Step 4: Adjusting Levels And Threshold

This is self-explanatory. The black white and gray arrows allow you to adjust those color tones in the current image. Just click and drag the arrows until your image is a pure black and white image. You don’t have to pull them all together because that will cause missing drawn lines, adjust them until your background is white and the lines are black.

Step 5: Migrating The Image, Coloring And Shading

Once you have set the layer to “Multiply” you will need to click on the background layer below to start coloring your page. From this point on. you will want to save this file as a .psd so it doesn’t flatten the image. It’s basically like a coloring book from here. You can just color your images using the brush tool and shade them using the burn and dodge tool. One thing you will want to remember about painting anything in Photoshop, canvas, building, you will always want to paint the back ground first. I will show an example with gradients. This was drilled in my head as a child attending art school growing up. The background is what the viewer uses to determine the depth of the picture and most of the time it’s what gives the picture its viewing pleasure. So before you start coloring remember to take your time and work from the background to the foreground.

In this example I have placed a rectangular marquee around the image that I want to apply my gradient background to, the marquee allows the gradient to just apply to the selected area of choice.

Like I have stated before in each picture work from the background up, the next step in this picture is light effect on the moon. This is a very simple step for a nice effect in any picture. All you have to do is grab the dodge tool and size it to fit around the light source, in this case it is the moon, so I will click the mouse a few times to get a decent shade of whit and size up the dodge tool a few more notches and click a few more times. Repeat this process until the glow is expanded to your liking.

If you include people in your comic you will probably want to wait to color them last unless there are people in the background. We will move on to coloring people and objects seeing as though I have finished my background and I am ready for the foreground. First off, you will want to pick your color for the characters that you’re showing. In this case I have picked blue and a tan for the clothes, pale skin and brown hair for the human figure. From this point on it’s like a coloring book, just color inside the lines until all the white is gone and everything is to your liking.

Next is the shading, this is a fairly easy step if its done right, the tool of choice for this matter is the burn tool. What we are going to do is scope out the shaded areas in the picture and apply the burn tool there. Its best to just experiment with it at first so you know what to expect, mess with a few settings as well, the more you play around with it the better your shading will turn out. The same applies to the dodge tool only it is the exact opposite. You can use this tool for lighting specific areas as I discussed earlier. With these tools you can add more texture to your drawings and color which makes for an all out better end product.