I feel like coloring some of Mike Sherman's art, especially The Lion King art of his. However, there're tons of pictures to color and the starting quality varies from relatively clean scanned pencil sketches to images colored by aliased zero-tolerance color fills and murdered by low quality JPEG compression. Starting with the first kind, for obvious reasons.
What is the modern way of coloring fast and easily? The goal is soft cell shading using mouse and keyboard. Well, unless there's an easy way of getting softer shading. The softness is actually what I struggle with the most.
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TL;DR: Scroll to the bottom where Problem #5 is described. Everything else somewhat works (though suggestions in other areas are welcome too).
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So, my pencil sketch clean up is currently this:
Cleanup Script 1: Levels
* Levels Adjustment layer Range=253–255
* Smart Blur Radius=10 Threshold=25 Quality=Low
* Levels 0–~230 (remove blur and light noise)
* Disable Level Adjustment layer
* Levels ~80-255 (make lines black)
This is scripted with PhotoShop macros with two Levels dialogs enabled. Mostly works, but values for Adjustment layer are sometimes not set (bug?). I also leave Adjustment layer to make later cleanup easier.
Cleanup Script 2: Denoise
* Duplicate Layer
* Median Radius=1
* Set Selection to inverted background gray
* Median Radius=1 on original layer
* Delete median layer
This cleans up the random pixel kind of noise while not allowing Median filter to murder line corners. Works only on medium quality scans.
At this point automation stops and I clean up stray lines pixels manually with brush. Then I open the file in BenVista PhotoZoom and scale 200–300% with Method=S-Spline Sharpness=75–85% Everything else=0. (Scaling is required because Sherman's scans have relatively low resolution.)
After I open the scaled image in PhotoShop, I apply Levels Range=20–200 to make lines more solid (doing stronger Levels before upscaling may remove too much smoothness). Also, if lines are too noisy and uneven, I do this manually:
Cleanup Manual 2: Smooth Lines
* Duplicate Layer
* Median Radius=2
* Erase areas where lines connect which Median filter makes too dark
The last operation requires manual work, which is unfortunate as I feel it can be automated. However, I can't find a way to mask away corners and line connections from stronger Median filter (Problem #1). I may also clean up lines a bit more if required, as they are final.
At this point I have clean black lines on white background. I convert them to transparent layer.
Cleanup Script 3: Transparent Lines
* Set Selection to inverted background gray
* Create layer filled with black
* Delete selected area
There's also a mask thing, but I feel like it's unnecessary here. Are there any benefots of using masks? (Problem #3)
Then the coloring starts. Mostly it's this:
Coloring Manual 1: Fill
* Create Color layer
* Cap line holes with color splotches on the Color layer
* Magic Wand select
* Expand Selection Radius=1
* Fill with current color
* Go to step 2
Now, the hard part starts. I want some cell shading, preferably smooth.
Coloring Manual 2: Shadows
* Create Brightness/Contrast Adjustemnt Layer attached to Color layer Mode=legacy Brightness=–20
* Clear adjustment layer's mask to black
* Paint shadows on the mask with white
Not sure what adjustment to use. Are there better alternatives to using negative brightness for shadows? (Problem #4)
And finally, the most confusing part. I want shadows to be smooth. If I just apply Gaussian Blur Radius=20, then not only edges which need to be smoothed are smoothed, but also those which should not. Masking fails as mask edges become visible. Is there any way to apply strong blur only to required areas of shadow? (Problem #5)
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6 years, 2 months ago
21 Jan 2018 10:03 CET
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