Tips for coloring your comic faster?

[TheDoublekey]

Hi everyone! So, lately, I decided to go and color my comic just for the fun of it and thought to myself: wouldn't it be cool if I colored it all? In the past, I would occasionally color one or two panels but that was about it. I'm thinking this might be a cool experiment to give more life to the world and make things easier to understand. Of course, I still have my doubts because some people might prefer the greyscale version.

Anyways, my actual problem is: it takes me a veeery long time to color every single panel. So, I was wondering, do you have any tips to color it faster? I'd love to hear your suggestions, every recommendation is welcome!

[BlairFujin]

Can you first give us some info on your current process? Then we can tell what we're doing differently that may speed things up for you.

[TheDoublekey]

You're right, I should've given some more info from the start, my bad . Anyways, I use photoshop for drawing and comics and I usually do flat coloring by using the magic wand tool. Each and every single color stays on its own layer to which I return by clicking on it.

Once I'm done with the flat coloring, I start shading and this is the most painful part. I do shading with a brush (sometimes hard, sometimes soft depending on what I'm shading) and the part I usually struggle the most with is hair, because I'm unable to do sharp lines.

My shading isn't always 100% precise, hence why I tend to correct every single mistake and it takes me a long time. Also, I do the shading on each level.

[TroyVSTheWorld]

Does photoshop have a colorize mask tool? I use Krita (which is a free app but by no means low-quality) and there's a tool that lets you basically just stroke a color in an area and then it fills out the rest for you.

[darthmongoose]

I think you may want to consider just simplifying the shading to start off with. Personally I only even do shading at all on skin and very light coloured stuff (like a white or yellow shirt) if possible, and it's nearly all flat shading; I just then throw a quick edge highlight on there. All my flat foreground colours are on the same layer with the highlight layer above it and transparency locked down.

When I look at your black and white pages, you mostly use your grey/tones as flat fills so... why not try the same approach with colours? Keep them flat with just a little cel shade and then use some nice chunky black fills and textured hatching to stop it looking too bare? See if it looks good, or try making an example and posting it here for some advice. Worth a shot!

[TheDoublekey]

Mmmh, I don't think there is one in PS, unfortunately. A friend of mine does have Krita, though (I suggested it to him because he wanted a free software) and I'll gladly let him know about this feature! Seems really useful!

[TheDoublekey]

I actually thought about doing this at some point, but wasn't really sure of it. I was always afraid it would look unfinished, but now that you're telling me this, I might even give it a try! I will definitely check out your comic to have a better idea of how you color panels. Thanks for the suggestion!

[smokesalty]

IF YOU HAVE CLIP STUDIO GET THE CLOSE AND FILL TOOL IT'S A LIFE SAVER

It only really works if you have neat linework (I've had to neaten mine to save time on colouring) but yeah. In short, you set your lineart as a reference layer. The tool is like a lasoo tool- you just need to circle the area you want coloured and it does it for you ITS SO GOOD

Edit: Idk if this question includes shading. For me, I have the shading colour I use saved in my palettes- my character colours are here too. I use the same flat colours for the characters, it's using the multiply, add glow and overlay layer filters that get the shading to fit the scene.

[darthmongoose]

I will definitely check out your comic to have a better idea of how you color panels. Thanks for the suggestion!

To save you some time, there is an extras page that's a tutorial. Here's skipping from the inks onwards:

I use Clip Studio, but the techniques are mostly the same. I don't know if Photoshop has a similar fill tool though... (You can get a similar outcome by selecting everything outside the characters, then expanding by a pixel or two and inverting the selection then filling all though).

Give some flat colours a shot. Worst thing that can happen is you know it doesn't work and to try something else, right?

[NickRowler]

If your lineart and grayscale are on different layers, you could just duplicate the grayscale layer and on the copy use the bucket tool and fill in the colors you want. Then fix up the edges. That is what I usually do.

If you only have lineart, and you don't have gaps in your lines, you could use the selection tool, select the area you want for a color, expand the selection by a few pixels, then use the bucket tool in it. You might have to fix up the edges.

If your lineart has gaps, you could add your color on the edge and select the middle, expand a few pixels, and fill in twice with the paint bucket.


If you fill it in only once, you will get a white ring

[TheDoublekey]

Oooh, I've been looking for a feature like this for ages! Unfortunately I use photoshop and I don't think there's any such tool.

Buuut, I do believe there is a way to save color palettes in photoshop (I might remember wrong) and that would save me lots of time. Thanks for your suggestion!

[TheDoublekey]

Oh, thank you so much! It's a pretty cool tutorial. I believe flat colors ain't that bad, they do give a distinct style to the series as well. It's just that I'm always super obsessive over little details and I always try to make everything look perfect and cinematic.

[TheDoublekey]

That's pretty nice! I do try this method from time to time, but my characters have pretty complex hair styles. For the coloring, I did duplicate my layer and changed the color, but my main problem is usually the shading, I love doing it but it takes a lot of time!

[NickRowler]

Buuut, I do believe there is a way to save color palettes in photoshop (I might remember wrong) and that would save me lots of time. Thanks for your suggestion!

So I use Photoshop

You can customize your swatch menu, like here you can see I added some various skin tones.

If you click the upper right menu you can save and load in swatches. If you load in a set, it will ask to replace or append. Replace will remove all the colors and add whatever is in the new pallet, you can reset to default if you accidentally do this. Append will just add onto what is already there. There are options to delete (and batch delete) colors if you added too many.

Tho sometimes what is even easier is just creating a reference image with the colors I want and just just using the eye dropper on it.

[KennethLopezJr921]

Im not sure if this way would be more efficient but I hope it helps.

I also use photoshop but for shading, I wont use the brush tool. Rather I'll use the Pen Tool in combination with any selections I saved. I personally prefer the pen tool over using the brush as you can get more precise shapes. Plus I dont have to worry about a shade tone overlapping or covering another color thanks to a cool trick I picked up when working on my latest episode in full color, but we'll get to that.

First I'll start of my making my path to where I want my darker tones to be. Usually, I would have each path be its own shading color but there are some exceptions where that would impractical given a character's color pallete. Also to save multiple paths, go to the paths tab (next to the channel tab) and double click on Work Path. That way Photoshop wont automatically delete whatever path youre working on if you start a new one.

Then you're going to right click on your path in that tab (make sure all of your paths show up without any anchor points or else this wont work properly) and this is where the fun starts. Your going to load your saved color selection and have that selection intersect with the path selection. That way whatever shade tone you're using will fill in that specific area.

I hope I was able to make sense there. Im really really terrible when it comes to explaining technical stuff like this in words but I hope this helps ^^

[wispysing]

Heya! I'm mainly a Procreate user, but I still occasionally use Photoshop.

Coloring Process

I'll do flats in one layer and do quick, messy shading above it. It sorta spills over everywhere

Afterwards, I'll turn the "Shading" layer into a clipping mask (alt key) so it'll lock the shading into the flats and remove the spills.

Maybe you can try filling all the panels' flats in one go and doing the same for the shading afterwards? It saves me much more time shading all the panels at once rather than doing them one at a time.

May I ask which brush are you using for shading hair? I do find it difficult to create sharp lines with the default round brush, but you can try checking out Kyle's Brush Pack! They've got wonderful brushes both textured and not. Outlining the hair's shadows/highlights with the lasso tool also helps.

Hope it helps, and good luck!

[system]

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