Photoshop Painting - Basic Preperations

I published this on my blog which is http://audrey-tifa.blogspot.com/ however I felt that this can also fit here.

Well I can't say I am really experienced in this factor, however I set myself in looking up information in order to start doing such myself and so far I have succeeded. I have always tried other painting programs in order to work with painting and such such as Corel Painter, OpenCanvas, SAI Painter and Art Rage but...I found Photoshop more convenient ironically enough. Since I tend to work and sketch a lot on actual paper rather than digital sketching, I found the following method the most convenient.

So here are the steps I have taken to start the painting magic. Also I strongly advice that this is to be done on CS version; in fact the version I am working on is with Photoshop CS3:

Step 1: From IRL to Virtual:
The first thing you'd need to do is obviously, to open the drawing you'd want to use on Photoshop. I strongly suggest you scan your drawing rather than photographing it. If you DO photograph, make sure it's a sunny day around noon in open air. You really don't want your lighting to be anywhere else except being straight on the paper. Also make sure your drawing is well outlined or used bold pencilwork. This is very important so that the lines won't fade away in the process. I tend to outline mine in ink or a 2B pencil. Also if your scanner has the traits of a douchebag and doesn't supress the drawing well, put a heavy book on the lid; it is what I do.

Here is the picture I am working with right now. It's an original character, so hands off her please:

See the bold vs. weaker lines? Keep them in mind to see how things will turn out.

Step 2: Get your drawing completely white and black:
It's time to start working on your preparations because 99.9% your drawing's background is just not white enough. You are bound to have paper grain and grey shades scanned along with your picture if you are using textured paper. If it is a printer's paper it should result to be less of a problem.
Now to get your drawing's background completely white; you should use:

• Dodge Tool from the left-side tool bar to weaken the picture's texture overall (that is, going over the whole picture with it) but DON'T fade it too much.
• Levels from Image > Adjustments > Levels. This is to contrast your picture further and making those pencil/ink lines black again and to make more papergrains to disappear. It will not completely eliminate that dreaded grain, so feel free to use the Dodge Tool once more.

After that, this should be the result:

Step 3: Unlock Background Layer
This is a very important step; unlock your drawing/sketch layer by going in the layers window (the one highlighted on the right hand side) and double click to get it as Layer 0.

Step 4: Deleting the white background
Now it's time to nuke the white off your drawing. Press [ CTRL + ALT + ~ ] to select all the white on the picture. (hint: ~ is the button next to your 1 on the keyboard just above the Tab). Once you have it selected just hit your backspace and the white is GONE.

Sidenotes:
"But where are the rest of the lines?!"
That's why I told you to keep an eye on them lines; while her face, hair, bow and earrings are clearly visible, the rest of the drawing is fading to nothing. This is because it wasn't properly outlined. To be honest, I won't need it outlined since I will be concentrating on the face rather than anything else however for your own sake; if you are about to make a full figure drawing, make sure the pencilwork or inkwork is fully done before moving on.

Multiply vs. Deleting White
Ah, everyone uses Multiply to dodge that horrible white nowadays, however it's not into full consideration in how such a method is not fully convenient. This is because of the following:

• Multiply tends to, as it states, Multiply everything even the black lines and pulls out all the white, that's all fine and dandy up til there. It is also clearly noticeable how the colors still appear from under the black lines; say you have a picture in multiply and you put a dash of red on another layer underneath that picture. While you cannot deny that the red line is still there, it is an eyesore to see the black line being more bold and going really deep red where the lines cross each other (in a few words, the red stroke that crossed the black line eliminated the multiplied black line). It doesn't matter much for one color, but it's a real eyesore when you have lots of other colors in the picture.
  
• Let's say you unlock the layer normally calling it Layer 0, put a block color underneath the sketch which we will call layer 1, set the sketch layer to Multiply and use another color to fill in something on a layer between the color background and the sketch which we will call layer 2. If you merge Layer 0 with Layer 2 this will simply make the white come back which is pretty much not what we want. By deleting the white, it's just gone forever and the sketch is all yours.

Step 5: Dropping a background color
Well, it's time to finish off your preparation; create other layers below the sketch (drag the sketch on top of list if needed) and pick the very last layer at the bottom: this will be your background layer. Pick a color that either eases your eyes or that fit with the mood of the picture. Since this one is a character and she's quite the country bumpkin, I picked green.


Step 6: The Actual Painting
OH DEAR GOD IT TOOK US A WHILE, DIDN'T IT? Well, at least you have a good stable area to work on and it is very feasible. Also the more this process is done the quicker it is to perform for sure. Well, time to get down to the other tricks and make sure you have a graphic tablet for painting. (d'uh)

Go to your Brush on the left-side tool bar and you notice that you have a few drop down menus on the top bar. There are Opacity and Flow:

• Opacity is to set the transparency of your brush or how much of the color are you going to put on the picture. Say you have 50% opacity on your brush with a white color; every time you apply that white stroke only 50% will show up and if you want to make it bolder, just do another stroke again. If it's not enough, stroke again. It's just that simple.
  
• Flow is a little tricky to explain; have you ever did a stroke of color with your mouse and having it on a big scale? You might have noticed that it leaves circles of the brush behind. This can be fixed easily by the Flow function; the lower the flow is the more overlapping circles will the stroke have and therefore rendered to be "smoother".

If you toy around with the Opacity and Flow of the brush and find the brush that most suits you, you are good to go!

This is the result I had by following all the steps above (It's far from done yet, but here's the WIP):


Hints and tips:
You might want to memorize some keyboard shortcuts so that you'd facilitate your work. Here's the shortcuts I used in the making of this picture:

Useful Shortcuts:

• Brush (shortcut: B): The most useful and self-explinatory.
• Eyedropper (shortcut: I): When working with monochrome you're going to need this if you are going to paint. Say you put a light color and then put a dark color over it; you're going to need that color that is created in between. Press I, press on that particular color sandwiched on the picture and make a stroke.
• Fullscreen (shortcut: F): Sick of having windows obstructing in the way? Well, fullscreen is all you need. Careful however, make sure you know your shortcuts well!
• Zoom (shortcut: Z): In fullscreen mode you're going to need this tool and there are several shortcuts to use.

1. When pressing Z it will automatically be on zoom in mode, but holding ALT button will make it switch to zoom out mode.
2. Other shortcuts to access this tool are CTRL + Spacebar and ALT + Spacebar, being Zoom In and Zoom Out respectively (works with CS3 and newer versions).
3. The last shortcut is by holding CTRL and pressing - or + for Zoom Out and Zoom In respectively. (thanks for pointing it out, Luca!)

• Hand Tool (shortcut: H): Another useful tool but not a must. This will make you able to travel around the picture by click-hold and drag without having to zoom in and out constantly. This is especially useful in fullscreen mode.

Tips:

• Do not use Blur of Smudge Tool. They're horrible tools that will make you go lazy and its bound to get disastrous results if you don't know how to use them properly. Leave them for photograph editing; paint by using the color itself to blend.
  
• Don't use the Burn or Dodge Tool while painting for darkening and highlights of painting. These are another set of tools that will make you go extremely lazy and will bring about a bad painting. Learn how colors blend and experiment with actual traditional paints before going digital. People have different opinion about this one but this is my tutorial after all so...obviously, it's how I do my stuff. I'd much rather go for the complete traditional.
  
• Put your actual sketch on 25% opacity from the layers window. This is not to get obstructed with the sketch itself while painting.
• Least possible Flow and moderate Opacity on your Brush setting. This is so that you'd get the smoothest stroke you can with a bit of an edge, yet still keeping the hint of the color on your brush. You don't want those dreaded circle leftovers to ruin your day. My personal setting for the brush is usually 50% or 40% opacity with 10% flow but variate in order to find what fits you best.
  
• Find a brush that would fit your style online if none fits your tastes on Photoshop pre-sets. This is because you'd want to find out what exactly fits your style and character. Just like how a traditional artist would have his and her personal brush and painting style, the digital factor is exactly the same...in its own way. I myself work with a brush that I found off DeviantArt and so far it had worked beautifully. However the Airbrush style brush in the preset brushes is a neat one as well; you might want to give it a try!
  

That's all folks.

Ciao!
A-T