Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Preparing Images for Blurb: Color Management

I've been away from the blog for a while, but now I'm ready to pick up where I left off.  In the last post, I showed a process video of how I shaded and highlighted my drawings.  Once all of my pages were completely colored, I added a few shadows with the pen and shape tools.  Also some extra little effects here and there that I felt were needed.  Then it was time to prepare my illustrations for Blurb.  First, I decide to test print a few pages to see how the color would look.  My images were printing much darker than they appeared on screen.  Thankfully, I went to the Blurb website and found a way to help improve the color.  I downloaded their Blurb ICC Profile.  This way I could view my illustrations in Photoshop and have a more accurate idea of how they would look printed.

Here is a link to the Blurb ICC Profile:

Color Management Resource Center | Blurb

ICC Profile in Photoshop:


Once the ICC Profile was downloaded, I used color adjustments to change some of the colors.  I created two new layers above all of my other layers.  One for the color balance adjustment and the other for vibrance.



Here is a before and after:
(The changes look subtle, but it actually made a big difference.)




I then test printed a few pages and was happier with the color results.  Now I was ready to prepare my files to create the book in Blurb.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Ninth Step: Coloring in Photoshop-Part 4- Shadows and Highlights

Here is a video I have annotated describing some of my shading and highlighting process.  
Click this button on the lower right hand side of the video to view in full screen.  


Sorry the quality is not at its best in full screen.  Trying to find a better solution!  :)

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Eighth Step: Coloring in Photoshop-Part 3-Coloring Line

Once the flat color was done I decided to paint the black lines a different color.  I used the eyedropper tool to select one of the flat colors from one of my characters.


Then in the color palette I selected a slightly darker color.  This was the color I would give to the line surrounding the original flat color.


I then clicked on my Black Outlines layer and clicked the Lock Transparent Pixels button.  This button enabled me to only color on the black lines.

With my Black Outlines layer selected, I chose a hard paintbrush and began to color over the  black lines.  I kept choosing different colors as needed and painted until every black line was colored.



I also masked out the black lines that were dividing my pages.  To do this, I selected my Black Outlines layer and then clicked on the Mask button.




Then I selected the paintbrush, selected the mask layer and made sure my color was selected to black.  I then began painting over the black dividing lines.  This turned my lines invisible.  I could have just used the eraser tool, but if I accidentally went over a line I didn’t want erased, I could then change the color to white and unmask any area I had accidentally masked out.


And here is the final image:


Next Step:  Coloring in Photoshop: Part 4 - Shadows and Highlights