COLOR TUTORIAL by Matteo Scalera

STEP I: INKS

hi everyone,
as I told you, here's a kind of tutorial for colors.
(Note: please do not take everything as a RULE, often they're just point of views )
(Note N°2: sometimes my english will appear pretty weird, I aplogize for that )


The first step is dedicated to the inks, how I work on them before starting to work effectively on colors.
The typical way used by the colorist consist simply in put the inks layer into "Multiply" mode.
It's actually the faster way, that's true; but doin' that way you won't be able to do some cool stuff in your inks, like, for example, coloring them
so....What can I say more? LET'S START!

STEP1
Scan your image, TIFF, 300 dpi, grayscale, nothing else.
Import it into Photoshop.

STEP2
Add contrast to your inks.
There are various way to do that, I use Curves (ctrl+M or Image-Adjustments-Curves)
I move them following a kind of "S" shape, as you can see in figure 2.
I repeat, this is not a rule, it works with my inks but it doesn't necessarily works with other inks
My suggestion is: play with curves until you're satisfied ("oooooh, thanks Matteo, your advices are soooo smart and helpful!!!" )

STEP3
After doing some clanings (if necessary), open the CHANNELS window (just near the LAYERS one, see the figure plz), you'll find only one channel, the GRAY one.

Ctrl+mouse click on it

(NOTE: IMPORTANT! Everytime I say "ctrl+click" on a layer or a channel I mean "CLICK ON THE SMALL PREVIEW OF IT", so you've absolutely to click THERE )

After doin' that you'll see that you've selected all the white areas of your image.

ctrl+shift+I (or Select-Inverse), and you'll inverse the selection, so now you've got all the black parts selected.

STEP 4
Go back to the layers, keeping the selection.
Create 2 new layers and start to work on the one on the top (Layer 2 in the figure).
Take the brush, using a giant size, and start painting in black on the selection.

NOTE: do NOT fill with paint bucket, use a giant brush.

STEP5
deselect (ctrl+D)
go on Layer 1 and fill it with white color
At this point, you can also delete the original image on the background ("I don't need you anymore, damn inks! BUAHHAHA!")

Change the image mode into "CYMK" (Image-Mode-CYMK). The program will ask you if you want to merge the layers or not. You'll obiouvsly reply "DON'T MERGE"
Passing into CYMK mode you'll notice the inks becoming a little bit "fatter" than before...no worries, it's just a photoshop process, nothing real he simply reads 3 more channels and overlay them.

STEP 6/7
Now you've got what you need:
one white sheet (layer1, totally white)
black inks (layer2)
The colors'll be done in the middle of these two layers.

Just a little thing, an anticipation of coloring inks:
go on layer2 and click on the "lock transparent pixels" button (it's the little square divided into littler gray and white squares). See figure 6 for that.
A white padlock will appear on the right side of the layer window. Now you've locked its transparency.

Do an experiment, just to understand what you've just done:
take the brush, take a random color and try to paint on the inks; you'll notice that you're coloring only the inks, leaving the other parts totally intact. See figure 7 for that.



Well, hope you've enjoyed this first step.
Have fun!

CIAO!

Teo