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| How to use flats when coloring lineart in photoshop |
Hey everyone. Someone
from the forum at www.penciljack.com asked me what
the purpose of "flats" in comic coloring was. I
took some screenshots in photoshop and made this
tutorial. I'll try to explain the different steps
here.
1. This is the channels
palette. This is where I put the flats. All the
channel "layers" are in greyscale. Select the flats
by pressing the flats layer.
2. Notice how the main image
changes to the greyscale flats channel.
3. Choose the magic wand tool
by pressing the icon on the tools palette or by
pressing the hotkey "ctrl-w". Copy the settings
from the ones on the image bellow. Turn of antialiasing
and set the tolerance to 0.
4. Here we are ready to select
the skin with the magic wand.
5. After a single click with the magic wand,
all her skin is selected Easy. Now You don't need
to reselect everything with the lasso tool each
time You want to make a correction. This will speed
up the coloring process enormously.
6. Change back to the main
image by pressing the rgb channel in the channels
palette. Notice how the selection from step 5 still
remains. Now You can color without running over
anything else than the skin. If you don't want to
look at the "marching ants" or selection outlines,
press "ctrl-h" to hide them. "ctrl-h" unhides them
again and "ctrl-d" deselects them.
Flats are used by all the professionals in the industry
(or most of them anyways) and some of them even
have flatters who lay down the flats for them. The
flats themselves are a little boring to make. You
start out with the lineart. Make a new layer in
the layers palette and set the mode to multiply
(make the lineart "shine" through whatever colors
you make on the new layer).
Select the polygonal lasso tool (the one that makes
straight lines), shortcut "L". The normal "freehand
lasso tool is on by default, so you have to browse
through the lasso tools until you get the polygonal
tool. You can browse through the different lassotools
by pressing "shift-L" (same with all the other tools).
Turn of antialiasing (very important). Now start
selecting the different areas of the lineart. Select
all the skin for example.. or the jacket. Anything
which you will need to color without affecting anything
else later on.
Only make flats.. highlights and shadows will come
later. When you have flatted the whole image, press
"ctrl-a" to select everything. Press "ctrl-c" to
copy. Go to the channels palette (next to the layers
palette". Make a new channel (same way as when you
make a new layer). Paste the flats onto this channel
by pressing "ctrl-v" (paste).
You now have a flats channel, and you can now start
adding shadows and highlights to the main image
(rgb channel). The smart thing about the flats are
that they stay the same no matter how much you paint
shadows and highlights and fancy effects on the
main image. Imagine that You didn't have flats and
you were to paint the skin. You would paint it with
a brush, being very careful not to go over the lines
and into the skirt or the background. Then you would
paint the shadows.. still having to be very careful
not to go over anything else than the skin. With
flats you just select the skin with the magic wand
from the flats channel. And now you don't have to
be careful anymore.
I hope this will be helpful to some of you! I don't
know where I would have been without my flats. |
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