Coloring a Grayscale Image
#5
Hi Chris,

Approaching grey scale digitally can be challenging and very rewarding. The trick is to make it look as natural as possible and not look like you used a bunch of overlay layers, which can leave a piece flat and boring. Your best bet is to experiment and find a technique that works best for you.

My personal approach is to use grey scale to work out my composition and over all lighting scenario. At this stage I will roughly render out the main shapes, establishing shadows and forms, I DO NOT render everything out, I don't even worry if all the forms read Pefectly. I am going to place a multiply layer over the complete image anyhow, which will darken the whole piece up. The multiply layer is like wash, I tend to use a gradient so I get a little more color. I then place another layer over that and change the blending mode to softlight and paint in some loose color, a little red on the nose and ear, some green and blue, have fun with this and be sure to move your colors around. Now the fun part, I add another layer over the top, i use my color picker to pick my base color and mix lighter tones and start rendering the forms out.

Hope this helps some:)

I did a quick paint over for some reference.



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Messages In This Thread
Coloring a Grayscale Image - by duquefbatina - 01-16-2015, 10:52 AM
RE: Coloring a Grayscale Image - by kyteki - 01-18-2015, 09:28 AM
RE: Coloring a Grayscale Image - by Chris P - 01-18-2015, 07:19 PM
RE: Coloring a Grayscale Image - by duquefbatina - 01-19-2015, 01:37 PM
RE: Coloring a Grayscale Image - by Elmst - 01-19-2015, 02:50 PM
RE: Coloring a Grayscale Image - by duquefbatina - 01-20-2015, 01:22 PM

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