Colouring in Photoshop

[radiator]

Hi there, wondering if any kind soul skilled in the art of photoshop can help me out with something. I colour my illos in PS, using a variation of the 'cut and grad' technique, which works great for me.
However, my main problem with using it is actually deciding on a colour scheme or colour palette. I tend to just pick colours at random from the colour picker, and the results sometimes look a bit too bright, busy and scattershot, even after tinkering with hue/sat, and i'd like my images to have a more unified, restrained feel (i'm digging kev walker's palette, for example). Basically, are there any tips/rules about picking a coherent colour scheme i should know about? I've searched high and low on the web, but most colouring tutorials don't really cover this aspect in any depth. If anyone can point me in the direction of one it'd be much appreciated.
Cheers

[Bico]

Drag a picture with your preferred colour scheme into photoshop, then use the eyedropper tool to pick the colours you want.
Not ideal, but quick.

[Adrian Bamforth]

My advice would be not to worry too much about getting the colours right when you're first applying them - when you're separating out the page into areas of colour treat it as just the laborious process that makes it easier to 'bucket fill' or adjust the colour balance of (or however you wish to do it) with the right colours later when you can concentrate solely on picking colours. Pick token colours for things, don't worry too much about saturation.

I've found a good method to get a colour scheme is colour everything with predictible colours (i.e.roughly the colours they are) then put a big block of colour over the top of the panel (or whole page if you want it all consistent) on a layer above. Set this layer to colour mode. Then you can play with the opacity of that layer to change the saturation of that colour into all the other colours and play with the colour balance to change the colour itself. You're narrowing colour range of the panel/page but that's probably what you want if you're after a colour scheme.

You can also use a dark colour and set the layer to Multiply and it'll make the panels darker with the colour (or set to Lighten for the opposite effect). This is useful for night-time scenes. It's like using a colour filter on a camera as done to death by the likes of Guy Richie.

If you take all the various layers of colour filtering off one of my pages, the original layer of colour looks pretty crap and lacking in atmosphere.

Need any more help and I can email you a (scaled-down) page with the layers intact if I can get the file size low enough.

ADE

[Art]

Have you read through the D'israeli tutorial?

Link: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/lynnfo/educatio/colou

[Adrian Bamforth]

As I recall, D'Israeli has quite a laborious method of creating a layer of just inks to keep on top of the colours. If anyone tries to follow his tutorial, bear in mind you can do it much easier by just duplicating the layer of the scanned page, setting it to 'Multiply' mode and colouring on a layer under that.

And his colours are gaudy.

ADE

[radiator]

Thanks a lot to you all. I'll give all these things a try. The Disraeli tutorial thing looks good, must have slipped me by. I don't use layers at all normally, except for text and stuff, generally do it all with channels, keeping the inks on an alpha channel.
It's only recently I've started to think about colour a lot, and I think that i tend to colour my stuff a bit too literally, if you know what i mean, and i feel as if i may be unwittingly breaking some 'laws' of colouring or something. I'm confident enough with my drawing, but the colours often seem to let me down.
Sorry for prattling on - Any more suggestions, especially on creating custom palettes, please keep them coming.
Thanks again.

[Adrian Bamforth]

If you haven't already, join the Artdroids group and prattle on with the rest of us for as long as you like.

ADE

Link: Artdroids

[radiator]

That sounds cool. I've submitted to join, so maybe see you round there sometime.
Cheers.

[LARF]

Don't use layers!!!

How do you survive. Pop your B&W line drawing on a multiply layer, drop another layer underneath fill that in white and then sandwich a layer inbetween to colour onto, simple really. You can add other layers inbetween the top and bottom and even use each one for a different colour. I tend to have a base layer of a midtone on the second to bottom layer (above the white), then using the same colour but on an 'overlay' layer above the midtone I use this for highlights, above this on a multiply layer using the same colour again I use this for shade then on each layer I just darken (multiply) or lighten (overlay) the colour to twaek the effect. You could add further layers in between these to add even more shade or highlights - works a treat.

[LARF]

This is the best example I could fiind of the technique I'm talking about. By mixing the properties of the layers and differing the opacities by over laying the layers (much like how you use watercolours) you get this kind of effect and you can alter the depth by altering the opacity's without having to use the history brush...

[Adrian Bamforth]

Now I'm confused, do you want him to use layers or not, or did you mean don't use channels?

ADE

[radiator]

No offence, but i think we're getting off the point a bit. My enquiry was more about actually choosing colours that go well together, and having a colour scheme that holds a page together (eg - i find it difficult to colour backgrounds and not have them overwhelm the foreground). Basically I'm after tips on creating and using a limited palette that doesn't overpower the work, do's and dont's, that sort of thing.

I'm quite happy with the actual technique I use, and I do use layers for adding final touches, I just tend to find they make your computer run very slowly, and a lot can be achieved using only channels. Maybe I will try to use layers more in the future. For the most part I just use the technique on

Link: here

[radiator]

Ok, now I'm waiting for someone to say 'OMG! Don't use that technique! That looks horrible! etc!'
:)

[Misanthrope]

Try finding a colour wheel on the net. This will show you the conflicting colours such as red/blue.

[Misanthrope]

Bit like this one.