Quick Photoshop tips--little hints to trim production time

[Xade]

Here's my favorite tip:

Make presets for what you use the most like text boxes. For example, instead of messing with selections for both the balloon and the line, just use the stroke layer style. You can have it inside or outside the border of the selection. Fill it with the color of your choice and go. Here is an example of Aden's balloon preset, which actually cuts time in half for me, just expand the bar, click and collapse it.

Edit: the actual settings I used, I forgot about this one.


Chose "New Style..." and you can save it. By choosing "Edit->Preset Manager..." from the menu you can move the presets around and save any selected ones.



I highly recommend that you save different sets for easy organizing, and you can also chose them on the fly by clicking where suggested here


or


Wow, this took longer than I thought it would, but I thought I would share my favorite time saving hint, so what's yours?

[Dr. BlkKnight]

My favorite time saver doesn't tie to any particular program, but I've found that creating color swatches for characters is a very useful tool. I know CS3 has a .ase swatch format that allows you to read the swatches in any of their programs. Personally, I find it easier to have the colors available at any time and not having to worry about sampling older pages or keeping a list of RGB values somewhere.

[Nuke]

Presets and swatches are both insanely useful.

Another great time saver, if you're using photoshop to color in linework, is to use Bpelt's flattening tools, found and explained here.

It's a bit complicated to use, so you might want to look for a tutorial. And read the comic attached to the tutorial attached to the tutorial, why not.

[raerae]

Color swatches are a life-saver, though keep in mind colors change when you're in different lighting than the norm(Nuke does a good job on colors for night scenes ;D ).

Presets and actions are lifesavers, but I never seem to remember to use them.

[Xade]

I fixed a typo in the top post so I wanted to reply so that anyone who is watching the thread or forum can see, I added the actual settings I used.

Edit: raerae, that is why I have them sitting collapsed below the actual work space, as a reminder. I have a bunch of panels that I sometimes use, and dont want to give up screen space for always available, styles, swatches, channels and paths. I only use them once in a while so they stay tucked away at the bottom ;)

[ran]

Lock transparent pixels on your line art layer, and you can easily slap colour over top of each separate part of the line art for results like the lineart in this picture. You can also use gradient on top of it for gradual changes, just make sure you use the radial as opposed to linear gradient. I'm always baffled when someone tells me that they spent hours doing multi-coloured line art and won't do it anymore because it's too time consuming and frustrating if you change your mind about the colour of something.

Also, for that above thing to work, there needs to be no white bg on the same layer as the line art. Easy enough if you draw straight into photoshop, but if you scan from paper, you can use this action I made to do that by holding down shift and tapping F2.

[Nuke]

Lock transparent pixels on your line art layer, and you can easily slap colour over top of each separate part of the line art for results like the lineart in this picture. You can also use gradient on top of it for gradual changes, just make sure you use the radial as opposed to linear gradient. I'm always baffled when someone tells me that they spent hours doing multi-coloured line art and won't do it anymore because it's too time consuming and frustrating if you change your mind about the colour of something.

I don't know how to lock the transparent pixels on a lineart layer D: Would that be masking or selecting a color range or what? I'd like to try that some time.

[Xade]

I don't know how to lock the transparent pixels on a lineart layer D: Would that be masking or selecting a color range or what? I'd like to try that some time.

theres a little icon

It's best to use images in tips that require some screen searching, which is why my first post had some, pictures speak louder than words. :P

[raerae]

I love that trick. I don't color my lines all the time, but it gives a good effect.

I also like Grouping layers(CTRL+G for earlier versions and CTRL+ALT+G for later versions) 'cause sometimes the shading just doesn't work out.

[Alectric]

I'm sorry, I don't really understand Ran's explanation.  Could someone please clarify what "lock transparent pixels" does exactly?

[Nuke]

I'm sorry, I don't really understand Ran's explanation.  Could someone please clarify what "lock transparent pixels" does exactly?

It means that when you color on a layer it only colors over the stuff that's already there. So if you scribbled over the lines with, lessay, tan, the black would be drawn over but the blank space behind it wouldn't be.

Also thanks for showing me where that button was :D I might mess around with colored lines some time <<

[Xade]

I'm sorry, I don't really understand Ran's explanation.  Could someone please clarify what "lock transparent pixels" does exactly?

I'll be happy to ^_^ *loads photoshop with blank file* Locked transparency means that all the pixels are locked in how transparent they are. If Pix A is set at 50% and its neighbor, pix B is at 100, and pix C is at 0 (meaning nothing) then no matter what you do A and C will remain at their transparencies but you can change their colors at will.

===Locked Transparency Tutorial====
by Xade

Okay, lets say you have a brush (works with other things too) that you wish to do a layer effect with.
For the tutorial I'll use Ron's flames, available at Daz 3d. Just place it in black on its own layer, we will change it shortly.



click the lock transparency then right click on the layer text and chose duplicate, hit enter, now it is doubled, and looking twice as black.



Now, here is the nifty thing about locked transparency. Chose a color, I'll chose a shade of yellow, and holding alt, hit the backspace button.



Volia! the flame is now dark yellow. To continue the flame tutorial (which is how I got the nifty flames here) you duplicate that layer change the layer to orange.....



Then chose color burn from the layer blending dropdown



There we go, that kinda looks like flames, but if you duplicate the color burned layer again you can make them even more red. To make them light just go down to the black layer and adjust the transparency slider until you're satisfied



However, bear in mind that it will show differently on other backgrounds, here's the same flame on a black background.



You can add highlights to the flames if you like on another layer.
Dont forget to group your layers for easy organization! I hope you liked this little tutorial, which is loosely based upon another one..



Play around with the layer settings and actual colors. The example I used utilized two different flames, set at two different colors so they looked good layered like that.