one that looks correct, any help would be great if this is the wrong thread for such I am really sorry.

 

This is how I do it, I think it's the most common way too: Have the core (aka the white part) of the lightsaber in a separate layer and then select Layer->Layerstyle->Outer Glow (that's how it looks in PS 7.0. Don't know if it's different in other versions). Select your color and then experiment with opacity, spread, size and range until you have a glow you like. I just tried it and here's what I ended up with: Opacity: 90%, Spread: 30% Size: 45 px, although size depends entirely on the size of the lightsaber of course, and range: 90%.

Hope that helped

 

That is an interesting way to do it but not normally how I would use the outer glow feature, I think it might be different than that in CS2 which I use at home but I use 7.0. I will have to try that next time and see what I get, thank you for the input

 

below is an excellent link to coloring line art. For those new to Photoshop, this is the place to go--very easy step by step methods provided:
Steel Dolphin photoshop tutorials

this is where I learned to color my line art, comic stuff, etc.

 

If you are using Photoshop 7.0, CS or CS2 it would be under the Filter tab at the top of the Photoshop window, go down to Blur and a side menu will be shown and go down to Gausian Blur then play around with the feature till you get what you want. At least that is how I do such

If some one already said this sorry for restating it

 

It could be colored with both-I love the gradient tool-especially the circle gradient tool. I use that alot for highlights, then go in with the brush tool, just to clean it up-but I'm sure if you use just plain color and the gradient tool, you could get it done.

 

I'm looking for a graphics tablet at some point. I'd like one that has a built in screen so that I'm drawing on the picture and not on a blank slate and looking at my monitor, like the Wacom Cintiq. I was wondering if anyone knew of something similar that wasn't as expensive as this? Another option is to buy a tablet pc as I'm looking to buy a new laptop.

 

If your going to get a tablet you have to get a Wacom, they might be expensive but there isn't really anything as good.