ICON TUTORIAL⇨Manga Coloring
A simple tutorial on how to clean up line art and color manga.
Program: PS7
Translatable: Yes. Uses channel mixer, levels, curves, and layers.
Steps: 18 (2 optional)
Difficulty: Intermediate
The tutorial is fairly image heavy. Or, as I like to say, image INTENSE.
1. First, we'll take our base. I'm using a panel from the Yuu Yuu Hakusho manga featuring Botan. She's adorable.
This tutorial works best if the background of your panel is white or black in some way. Lots of screentone or objects like buildings or trees will make it harder.
2. Get rid of anything you don't want. I erased the bit of the word bubble in the left corner.
3. I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling all the grain and jpg artifacts. Let's fix that.
First, I want to get rid of the screentone a lot of comic book artists use. To do this, I'm going to use Photoshop's most underrated tool: the channel mixer.
Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer
Okay. Got your dialogue box up? It should look something like this:
The goal of this step is to get rid of any ickiness the image might have. The key to doing this is making sure the MONOCHROME radio box at the bottom of the image is clicked. Then, you can take the BLUE slider and sort of play with it to whatever fits your base. I don't really know the technical term for what this function does, but what you're doing is kind of strengthening your whites and fading out grays. For this picture, my blue scale number was 36. My settings look like this:
The results look like this:
4. Yeeeaaah, not feeling that either. It washed out all our black lines. Let's fix that. With levels.
Image > Adjustments > Levels
Levels is actually not that hard. Most of the time I just play with the slider until I get something I like. That's what I did this time. Here are my settings:
What number you use really just depends on how strong you want your line art to stand out. I like crisp, black lines.
That should leave you with something like this:
Getting better.
5. CURVES TIME. I'm excited.
Image > Adjustments > Curves
We want to give our lines lots of pop. Again, play around with the settings. These are mine:
Which yields this:
While that's nice, I'm not too fond of the fact that the black lines have become so jagged they resemble clip art. There's an app tool for that.
6. Duplicate your background layer. Blur your duplicate layer by going to Filter > Blur > Blur More.
I'm sorry for assaulting your eyes with that. We can make it better by setting the top layer to Multiply. If you need to, drop the opacity. When you're happy, merge your layers.
This is so much better. Now, we can crop it.
7. Crop your image in whatever way you want.
Sharpen it if you need to. I sharpened my base and then dropped the opacity to 40%.
8. Coloring time! What I recommend is before you start coloring, you take a screenshot/colored image of the character, then eyedrop out the colors you'll need and create a little swatch collection on a new document. If you've ever painted IRL, you get what I mean.
So, to start out, I created a new layer (Layer > New > Layer). I set that layer to multiply. Then I started to color Botan's hair. I used #7DEEFE.
9. Next, I'll do the skin. I created a new layer, same way as the first, set it to multiply, and used #EAC4AF.
10. Let's give her a fabulous shirt. On a new multiply layer, I used #FF9600.
11. New layer, multiply, #C9737E for her eyes. Yada yada.
At this point, I merged my layers.
12. She looks good, but I think she would look cuter and more lively with some color in her cheeks. I created a new layer, leaving it on normal blend mode. I changed my brush to a soft one, size nine. I made a few little blobs in #FF0042. I followed similar principles doing this as you do applying blush on your face. Imagine where the apple of the cheek is, as well as the contour of the cheekbone. Follow that.
13. That just looks silly. I decided to blur the dots. I used Gaussian Blur, Radius: 4.5, and Motion Blur, angle: -45 distance: 16.
If you need to, erase some of the blush with a soft eraser and lower the opacity. I put it on 74%.
14. I wanted to add some highlights to the blush. On the apples of the cheeks, I put little white blobs using a size five soft brush. Again, I used Gaussian Blur, Radius: 1.5. Erase and drop opacity as you like it.
15. Final bit of coloring. New layer, multiply, #EAE0AF for the background.
Merge all your layers.
16. The next bit is mostly traditional "icon coloring," so I won't go into much detail.
New Layer, fill with #B371E5. Set that layer to Luminosity. Your icon should look something like this:
Gross, I know. DO NOT MERGE YOUR LAYERS or you will be doomed to all this grossness forever. Instead of doing that, select your entire icon, go to Edit > Copy Merged. Then paste what you just copied as a new layer. Delete the #B371E5 layer (or make it invisible). Then set the top, "copy merged" layer to overlay. You should have something like this:
If overlay is too strong, you can use soft light. Now, merge all your layers. If you just hid your #B371E5 layer, say okay to the "discard hidden layers" dialogue.
See? Now you're not doomed to grossness forever. You can really just stop here if you want, but I think it would be cool to add some texture to her sweater and to the background. It gives it depth. And, because, you know, I didn't shade. I suck at shading.
17. For her sweater, I added this texture as a new layer:
I set the layer to linear burn, then erased everything that wasn't where I wanted it to be.
18. I did the same thing with this texture:
My final result is this:
Pretty cool, right?
FUN TIPS AND TRICKS:
★ When you clean up the line art, I suggest you do that before you crop and resize. It looks better when you do that.
★ Here's a cool variation. If you want line art in a color other than black, put a screen layer of the color you want before you start laying down your multiply layers.
These icons use a screen layer filled with #630B43 set to 42% opacity.
★ Each one of these icons takes me about 20 minutes. It's a pretty simple process, especially if you set up some actions.
Program: PS7
Translatable: Yes. Uses channel mixer, levels, curves, and layers.
Steps: 18 (2 optional)
Difficulty: Intermediate
The tutorial is fairly image heavy. Or, as I like to say, image INTENSE.
1. First, we'll take our base. I'm using a panel from the Yuu Yuu Hakusho manga featuring Botan. She's adorable.
This tutorial works best if the background of your panel is white or black in some way. Lots of screentone or objects like buildings or trees will make it harder.
2. Get rid of anything you don't want. I erased the bit of the word bubble in the left corner.
3. I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling all the grain and jpg artifacts. Let's fix that.
First, I want to get rid of the screentone a lot of comic book artists use. To do this, I'm going to use Photoshop's most underrated tool: the channel mixer.
Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer
Okay. Got your dialogue box up? It should look something like this:
The goal of this step is to get rid of any ickiness the image might have. The key to doing this is making sure the MONOCHROME radio box at the bottom of the image is clicked. Then, you can take the BLUE slider and sort of play with it to whatever fits your base. I don't really know the technical term for what this function does, but what you're doing is kind of strengthening your whites and fading out grays. For this picture, my blue scale number was 36. My settings look like this:
The results look like this:
4. Yeeeaaah, not feeling that either. It washed out all our black lines. Let's fix that. With levels.
Image > Adjustments > Levels
Levels is actually not that hard. Most of the time I just play with the slider until I get something I like. That's what I did this time. Here are my settings:
What number you use really just depends on how strong you want your line art to stand out. I like crisp, black lines.
That should leave you with something like this:
Getting better.
5. CURVES TIME. I'm excited.
Image > Adjustments > Curves
We want to give our lines lots of pop. Again, play around with the settings. These are mine:
Which yields this:
While that's nice, I'm not too fond of the fact that the black lines have become so jagged they resemble clip art. There's an app tool for that.
6. Duplicate your background layer. Blur your duplicate layer by going to Filter > Blur > Blur More.
I'm sorry for assaulting your eyes with that. We can make it better by setting the top layer to Multiply. If you need to, drop the opacity. When you're happy, merge your layers.
This is so much better. Now, we can crop it.
7. Crop your image in whatever way you want.
Sharpen it if you need to. I sharpened my base and then dropped the opacity to 40%.
8. Coloring time! What I recommend is before you start coloring, you take a screenshot/colored image of the character, then eyedrop out the colors you'll need and create a little swatch collection on a new document. If you've ever painted IRL, you get what I mean.
So, to start out, I created a new layer (Layer > New > Layer). I set that layer to multiply. Then I started to color Botan's hair. I used #7DEEFE.
9. Next, I'll do the skin. I created a new layer, same way as the first, set it to multiply, and used #EAC4AF.
10. Let's give her a fabulous shirt. On a new multiply layer, I used #FF9600.
11. New layer, multiply, #C9737E for her eyes. Yada yada.
At this point, I merged my layers.
12. She looks good, but I think she would look cuter and more lively with some color in her cheeks. I created a new layer, leaving it on normal blend mode. I changed my brush to a soft one, size nine. I made a few little blobs in #FF0042. I followed similar principles doing this as you do applying blush on your face. Imagine where the apple of the cheek is, as well as the contour of the cheekbone. Follow that.
13. That just looks silly. I decided to blur the dots. I used Gaussian Blur, Radius: 4.5, and Motion Blur, angle: -45 distance: 16.
If you need to, erase some of the blush with a soft eraser and lower the opacity. I put it on 74%.
14. I wanted to add some highlights to the blush. On the apples of the cheeks, I put little white blobs using a size five soft brush. Again, I used Gaussian Blur, Radius: 1.5. Erase and drop opacity as you like it.
15. Final bit of coloring. New layer, multiply, #EAE0AF for the background.
Merge all your layers.
16. The next bit is mostly traditional "icon coloring," so I won't go into much detail.
New Layer, fill with #B371E5. Set that layer to Luminosity. Your icon should look something like this:
Gross, I know. DO NOT MERGE YOUR LAYERS or you will be doomed to all this grossness forever. Instead of doing that, select your entire icon, go to Edit > Copy Merged. Then paste what you just copied as a new layer. Delete the #B371E5 layer (or make it invisible). Then set the top, "copy merged" layer to overlay. You should have something like this:
If overlay is too strong, you can use soft light. Now, merge all your layers. If you just hid your #B371E5 layer, say okay to the "discard hidden layers" dialogue.
See? Now you're not doomed to grossness forever. You can really just stop here if you want, but I think it would be cool to add some texture to her sweater and to the background. It gives it depth. And, because, you know, I didn't shade. I suck at shading.
17. For her sweater, I added this texture as a new layer:
I set the layer to linear burn, then erased everything that wasn't where I wanted it to be.
18. I did the same thing with this texture:
My final result is this:
Pretty cool, right?
FUN TIPS AND TRICKS:
★ When you clean up the line art, I suggest you do that before you crop and resize. It looks better when you do that.
★ Here's a cool variation. If you want line art in a color other than black, put a screen layer of the color you want before you start laying down your multiply layers.
These icons use a screen layer filled with #630B43 set to 42% opacity.
★ Each one of these icons takes me about 20 minutes. It's a pretty simple process, especially if you set up some actions.