PDA

View Full Version : Coloring after painting in black & white

eidolons
02-13-2007, 07:44 PM
Hi,
I've been painting a picture purely in black & white to get the values and forms just right in my painting. I've never painted this way before, but thought I'd try it out. Now, what is the best way to start coloring in the painting? Do I create a new layer, and switch to "soft light" and then just start going over the painting with the colors I want? I don't want to compromise the values I already established in the original B & W painting.

Anyway know how to color properly in Photoshop? Thanks for any assistance!
Erik Heyninck
02-13-2007, 10:27 PM
Layers: of course. Soft light? Why?

Perhaps you need to spend an hour or so on some blend modes?

Some basic ones are
-Multiply: darkens everything except where the multiplied layer is pure white
-Screen: lightens everything except where the screend layer is pure black
-Hard Light: darkens everything where the HLlayer is darker than medium grey and lightens everything where the HLlayer is lighter than medium grey. (! this medium grey is VERY important as it is not influenced!)
-Overlay: the opposite of Hard Light.

Hard light makes the top layer dominant, Overlay the underlying one and SoftLight gives a 50-50 effect. Good perhaps for quick blending of two photographs you want to mix so you get a notion of where and what you'll need to mask.

Then you have three withwhich you can influence the components of your colour:
-hue
-saturation
-luminosity

and the one you probably should be using:
-Color. This changes hue and saturation, but not the brightness. Useful for colouring greyscale images.
CGTalk Moderation
02-13-2007, 10:27 PM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.