Categories
December 2nd, 2008
Photoshop Coloring Tutorial
(click the spoiler button to open tutorial)
Finally I am getting around to posting this. I have been meaning to do so for a while now. Gomen XD
Okay, so, this is my method for setting up pieces to be colored in Photoshop. It is a bit more complicated than using layers, so if at any point you feel lost or confused, shoot me a message and I will be more than happy to help you out.
The method I am teaching you is NOT
1. Set line art to multiply
2. Create 10078484 layers, lock to color
3. Burn/dodge for pretties
which is what you will find in most photoshop tutorials. What I am going to teach is a little more complicated, but in the long run saves you time, RAM, space on your hard drive, and it will have you actively thinking about ways to utilize photoshop and its capabilities. And it is AMAZINGLY simple once you get the hang of it (just somewhat awkward to teach).
*************************************************************************************
Windows s: A Note About Hotkeys
In this tutorial, I mention the apple hotkeys first because--you guessed it--I use a Mac. I try to guess at what the hotkeys are for windows, although I'm not sure on some of them. But the general rule of thumb is that hotkeys that are apple+something on a mac are usually ctrl+something on windows. I would try that first. I also walk you through how to do things without hotkeys, so if it's a hotkey that doesn't work, just do it without the hotkey and from there you can figure out what the hotkey is.
*************************************************************************************
Step 1: Prepping Your Line Art
There are many different ways that you can go about doing this; you can scan a sketch/ink drawing and convert the lines to digital data; you can scan a sketch and ink it digitally; you can also import a drawing from somewhere else and convert it from a flat piece to digital ink (using this method). However you get to this point, the inks need to be on a single layer and on a transparent background. (in other words, DO NOT scan in a line art layer and set it to multiply! It fucks with the colors!)
Tip: What is this "multiply"? Why do I not want to use it? How can I avoid using it?
Multiply is a setting in photoshop that sets a layer (or flood fill, texture...several other things) to look at the color info in a set of channels and multiply the base color by the blend color in laymen's , it allows the darker colors on the layers underneath to show through.
It is believed that multiply is an easy way to color underneath your line art (scan a sketch, set that layer to multiply, create a layer underneath and color it). While this is true, the fact of the matter is IT MESSES UP YOUR COLORS. You aren't painting with the color you thought you were painting with, and it causes trouble in the long run, especially if you want to adjust the colors prior to finishing the piece.
DO NOT USE MULTIPLY WITH THIS TUTORIAL. When we get to the part about selective color adjustments, if you used multiply, it's going to mess you up. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use the method I described in this tutorial. It will get me to shut up about it. XD
So at this point you should have three layers, in this order from top to bottom: your "ink" layer, the "paint" layer (which we will be painting on) and your "background" layer (which we will use to paint the background on). Fill the "background" layer with a neutral color, tinted to match the mood of the piece (grey with a red tint for a warm piece, grey with a blue tint for a cool piece, etc). I actually filled my background with white to make the colors bolder, since the piece is going to have a simple background (and there isn't really a "mood," other than "OMG YOKO'S HOT").
*************************************************************************************
Step 2: Setting Up Channels
Select the lasso tool
Make sure that FEATHER is set to zero and ANTI-ALIAS is turned OFF. (Feather creates a feather around your selection--DO NOT WANT(for this); Anti-alias fades the edges of your selection/fill--also DO NOT WANT, because in this method, when we use the selection too, we want it to grab EVERYTHING, and not just the area up until the fade. You'll see later.)
Select an area on your piece, inside part of the line art; I usually start with the hair. (Tip: if you hold down the "alt" button, you can actually lift the pen and create anchor points, making it slightly easier to work with. Test it out, it's really cool). Close the selection area (let go if you are tracing; release the alt button if you went that route). Choose a bright bright color--doesn't matter what color; you can change it later, right now we just need something that is starkly different from everything else in the piece. Select the paint bucket; make sure anti-alias is turned OFF. Fill the selection.
If you press apple+h (ctrl+h), you can view it without the "marching ants." You should be seeing a very jagged edge, like in the box above. This is good--you want this. (Test this out in another file: create a selection and flood fill with anti-alias turned on; now try to select that area. Zoom in and look closely; notice how it didn't select all of the painted area? Yeah, we don't want it to do that. Which is why we leave anti-alias off.)
Continue doing this until you have completely colored in the area (whether it be hair, a shirt, skin, etc--although I usually save the skin for last, makes things easier). Since the cranberry sauce doesn't touch the hair in any place, I went ahead and painted it too to save myself grief later.
Tip: wacoms are the shizzle
If you are using a Wacom Intuos, you can set the buttons on your pen to "L" and "G" in order to easily switch back and forth from the lasso (L) to the paint bucket (G). I always do this during this process because it saves SO MUCH TIME.
(You do this by going to the control ; I can't where this is in Windows, but on a Mac it is located in Apple>System Preferences... and then click the picture of the Wacom, probably located at the bottom of the screen. Click on the pen; you should now see drop-down menus where you can set what the pen buttons do. See below.)
Select the magic wand tool
Make sure that "contiguous" and "anti-alias" are OFF
and click where you just painted so that it selects everything that color (when contiguous is on, it only selects the color touching what you clicked)--you should now see marching ants around everything that is red
and press apple+c (ctrl+c for windows s), or Edit>Copy.
Open up the channels window. You can do this by going to Window>Channels:
Tip: making your own toolbar
You can also take all of the windows that you use frequently and make your own toolbar/tool palette :D Click the title of the tab you want to use (such as "layers" or "history," like in the picture) and drag and drop them into the same window, closing the ones you don't need. The result is a customized tool window with all of the palettes that you use on a regular basis. Such as yeah:
Click the new channel button
and a new channel will appear as a black background:
Your marching ants should still be there--if not, go back and use the magic wand to select the area again. Hit apple+v (ctrl+v) and this should happen:
Double-click the channel title (Alpha 1) to rename it something that will make sense to you. Since I'm coloring the hair and cranberry sauce, I named it "hair, cranberry sauce."
Go back to your painting by clicking the RGB channel (or by hitting apple+tilde on your keyboard, I have no idea what that is for windows). Repeat steps 2-6, separating the different objects in the painting and the areas that you wish to keep separate while painting, and copying them into separate channels. Be sure to use different colors (, it doesn't matter what color you use) so that when you use the magic wand, it only selects that color.
Tip: blue skin is hot
Use colors that boldly contrast each other. That way, it is easier to spot overlapping where you don't want it so that you can fix it by re-selecting and flood filling:
...yes, that means blue skin.
This also means that once you have the hang of this method, wait until you have painted everything to copy it over into channels. That way you can catch overlapping and fix it before you copy the selection into a channel. This will make more sense later on in the tutorial; for now just do what I say. XD
Your painting should look something like this
And your channels should look something like this
Now go back to the paint layer, hit apple+a (ctrl+a) to select everything, and then hit...THE DELETE KEY. Yes, that's right. Delete it.
:D
*************************************************************************************
Step 3: PAINTING
Now that we've gotten rid of that horrible mess, it's time to PAINT! Wee. Go back to your channels (click a channel; for this demo I'm using the hair/cranberry sauce channel). Use the magic wand tool (turn contiguous ON so that it only selects one area) and click the area that you wish to paint. I'm painting the hair, but the hair has more than one piece. So how do I select more than one piece without turning off contiguous to select all of them?
I click the first piece
then hold shift while clicking the second piece (a little plus sign appears when you do this to let you know that you are adding it to the selection):
Now both pieces are selected. I go back to the RGB channel (apple+tilde), pick a base color for the hair and flood fill. I then hit apple+h (ctrl+h) on my keyboard to hide the marching ants. Now I can paint relentlessly without going outside of my selection area. Go ahead, try to draw a line across it, you'll get something like this
Because you can only color inside of the place you have selected. Anytime you want to color outside of it, hit apple+d (or ctrl+d) to deselect. You can now proceed to use the channels/selection areas that you made earlier to color the entire picture. Think of the areas in the channels as placeholders.
Tip: turning contiguous on and off
While you are flood filling, turn contiguous off if you want to fill multiple selections at once. Turn it back on if you have multiple selections and only want to fill one.
Tip: painting/coloring
I won't go into big detail about how to use photoshop to paint, because this is my method:
1. choose color
2. choose brush
3. move pen around on tablet until satisfied
which is not exactly something that can be taught easily (there is a lot to go into! maybe a tutorial for another day). But I will say that there are innumerable technique tutorials available all over the internet. There are also many different looks you could go for, and many different ways that you can get them. You can learn a lot just by messing around. Open up a blank file and go to town--try various brushes, try the airbrush, try the pen tool. It takes a little bit of time and patience, but by experimenting you are more likely to find a technique that you are satisfied with than if I sat here and tried to tell you "how to paint."
Here are some things that you should study, and some resources that will help you out:
Perspective (<--highly recommended)
Drawing Hands
Shading (this tutorial is for pencil work, but the concepts are the same for digital painting)
Lighting (<--highly recommended)
Here are some techniques that are useful in combination of the one that I just taught:
Toning in Photoshop
Painting Skin
More Painting Skin
Painting a Background
Magic and Special Effects
Inking in Photoshop (<--highly recommend)
Other Resources
I can't speak for every tutorial that you will find in the following resources, but I will say that they have a lot of tutorials, and you may be able to find the methods/techniques that suit you best somewhere among all of them.
Art Tutorial Wiki
Deviant Art Tutorials
Polykarbon
GFXartist
Have fun!
*************************************************************************************
...see, isn't this nice?
...and it gets better!
...let's look at some advance techniques you can use with selection areas. (and find out more about why they pwn layers)
*************************************************************************************
Selective Color Adjustment
About color adjustment: after finishing your painting, I highly recommend adjusting the color balance. You do this by hitting apple+b (ctrl+b I think, or go to Image>Adjustments>Color Balance). This will bring out the hues in the piece and give it the look that you really want, as opposed to the look that you thought you were giving it. Go ahead, play with it and you will see what I mean :D You can see an example above; Yoko's skin went from some strange yellow hue to a nice fleshy smex. X3
Okay, so, if we had used the method where we made a bunch of layers to do the painting, we would now be in a dilemma. How do we adjust the colors of an area if they are separated onto different layers? And similarly, how would we adjust the colors of the entire piece? With layers, this is not possible (or at least, I have never been able to figure out how to do it). With this method, it is so simple.
To selectively adjust one area, or multiple areas at once
First, go back into the channels. Select an area inside one of the channels that you want to adjust. (Like the skin, if you wanted to adjust the skin). Go back to the RGB channel (apple+tilde). Hit apple+b to open up the Color Balance menu (ctrl+b, or Image>Adjustments>Color Balance)
1. These sliders control the level of that color in the selection. For Yoko's skin, I needed more fleshy colors, so I moved the sliders towards the fleshy colors.
2. Tone Balance will tell you what level of tone you are changing the colors in. Highlights are the lighter areas, Shadows are the shaded areas, and Midtones...you probably get it by now. Anyway, adjust the sliders for each level of tone.
3. While the Preview box is checked, you can watch what effect the adjusting is having on the actual colors of the picture. When you've reached a stopping point, uncheck the box to see what your picture looked like without the adjustments. If you like your original version better, hit cancel and either try it again or stick with the original.
To adjust the colors of the entire piece
Apple+d/ctrl+d to make sure you have nothing selected. Then open up the Color Balance controls and go to town. :D
(If we had done this in layers, we would have to flatten the image first before adjusting the color balance, but then we wouldn't be able to go back and selectively edit areas. Since we have set up placeholders in channels, we can go back and forth as much as we want.)
*************************************************************************************
Selective Masking
So let's say that I want to screen a gradient over just the hair. (Which I don't actually want to do in this piece, but this method can be used in other pieces where this effect is actually cool looking). Go into the channels and select the hair. Go back to your layer palette and create a new layer over your paint layer. Lay down a flood fill or gradient inside of the selection area (learn more about gradients in my line art tutorial). You'll notice that it will only lay the gradient/fill inside of the selection area.
Now you can set the layer mode to something like screen or multiply, and lower the opacity
And look at that, it's pretty. If you decide you don't like it, getting rid of it is as easy as deleting the layer :D
*************************************************************************************
Selective Filters
By now, you should understand the concept of selecting an area in a channel, so fast forward to-->you've selected an area. Now you can apply a filter to just that selection for fun effects (Filter>[choose a filter]). The example above is the "plastic wrap" filter. You can also easily add a filter to the entire picture by de-selecting (apple+d/ctrl+d) and applying the filter, or apply the same filter to several selections at once by selecting multiple areas inside your channels (, contiguous ON and shift+click to select one area at a time).
This technique is really handy when you want to add textures or create fun effects.
*************************************************************************************
Tips For File Saving
1. Work in high resolutions, save in small. For colored images, 300 is good. For greyscale/black and white, I recommend 600.
2. When it comes time to save the image for use on the internets, I select everything (apple+a/ctrl+a) and copy all layers (shift+apple+c/shift+ctrl+c, or Edit>Copy Merged), then paste it into a new file (apple+n/ctrl+n will give you a new file; when it prompts you for file size, just hit "okay," because the size it defaults at is always whatever is on your clipboard--in this case, your painting). Alt+apple+i to open the image size controls (Image>Image Size) and set the resolution to 72, the web-friendly resolution.
3. Use the "save for web" function in photoshop, as opposed to using "Save As>jpg." This compresses the image a lot more, making it more web-friendly. The one down-side to this is that it will sometimes change the colors of the image. So my method of dealing of dealing with this is to check out the preview of the saved image, hit cancel, and adjust the brightness/contrast accordingly.
*************************************************************************************
And that concludes the color tutorial!
As always, if you have any questions I will be more than happy to answer. Also, you can now find all of my tutorials in one place by clicking here (you can also bookmark that page, or just go to my blog and click on the "tutorials" category).
Finally I am getting around to posting this. I have been meaning to do so for a while now. Gomen XD
Okay, so, this is my method for setting up pieces to be colored in Photoshop. It is a bit more complicated than using layers, so if at any point you feel lost or confused, shoot me a message and I will be more than happy to help you out.
The method I am teaching you is NOT
1. Set line art to multiply
2. Create 10078484 layers, lock to color
3. Burn/dodge for pretties
which is what you will find in most photoshop tutorials. What I am going to teach is a little more complicated, but in the long run saves you time, RAM, space on your hard drive, and it will have you actively thinking about ways to utilize photoshop and its capabilities. And it is AMAZINGLY simple once you get the hang of it (just somewhat awkward to teach).
*************************************************************************************
Windows s: A Note About Hotkeys
In this tutorial, I mention the apple hotkeys first because--you guessed it--I use a Mac. I try to guess at what the hotkeys are for windows, although I'm not sure on some of them. But the general rule of thumb is that hotkeys that are apple+something on a mac are usually ctrl+something on windows. I would try that first. I also walk you through how to do things without hotkeys, so if it's a hotkey that doesn't work, just do it without the hotkey and from there you can figure out what the hotkey is.
*************************************************************************************
Step 1: Prepping Your Line Art
There are many different ways that you can go about doing this; you can scan a sketch/ink drawing and convert the lines to digital data; you can scan a sketch and ink it digitally; you can also import a drawing from somewhere else and convert it from a flat piece to digital ink (using this method). However you get to this point, the inks need to be on a single layer and on a transparent background. (in other words, DO NOT scan in a line art layer and set it to multiply! It fucks with the colors!)
Tip: What is this "multiply"? Why do I not want to use it? How can I avoid using it?
Multiply is a setting in photoshop that sets a layer (or flood fill, texture...several other things) to look at the color info in a set of channels and multiply the base color by the blend color in laymen's , it allows the darker colors on the layers underneath to show through.
It is believed that multiply is an easy way to color underneath your line art (scan a sketch, set that layer to multiply, create a layer underneath and color it). While this is true, the fact of the matter is IT MESSES UP YOUR COLORS. You aren't painting with the color you thought you were painting with, and it causes trouble in the long run, especially if you want to adjust the colors prior to finishing the piece.
DO NOT USE MULTIPLY WITH THIS TUTORIAL. When we get to the part about selective color adjustments, if you used multiply, it's going to mess you up. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use the method I described in this tutorial. It will get me to shut up about it. XD
So at this point you should have three layers, in this order from top to bottom: your "ink" layer, the "paint" layer (which we will be painting on) and your "background" layer (which we will use to paint the background on). Fill the "background" layer with a neutral color, tinted to match the mood of the piece (grey with a red tint for a warm piece, grey with a blue tint for a cool piece, etc). I actually filled my background with white to make the colors bolder, since the piece is going to have a simple background (and there isn't really a "mood," other than "OMG YOKO'S HOT").
*************************************************************************************
Step 2: Setting Up Channels
Select the lasso tool
Make sure that FEATHER is set to zero and ANTI-ALIAS is turned OFF. (Feather creates a feather around your selection--DO NOT WANT(for this); Anti-alias fades the edges of your selection/fill--also DO NOT WANT, because in this method, when we use the selection too, we want it to grab EVERYTHING, and not just the area up until the fade. You'll see later.)
Select an area on your piece, inside part of the line art; I usually start with the hair. (Tip: if you hold down the "alt" button, you can actually lift the pen and create anchor points, making it slightly easier to work with. Test it out, it's really cool). Close the selection area (let go if you are tracing; release the alt button if you went that route). Choose a bright bright color--doesn't matter what color; you can change it later, right now we just need something that is starkly different from everything else in the piece. Select the paint bucket; make sure anti-alias is turned OFF. Fill the selection.
If you press apple+h (ctrl+h), you can view it without the "marching ants." You should be seeing a very jagged edge, like in the box above. This is good--you want this. (Test this out in another file: create a selection and flood fill with anti-alias turned on; now try to select that area. Zoom in and look closely; notice how it didn't select all of the painted area? Yeah, we don't want it to do that. Which is why we leave anti-alias off.)
Continue doing this until you have completely colored in the area (whether it be hair, a shirt, skin, etc--although I usually save the skin for last, makes things easier). Since the cranberry sauce doesn't touch the hair in any place, I went ahead and painted it too to save myself grief later.
Tip: wacoms are the shizzle
If you are using a Wacom Intuos, you can set the buttons on your pen to "L" and "G" in order to easily switch back and forth from the lasso (L) to the paint bucket (G). I always do this during this process because it saves SO MUCH TIME.
(You do this by going to the control ; I can't where this is in Windows, but on a Mac it is located in Apple>System Preferences... and then click the picture of the Wacom, probably located at the bottom of the screen. Click on the pen; you should now see drop-down menus where you can set what the pen buttons do. See below.)
Select the magic wand tool
Make sure that "contiguous" and "anti-alias" are OFF
and click where you just painted so that it selects everything that color (when contiguous is on, it only selects the color touching what you clicked)--you should now see marching ants around everything that is red
and press apple+c (ctrl+c for windows s), or Edit>Copy.
Open up the channels window. You can do this by going to Window>Channels:
Tip: making your own toolbar
You can also take all of the windows that you use frequently and make your own toolbar/tool palette :D Click the title of the tab you want to use (such as "layers" or "history," like in the picture) and drag and drop them into the same window, closing the ones you don't need. The result is a customized tool window with all of the palettes that you use on a regular basis. Such as yeah:
Click the new channel button
and a new channel will appear as a black background:
Your marching ants should still be there--if not, go back and use the magic wand to select the area again. Hit apple+v (ctrl+v) and this should happen:
Double-click the channel title (Alpha 1) to rename it something that will make sense to you. Since I'm coloring the hair and cranberry sauce, I named it "hair, cranberry sauce."
Go back to your painting by clicking the RGB channel (or by hitting apple+tilde on your keyboard, I have no idea what that is for windows). Repeat steps 2-6, separating the different objects in the painting and the areas that you wish to keep separate while painting, and copying them into separate channels. Be sure to use different colors (, it doesn't matter what color you use) so that when you use the magic wand, it only selects that color.
Tip: blue skin is hot
Use colors that boldly contrast each other. That way, it is easier to spot overlapping where you don't want it so that you can fix it by re-selecting and flood filling:
...yes, that means blue skin.
This also means that once you have the hang of this method, wait until you have painted everything to copy it over into channels. That way you can catch overlapping and fix it before you copy the selection into a channel. This will make more sense later on in the tutorial; for now just do what I say. XD
Your painting should look something like this
And your channels should look something like this
Now go back to the paint layer, hit apple+a (ctrl+a) to select everything, and then hit...THE DELETE KEY. Yes, that's right. Delete it.
:D
*************************************************************************************
Step 3: PAINTING
Now that we've gotten rid of that horrible mess, it's time to PAINT! Wee. Go back to your channels (click a channel; for this demo I'm using the hair/cranberry sauce channel). Use the magic wand tool (turn contiguous ON so that it only selects one area) and click the area that you wish to paint. I'm painting the hair, but the hair has more than one piece. So how do I select more than one piece without turning off contiguous to select all of them?
I click the first piece
then hold shift while clicking the second piece (a little plus sign appears when you do this to let you know that you are adding it to the selection):
Now both pieces are selected. I go back to the RGB channel (apple+tilde), pick a base color for the hair and flood fill. I then hit apple+h (ctrl+h) on my keyboard to hide the marching ants. Now I can paint relentlessly without going outside of my selection area. Go ahead, try to draw a line across it, you'll get something like this
Because you can only color inside of the place you have selected. Anytime you want to color outside of it, hit apple+d (or ctrl+d) to deselect. You can now proceed to use the channels/selection areas that you made earlier to color the entire picture. Think of the areas in the channels as placeholders.
Tip: turning contiguous on and off
While you are flood filling, turn contiguous off if you want to fill multiple selections at once. Turn it back on if you have multiple selections and only want to fill one.
Tip: painting/coloring
I won't go into big detail about how to use photoshop to paint, because this is my method:
1. choose color
2. choose brush
3. move pen around on tablet until satisfied
which is not exactly something that can be taught easily (there is a lot to go into! maybe a tutorial for another day). But I will say that there are innumerable technique tutorials available all over the internet. There are also many different looks you could go for, and many different ways that you can get them. You can learn a lot just by messing around. Open up a blank file and go to town--try various brushes, try the airbrush, try the pen tool. It takes a little bit of time and patience, but by experimenting you are more likely to find a technique that you are satisfied with than if I sat here and tried to tell you "how to paint."
Here are some things that you should study, and some resources that will help you out:
Perspective (<--highly recommended)
Drawing Hands
Shading (this tutorial is for pencil work, but the concepts are the same for digital painting)
Lighting (<--highly recommended)
Here are some techniques that are useful in combination of the one that I just taught:
Toning in Photoshop
Painting Skin
More Painting Skin
Painting a Background
Magic and Special Effects
Inking in Photoshop (<--highly recommend)
Other Resources
I can't speak for every tutorial that you will find in the following resources, but I will say that they have a lot of tutorials, and you may be able to find the methods/techniques that suit you best somewhere among all of them.
Art Tutorial Wiki
Deviant Art Tutorials
Polykarbon
GFXartist
Have fun!
*************************************************************************************
...see, isn't this nice?
...and it gets better!
...let's look at some advance techniques you can use with selection areas. (and find out more about why they pwn layers)
*************************************************************************************
Selective Color Adjustment
About color adjustment: after finishing your painting, I highly recommend adjusting the color balance. You do this by hitting apple+b (ctrl+b I think, or go to Image>Adjustments>Color Balance). This will bring out the hues in the piece and give it the look that you really want, as opposed to the look that you thought you were giving it. Go ahead, play with it and you will see what I mean :D You can see an example above; Yoko's skin went from some strange yellow hue to a nice fleshy smex. X3
Okay, so, if we had used the method where we made a bunch of layers to do the painting, we would now be in a dilemma. How do we adjust the colors of an area if they are separated onto different layers? And similarly, how would we adjust the colors of the entire piece? With layers, this is not possible (or at least, I have never been able to figure out how to do it). With this method, it is so simple.
To selectively adjust one area, or multiple areas at once
First, go back into the channels. Select an area inside one of the channels that you want to adjust. (Like the skin, if you wanted to adjust the skin). Go back to the RGB channel (apple+tilde). Hit apple+b to open up the Color Balance menu (ctrl+b, or Image>Adjustments>Color Balance)
1. These sliders control the level of that color in the selection. For Yoko's skin, I needed more fleshy colors, so I moved the sliders towards the fleshy colors.
2. Tone Balance will tell you what level of tone you are changing the colors in. Highlights are the lighter areas, Shadows are the shaded areas, and Midtones...you probably get it by now. Anyway, adjust the sliders for each level of tone.
3. While the Preview box is checked, you can watch what effect the adjusting is having on the actual colors of the picture. When you've reached a stopping point, uncheck the box to see what your picture looked like without the adjustments. If you like your original version better, hit cancel and either try it again or stick with the original.
To adjust the colors of the entire piece
Apple+d/ctrl+d to make sure you have nothing selected. Then open up the Color Balance controls and go to town. :D
(If we had done this in layers, we would have to flatten the image first before adjusting the color balance, but then we wouldn't be able to go back and selectively edit areas. Since we have set up placeholders in channels, we can go back and forth as much as we want.)
*************************************************************************************
Selective Masking
So let's say that I want to screen a gradient over just the hair. (Which I don't actually want to do in this piece, but this method can be used in other pieces where this effect is actually cool looking). Go into the channels and select the hair. Go back to your layer palette and create a new layer over your paint layer. Lay down a flood fill or gradient inside of the selection area (learn more about gradients in my line art tutorial). You'll notice that it will only lay the gradient/fill inside of the selection area.
Now you can set the layer mode to something like screen or multiply, and lower the opacity
And look at that, it's pretty. If you decide you don't like it, getting rid of it is as easy as deleting the layer :D
*************************************************************************************
Selective Filters
By now, you should understand the concept of selecting an area in a channel, so fast forward to-->you've selected an area. Now you can apply a filter to just that selection for fun effects (Filter>[choose a filter]). The example above is the "plastic wrap" filter. You can also easily add a filter to the entire picture by de-selecting (apple+d/ctrl+d) and applying the filter, or apply the same filter to several selections at once by selecting multiple areas inside your channels (, contiguous ON and shift+click to select one area at a time).
This technique is really handy when you want to add textures or create fun effects.
*************************************************************************************
Tips For File Saving
1. Work in high resolutions, save in small. For colored images, 300 is good. For greyscale/black and white, I recommend 600.
2. When it comes time to save the image for use on the internets, I select everything (apple+a/ctrl+a) and copy all layers (shift+apple+c/shift+ctrl+c, or Edit>Copy Merged), then paste it into a new file (apple+n/ctrl+n will give you a new file; when it prompts you for file size, just hit "okay," because the size it defaults at is always whatever is on your clipboard--in this case, your painting). Alt+apple+i to open the image size controls (Image>Image Size) and set the resolution to 72, the web-friendly resolution.
3. Use the "save for web" function in photoshop, as opposed to using "Save As>jpg." This compresses the image a lot more, making it more web-friendly. The one down-side to this is that it will sometimes change the colors of the image. So my method of dealing of dealing with this is to check out the preview of the saved image, hit cancel, and adjust the brightness/contrast accordingly.
*************************************************************************************
And that concludes the color tutorial!
As always, if you have any questions I will be more than happy to answer. Also, you can now find all of my tutorials in one place by clicking here (you can also bookmark that page, or just go to my blog and click on the "tutorials" category).
Posted by 0 comments
November 29th, 2008
Photoshop Lineart Tutorial: converting a flat image into digital lines
(click spoiler button to open tutorial)
This is kind of an off-shoot of the color tutorial that I will be posting; it's important but at the same time needs to be separated. Here is what I will be teaching:
****************************************************************************************************************
What is this "multiply"? Why do I not want to use it? How can I avoid using it?
Multiply is a setting in photoshop that sets a layer (or flood fill, texture...several other things) to look at the color info in a set of channels and multiply the base color by the blend color in laymen's , it allows the darker colors on the layers underneath to show through.
It is believed that multiply is an easy way to color underneath your line art (scan a sketch, set that layer to multiply, create a layer underneath and color it). While this is true, the fact of the matter is IT MESSES UP YOUR COLORS. You aren't painting with the color you thought you were painting with, and it causes trouble in the long run, especially if you want to adjust the colors prior to finishing the piece.
Which is why this is important to the color tutorial :D
Anyway, if you use the method I'm about to teach you, you can also do cool stuff like color the line art different colors, give it gradients, and more. Let's learn!
So how can I scan a sketch/drawing/traditional ink and convert those lines to digital and be able to color under it without using multiply?
IT'S SO EASY (I promise!). watch.
So here's a sketch that I scanned, and now want to convert those lines into digital data that can be used as if I had drawn them with digital ink. (Tip: sketches are fine to scan and color, but they require more cleanup than if you ink something with traditional ink and scan it, or if you are converting a flat image into digital lines, which this method is also good for). I will cover clean-up a little bit at the end of this tutorial.
First, I want to make sure that the resolution of my sketch is definitely 600 dpi. I open up the image size controls by hitting alt+apple+i (no idea what that is in windows; from the menu options, "it's Image>Image Size...")
Once the Image Size controls are open, make sure that "constrain proportions" is ON and then set the Resolution (under "document size") to six hundred (note that in the image below, it starts at 200, which is what my scanner scans at, but yours may be different).
After you have resized the image to have a 600 resolution, adjust the brightness/contrast (or the levels, but I use "brightness/contrast" because it's easier and you get the same result). This is under "Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast...":
Now wiggle the bars around until the sketch lines are the most visible (without being too horribly pixelated). Do this while having a good view of your picture; I usually have the sketch zoomed in at 25%, which allows me to see everything (or almost everything) and gives me a better idea of what I'll be looking at when I'm done.
As you can see, the sketch lines are now more visible. Usually, this means lowering the brightness and raising the contrast. Also, take a moment to stare at Mugen's crotch.
After you are done staring at Mugen's crotch, hit the "okay" button and then set the image mode to grayscale (go up to Image>Mode>Grayscale):
It will ask you if you want to discard the color information. Tell it yes. Now set the image mode to bitmap (Image>Mode>Bitmap..)
And this box will appear:
Make sure that the output resolution is 600; click okay. The result will be something like this:
As stated earlier, and as you can see now, sketches will need some clean up after this process is done. Pieces that have been inked traditionally (or are just flat black and white pieces) will fare better. Although don't give up all hope on the sketch, there is nothing wrong with using it :D
Anyway, continuing on. Now, there are only two colors present: black and white. Convert it back to grayscale, and then back to RGB:
All of this converting back-and-forth seems a bit silly, but what we have done is told it that all of the sketch lines are one collective piece of digital data by converting it to bitmap, and now that we have converted it back to RGB we can work with it in color. Select the magic wand tool
making sure that "contiguous" and "anti-alias" are OFF (I will talk more about these things in the color tutorial)
And click one of your lines. It should select all of the lines in the piece:
Now copy the selection (apple+c/ctrl+c, or Edit>Copy). Create a new layer (shift+apple+N, or click the new layer button in the layer tool palette, or go to Layer>New>Layer...) and name it something like "ink" (or whatever you want, doesn't matter). Now paste it by hitting apple+V (ctrl+v, or Edit>Paste). Delete the first layer you were working with (the sketch) and you will be left with this:
And that, my friends, is awesomer than pie :D Let me show you some of the things you can do with it. For one, you can color under it without mes your colors (as explained in the "multiply" rant at the beginning of this tutorial). But there are more cool things you can do. For one, you can change the color of your ink in an instant. To change the entire thing at once, use the magic wand tool, click on your lines, and flood fill (make sure that contiguous and anti-alias are OFF):
(Hit apple+D/ctrl+D to deselect). You can also lock the layer
and color selectively with the paintbrush
That comes very much in handy when you want to do something like outline lips in red, or give the eyelashes pretty colors.
how to give your lines a gradient
You can also give the lines a really pretty gradient; use the magic wand tool to select everything again. Right-click on the paint bucket tool and select the gradient tool
And for this example I'm just going to use whatever gradient it gives me, but please note that you can also make your own gradient by double-clicking the gradient drop-down box
And it will bring up a gradient editor
From here, you can make your own gradient. Make sure that "Gradient Type" is set to "solid" (which I circled in red above), and now you can play with the colors and opacity :D Grab these bars with your mouse or pen
And wiggle them around. The top bars control the gradient, and the bottom bars control the color. Click on one of the bottom ones, and then you can use the color option to change the color (by double-clicking the color drop down box, or the little bar itself, and it will open up the color-picker, where you can change the color):
You can add more opacity/color bars to the gradient by clicking just above the gradient preview when the pointing finger curser appears. Delete them by using the delete button to the right of the "location" option.
Okay, I think that's side-tracked enough XD Once you have a gradient that you like, go back to your picture and drag the gradient line over your selection (Tip: you can control the direction and stretch of the gradient by how you drag the gradient line) and it will make it pretty:
With this method, if you decide later that you want the line art to have a gradient but you want to outline the lips or eyelashes (or a piece of clothing--whatever) in another color, you can just lock the layer and color the area that you want with another color.
What if I do all of this and at the end I don't like it?
Hoo boy, that's the fun part about this method :D Let's say that you have given your line art a gradient, but after a while of working with it you don't want the gradient anymore. Lock the layer, select a HUGE brush (something offensively big, like 2500 pixels or something) and swipe it over the layer:
Yay! We're back to normal.
You can also use the shape tool and lay a big block o' black over the lines. The results are the same.
What if I want to give my line art a gradient that I can remove more easily, but I don't want to be able to color the lines because I don't care?
Well then, let's give it a clipping mask! This is amazingly easy, and will save you time if you ever want to just color the lines a solid color or give it a gradient and you don't have any plans for going back in later and coloring eyelashes or anything a different color.
First, create another layer on top of your ink layer. Fill this layer with the color or gradient of your choice. Click on the layer type options at the top of the layer tool bar and select "screen"
And it will give you the same effect as the other method. But to make sure that this gradient doesn't interfere with any color that you give your painting (that it only effects the line art, and doesn't mess with any other color) right-click on the layer and select "create clipping mask":
And this will ensure that the only thing affected by the gradient is the line art. The layers should look like this
And there, you are done. :D To remove the clipping layer, just delete it. You can also group the layers together like so
to prevent yourself by accidentally messing with it. Group layers by clicking on the folder icon (circled in red above) and dragging the layers into it. Click the grey arrow to open and close the folder.
****************************************************************************************************************
Cleanup
So let's say that you scan in a sketch like I did, and it's a lot messier than you want it to be. One way to deal with this is to clean it up by hand. Zoom in 100%
And use a brush with black (#000000) to smooth out the ink a little bit. Use the eraser to get rid of random fragments of lines that you don't want. Five minutes of work gave me this:
So you can see, not instantly easy, but not hard either. Please note that the sketch I used for this example was pretty messy and I didn't clean it up before scanning it, and the digital version would look a lot cleaner if I had. Anyway, you can still do all the fun effects to the line art that we talked about earlier :D
Another way to make the line art look cleaner is to use a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur...), although I am not a huge fan of this method. But if you like it, and it works for you, then go for it :D here is what a gaussian blur looks like:
Note that this is after I fixed the left side of her face. XD
****************************************************************************************************************
And that concludes this tutorial! If anybody has any questions or would like me to elaborate on anything, feel free to ask. I will be more than happy to help. :)
This is kind of an off-shoot of the color tutorial that I will be posting; it's important but at the same time needs to be separated. Here is what I will be teaching:
- What is "multiply," and why it is bad
- How to convert a scanned sketch/inked drawing, or a "flat" image, into digital, workable lines
- How to give your lines a gradient (TWO DIFFERENT WAYS!)
- I will also briefly touch on clean-up.
****************************************************************************************************************
What is this "multiply"? Why do I not want to use it? How can I avoid using it?
Multiply is a setting in photoshop that sets a layer (or flood fill, texture...several other things) to look at the color info in a set of channels and multiply the base color by the blend color in laymen's , it allows the darker colors on the layers underneath to show through.
It is believed that multiply is an easy way to color underneath your line art (scan a sketch, set that layer to multiply, create a layer underneath and color it). While this is true, the fact of the matter is IT MESSES UP YOUR COLORS. You aren't painting with the color you thought you were painting with, and it causes trouble in the long run, especially if you want to adjust the colors prior to finishing the piece.
Which is why this is important to the color tutorial :D
Anyway, if you use the method I'm about to teach you, you can also do cool stuff like color the line art different colors, give it gradients, and more. Let's learn!
So how can I scan a sketch/drawing/traditional ink and convert those lines to digital and be able to color under it without using multiply?
IT'S SO EASY (I promise!). watch.
So here's a sketch that I scanned, and now want to convert those lines into digital data that can be used as if I had drawn them with digital ink. (Tip: sketches are fine to scan and color, but they require more cleanup than if you ink something with traditional ink and scan it, or if you are converting a flat image into digital lines, which this method is also good for). I will cover clean-up a little bit at the end of this tutorial.
First, I want to make sure that the resolution of my sketch is definitely 600 dpi. I open up the image size controls by hitting alt+apple+i (no idea what that is in windows; from the menu options, "it's Image>Image Size...")
Once the Image Size controls are open, make sure that "constrain proportions" is ON and then set the Resolution (under "document size") to six hundred (note that in the image below, it starts at 200, which is what my scanner scans at, but yours may be different).
After you have resized the image to have a 600 resolution, adjust the brightness/contrast (or the levels, but I use "brightness/contrast" because it's easier and you get the same result). This is under "Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast...":
Now wiggle the bars around until the sketch lines are the most visible (without being too horribly pixelated). Do this while having a good view of your picture; I usually have the sketch zoomed in at 25%, which allows me to see everything (or almost everything) and gives me a better idea of what I'll be looking at when I'm done.
As you can see, the sketch lines are now more visible. Usually, this means lowering the brightness and raising the contrast. Also, take a moment to stare at Mugen's crotch.
After you are done staring at Mugen's crotch, hit the "okay" button and then set the image mode to grayscale (go up to Image>Mode>Grayscale):
It will ask you if you want to discard the color information. Tell it yes. Now set the image mode to bitmap (Image>Mode>Bitmap..)
And this box will appear:
Make sure that the output resolution is 600; click okay. The result will be something like this:
As stated earlier, and as you can see now, sketches will need some clean up after this process is done. Pieces that have been inked traditionally (or are just flat black and white pieces) will fare better. Although don't give up all hope on the sketch, there is nothing wrong with using it :D
Anyway, continuing on. Now, there are only two colors present: black and white. Convert it back to grayscale, and then back to RGB:
All of this converting back-and-forth seems a bit silly, but what we have done is told it that all of the sketch lines are one collective piece of digital data by converting it to bitmap, and now that we have converted it back to RGB we can work with it in color. Select the magic wand tool
making sure that "contiguous" and "anti-alias" are OFF (I will talk more about these things in the color tutorial)
And click one of your lines. It should select all of the lines in the piece:
Now copy the selection (apple+c/ctrl+c, or Edit>Copy). Create a new layer (shift+apple+N, or click the new layer button in the layer tool palette, or go to Layer>New>Layer...) and name it something like "ink" (or whatever you want, doesn't matter). Now paste it by hitting apple+V (ctrl+v, or Edit>Paste). Delete the first layer you were working with (the sketch) and you will be left with this:
And that, my friends, is awesomer than pie :D Let me show you some of the things you can do with it. For one, you can color under it without mes your colors (as explained in the "multiply" rant at the beginning of this tutorial). But there are more cool things you can do. For one, you can change the color of your ink in an instant. To change the entire thing at once, use the magic wand tool, click on your lines, and flood fill (make sure that contiguous and anti-alias are OFF):
(Hit apple+D/ctrl+D to deselect). You can also lock the layer
and color selectively with the paintbrush
That comes very much in handy when you want to do something like outline lips in red, or give the eyelashes pretty colors.
how to give your lines a gradient
You can also give the lines a really pretty gradient; use the magic wand tool to select everything again. Right-click on the paint bucket tool and select the gradient tool
And for this example I'm just going to use whatever gradient it gives me, but please note that you can also make your own gradient by double-clicking the gradient drop-down box
And it will bring up a gradient editor
From here, you can make your own gradient. Make sure that "Gradient Type" is set to "solid" (which I circled in red above), and now you can play with the colors and opacity :D Grab these bars with your mouse or pen
And wiggle them around. The top bars control the gradient, and the bottom bars control the color. Click on one of the bottom ones, and then you can use the color option to change the color (by double-clicking the color drop down box, or the little bar itself, and it will open up the color-picker, where you can change the color):
You can add more opacity/color bars to the gradient by clicking just above the gradient preview when the pointing finger curser appears. Delete them by using the delete button to the right of the "location" option.
Okay, I think that's side-tracked enough XD Once you have a gradient that you like, go back to your picture and drag the gradient line over your selection (Tip: you can control the direction and stretch of the gradient by how you drag the gradient line) and it will make it pretty:
With this method, if you decide later that you want the line art to have a gradient but you want to outline the lips or eyelashes (or a piece of clothing--whatever) in another color, you can just lock the layer and color the area that you want with another color.
What if I do all of this and at the end I don't like it?
Hoo boy, that's the fun part about this method :D Let's say that you have given your line art a gradient, but after a while of working with it you don't want the gradient anymore. Lock the layer, select a HUGE brush (something offensively big, like 2500 pixels or something) and swipe it over the layer:
Yay! We're back to normal.
You can also use the shape tool and lay a big block o' black over the lines. The results are the same.
What if I want to give my line art a gradient that I can remove more easily, but I don't want to be able to color the lines because I don't care?
Well then, let's give it a clipping mask! This is amazingly easy, and will save you time if you ever want to just color the lines a solid color or give it a gradient and you don't have any plans for going back in later and coloring eyelashes or anything a different color.
First, create another layer on top of your ink layer. Fill this layer with the color or gradient of your choice. Click on the layer type options at the top of the layer tool bar and select "screen"
And it will give you the same effect as the other method. But to make sure that this gradient doesn't interfere with any color that you give your painting (that it only effects the line art, and doesn't mess with any other color) right-click on the layer and select "create clipping mask":
And this will ensure that the only thing affected by the gradient is the line art. The layers should look like this
And there, you are done. :D To remove the clipping layer, just delete it. You can also group the layers together like so
to prevent yourself by accidentally messing with it. Group layers by clicking on the folder icon (circled in red above) and dragging the layers into it. Click the grey arrow to open and close the folder.
****************************************************************************************************************
Cleanup
So let's say that you scan in a sketch like I did, and it's a lot messier than you want it to be. One way to deal with this is to clean it up by hand. Zoom in 100%
And use a brush with black (#000000) to smooth out the ink a little bit. Use the eraser to get rid of random fragments of lines that you don't want. Five minutes of work gave me this:
So you can see, not instantly easy, but not hard either. Please note that the sketch I used for this example was pretty messy and I didn't clean it up before scanning it, and the digital version would look a lot cleaner if I had. Anyway, you can still do all the fun effects to the line art that we talked about earlier :D
Another way to make the line art look cleaner is to use a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur...), although I am not a huge fan of this method. But if you like it, and it works for you, then go for it :D here is what a gaussian blur looks like:
Note that this is after I fixed the left side of her face. XD
****************************************************************************************************************
And that concludes this tutorial! If anybody has any questions or would like me to elaborate on anything, feel free to ask. I will be more than happy to help. :)
Posted by 0 comments
November 27th, 2008
List Design/Screen Res Tutorial
(click the spoiler button to open the tutorial)
This is the EXACT same tutorial that I posted on the forum over a year ago; I am re-posting it in my b order to keep all of my tutorials in one place, plus now you can click on my "tutorials" category and see everything that I have posted.
Anyway, you can ask questions here or in the forum topic, either works and I reply to both. You can also message me, although I prefer to use the comments here or the forum topic so that if other s have the same question, they can get help too.
enjoi :D
****************************************************************************************************************
Here is a tutorial for how to design your list (and even a website) around multiple screen resolutions, since this is a problem that is constantly coming up. XD This tutorial uses Photoshop CS2, although the PS features used are available from PS6 and up. If you don't have any version of photoshop, you still might be able to figure out how to do it using another program (there are many freeware/open source programs that have similar features to photoshop, and of course there is always the option of pirating o_O).
Setting up your background for multiple resolutions
First, decide what is the largest screen res that you are willing to accommodate. For this example, I picked 1600x1200. Next, decide what other resolutions you are going to accommodate (I recommend at the least using 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1280x800, the most common resolutions on MAL).
Open up photoshop and create a new file, with the following specs (1600x1200; Make sure "Resolution" is set at 72 (it's the web-friendly dpi)):
So now you have a file. Fill it with black to make the guides easier to see (you can change this later). Go to "View>New Guide":
To make things easy, let's start with the smallest resolution and work our way up. Set to create a guide at 800 pixels vertical, like so:
And this should happen:
Now go to "View>New Guide" again, and set 600px horizontal:
And you should get this:
Now you have a guide that shows you what will be inside an 800x600 screen area. Duplicate this process for each screen resolution you want to accommodate; I have chosen 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1280x800 (if you are doing 1280x1024, just add a horizontal guide at 800px), and 1440x900 (if your image is 1600x1200, then the document bounds are your guide for that size). The end result looks like this:
And now I can work on a design that will accommodate each screen resolution, by knowing what each screen is going to see. And to prevent myself from accidentally moving the guides, I will select "View>Lock guides":
PLEASE NOTE that this doesn't mean your wallpaper has to be the maximum size; on separate layers, test out how different background colors will look (outside of your wallpaper size), and use that color as the background color for the page. That way, you can accommodate people with larger resolutions while not using a ginormous wallpaper. Example:
As you can see, the wallpaper isn't the maximum size, but now I can see what people with other resolutions will see when they load the page, and opt to change the color of the background to fit with the wallpaper, like so:
Now I just set that color to my background in the CSS.
WHOOPS! I fudged my guides
If you accidentally move your guides or put them in the wrong place, get rid of them and start over like this:
I want to view the image without the guides, but I don't want to have to clear them and do them all over again o_o;
Go to "View>Show>Guides," and you can toggle the guides on and off without having to clear them :D See:
How to toggle snap
Most versions of Photoshop are at default set to snap. Snap can be very helpful, when used properly. You can toggle it on and off in the following menu by clicking "Snap" (if it is on, there will be a check-mark next to it):
You can also tell Photoshop what to snap to in the following menu by clicking the options:
How is snap useful? If you want to line something up directly against a guide (or center it on top of a guide), snap will make sure it is accurate. Go ahead, play with it :D
Positioning Your List
First, make sure that snap is turned on ONLY to document bounds and not to guides (see above). Now, select the rectangular marquee tool from the tools menu:
And up to the menu options at the top; select "Fixed Size" from the Style drop-down menu. Now, in the "height" and "width" boxes, put in the size you are going to make your list. Let's make it 600x1200:
Now click anywhere on your image. A selection box of that size will appear:
Now you can move around the selection box and see what your list area is going to cover :D
Now that I know where I want to put my list, how do I know what to tell my CSS?
First, make sure that your Info Palette is open. If not, go to "Window>Info," or press F8 on your keyboard. Now, let's make sure that the Info Palette is displaying pixel information, and not some other silly standard like "inches" or something. Click the ">" button on the Info Palette and select "Palette Options..." from the menu that pops up:
The third option down will say "Mouse Coordinates." Select "Pixels" from the drop-down menu:
Now the Info Palette will display your mouse coordinates; hover your mouse over the edge of selection area and the Info Palette will display the mouse position as X/Y coordinates (X being the width between the document bound from the left and your mouse, Y being the height from the top):
Use these coordinates to define the position of your list. =)
other tips
1. There is a book for graphic/web designers called "color index" (it's pretty much a print/web designer's "Bible"). If you have $23 bucks, get a copy (isbn: 1581802366). It will make itself VERY useful.
2. If at all possible, check your design on multiple browsers/resolutions/computers, or have a friend check it for you. , nothing in web-design is ever foolproof :D
3. Apple+z (or ctrl+z for windows s) is your friend :D (it is a quick "undo button;" however, keep in mind that it erases that action from your history altogether, so you can't "redo").
4. Photoshop comes with a feature that allows you to view web-safe color palettes. Click the checkbox next to "Only Web Colors" from the color picker menu. Also, it's so nice, it even gives you the hex code for the color:
Questions? Problems? Need more info?
Feel free to ask :D And I will help you to the best of my ability. You can reply to this topic or send me a PM, although I would prefer that you reply to this topic in case other s have the same question.
****************************************************************************************************************
*UPDATES*
Here is info that has been added/questions that have been answered since the posting of this tutorial.
Thanks to the people that asked the questions/gave additional info :D
****************************************************************************************************************
****************************************************************************************************************
****************************************************************************************************************
This is the EXACT same tutorial that I posted on the forum over a year ago; I am re-posting it in my b order to keep all of my tutorials in one place, plus now you can click on my "tutorials" category and see everything that I have posted.
Anyway, you can ask questions here or in the forum topic, either works and I reply to both. You can also message me, although I prefer to use the comments here or the forum topic so that if other s have the same question, they can get help too.
enjoi :D
****************************************************************************************************************
Here is a tutorial for how to design your list (and even a website) around multiple screen resolutions, since this is a problem that is constantly coming up. XD This tutorial uses Photoshop CS2, although the PS features used are available from PS6 and up. If you don't have any version of photoshop, you still might be able to figure out how to do it using another program (there are many freeware/open source programs that have similar features to photoshop, and of course there is always the option of pirating o_O).
Setting up your background for multiple resolutions
First, decide what is the largest screen res that you are willing to accommodate. For this example, I picked 1600x1200. Next, decide what other resolutions you are going to accommodate (I recommend at the least using 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1280x800, the most common resolutions on MAL).
Open up photoshop and create a new file, with the following specs (1600x1200; Make sure "Resolution" is set at 72 (it's the web-friendly dpi)):
So now you have a file. Fill it with black to make the guides easier to see (you can change this later). Go to "View>New Guide":
To make things easy, let's start with the smallest resolution and work our way up. Set to create a guide at 800 pixels vertical, like so:
And this should happen:
Now go to "View>New Guide" again, and set 600px horizontal:
And you should get this:
Now you have a guide that shows you what will be inside an 800x600 screen area. Duplicate this process for each screen resolution you want to accommodate; I have chosen 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1280x800 (if you are doing 1280x1024, just add a horizontal guide at 800px), and 1440x900 (if your image is 1600x1200, then the document bounds are your guide for that size). The end result looks like this:
And now I can work on a design that will accommodate each screen resolution, by knowing what each screen is going to see. And to prevent myself from accidentally moving the guides, I will select "View>Lock guides":
PLEASE NOTE that this doesn't mean your wallpaper has to be the maximum size; on separate layers, test out how different background colors will look (outside of your wallpaper size), and use that color as the background color for the page. That way, you can accommodate people with larger resolutions while not using a ginormous wallpaper. Example:
As you can see, the wallpaper isn't the maximum size, but now I can see what people with other resolutions will see when they load the page, and opt to change the color of the background to fit with the wallpaper, like so:
Now I just set that color to my background in the CSS.
WHOOPS! I fudged my guides
If you accidentally move your guides or put them in the wrong place, get rid of them and start over like this:
I want to view the image without the guides, but I don't want to have to clear them and do them all over again o_o;
Go to "View>Show>Guides," and you can toggle the guides on and off without having to clear them :D See:
How to toggle snap
Most versions of Photoshop are at default set to snap. Snap can be very helpful, when used properly. You can toggle it on and off in the following menu by clicking "Snap" (if it is on, there will be a check-mark next to it):
You can also tell Photoshop what to snap to in the following menu by clicking the options:
How is snap useful? If you want to line something up directly against a guide (or center it on top of a guide), snap will make sure it is accurate. Go ahead, play with it :D
Positioning Your List
First, make sure that snap is turned on ONLY to document bounds and not to guides (see above). Now, select the rectangular marquee tool from the tools menu:
And up to the menu options at the top; select "Fixed Size" from the Style drop-down menu. Now, in the "height" and "width" boxes, put in the size you are going to make your list. Let's make it 600x1200:
Now click anywhere on your image. A selection box of that size will appear:
Now you can move around the selection box and see what your list area is going to cover :D
Now that I know where I want to put my list, how do I know what to tell my CSS?
First, make sure that your Info Palette is open. If not, go to "Window>Info," or press F8 on your keyboard. Now, let's make sure that the Info Palette is displaying pixel information, and not some other silly standard like "inches" or something. Click the ">" button on the Info Palette and select "Palette Options..." from the menu that pops up:
The third option down will say "Mouse Coordinates." Select "Pixels" from the drop-down menu:
Now the Info Palette will display your mouse coordinates; hover your mouse over the edge of selection area and the Info Palette will display the mouse position as X/Y coordinates (X being the width between the document bound from the left and your mouse, Y being the height from the top):
Use these coordinates to define the position of your list. =)
other tips
1. There is a book for graphic/web designers called "color index" (it's pretty much a print/web designer's "Bible"). If you have $23 bucks, get a copy (isbn: 1581802366). It will make itself VERY useful.
2. If at all possible, check your design on multiple browsers/resolutions/computers, or have a friend check it for you. , nothing in web-design is ever foolproof :D
3. Apple+z (or ctrl+z for windows s) is your friend :D (it is a quick "undo button;" however, keep in mind that it erases that action from your history altogether, so you can't "redo").
4. Photoshop comes with a feature that allows you to view web-safe color palettes. Click the checkbox next to "Only Web Colors" from the color picker menu. Also, it's so nice, it even gives you the hex code for the color:
Questions? Problems? Need more info?
Feel free to ask :D And I will help you to the best of my ability. You can reply to this topic or send me a PM, although I would prefer that you reply to this topic in case other s have the same question.
****************************************************************************************************************
*UPDATES*
Here is info that has been added/questions that have been answered since the posting of this tutorial.
Thanks to the people that asked the questions/gave additional info :D
****************************************************************************************************************
ChrisCaboose said:
Thanks for the tut, but what if you have a 1680x1050 resolution? What size would you make the document bounds?
Thanks for the tut, but what if you have a 1680x1050 resolution? What size would you make the document bounds?
ScrumYummy said:
I would still make it at 1600x1200; you can put a 1050px horizontal guide in first and design to your specific resolution, or go all the way and fill in all of the guides if you want to see what others are going to see. =)
And don't forget, you can always figure out which dimension each guide is for if you have the "info" palette open, and the XY coordinates set to pixels (for instructions on how to do this, see the screen caps under "Now that I know where I want to put my list, how do I know what to tell my CSS?").
I say this because after awhile, they all look like they're just blue bars and suddenly you can't what any of them are for. XD
*EDIT*
You can also make notes for yourself about which guide is for what resolution, using the note tool:
The main note box (in the pic, the one that says "guide") can be closed by clicking the little box on the top left of the note, and re-opened when you double-click the note symbol on your canvas.
I would still make it at 1600x1200; you can put a 1050px horizontal guide in first and design to your specific resolution, or go all the way and fill in all of the guides if you want to see what others are going to see. =)
And don't forget, you can always figure out which dimension each guide is for if you have the "info" palette open, and the XY coordinates set to pixels (for instructions on how to do this, see the screen caps under "Now that I know where I want to put my list, how do I know what to tell my CSS?").
I say this because after awhile, they all look like they're just blue bars and suddenly you can't what any of them are for. XD
*EDIT*
You can also make notes for yourself about which guide is for what resolution, using the note tool:
The main note box (in the pic, the one that says "guide") can be closed by clicking the little box on the top left of the note, and re-opened when you double-click the note symbol on your canvas.
****************************************************************************************************************
Kairyn said:
I guess this is a stupid question but...will the blue lines automatically go away when the picture is saved, or will it show up? I've never used it for bg before...
~Kairyn
I guess this is a stupid question but...will the blue lines automatically go away when the picture is saved, or will it show up? I've never used it for bg before...
~Kairyn
ScrumYummy said:
nope :D They stay there until you tell them to go away.
nope :D They stay there until you tell them to go away.
****************************************************************************************************************
saka said:
Also, in positioning your list don't forget the height of the top mal bar, since your background is positioned behind it. I copied and pasted it into my proof for reference. Making a proof helps quite a lot, although keep the limitations of the html structure in mind (the borders of the tables in my original proof weren't possible T_T ).....
Also, in positioning your list don't forget the height of the top mal bar, since your background is positioned behind it. I copied and pasted it into my proof for reference. Making a proof helps quite a lot, although keep the limitations of the html structure in mind (the borders of the tables in my original proof weren't possible T_T ).....
ScrumYummy said:
You can also set a guide for the height of the bar. Not to mention give the bar a custom background. :D
You can also set a guide for the height of the bar. Not to mention give the bar a custom background. :D
Posted by 2 comments
July 10th, 2007
New Art: Rainy Day Umbrella Bridage
2k204j
For the Kumoircon cover contest. :D
Posted by 5 comments
July 7th, 2007
why hedgehogs will never learn to fly
This weekend has just been...a ball of shit. Rolled up in shit. On top of a pile...of shit.
I keep telling myself that it will get better. And then something else goes wrong.
It makes me want to curl into a ball and hide in a corner until it feels safe to come out. D:
Sorry about making a blog entry just to whine like a fucking baby. I just want something anything to make me feel incrementally better.
Posted by 2 comments