The Drawing Board

[Unicorn Master]

I'm trying to use channels for flatting colours in Photoshop CS5. I'm following this tutorial http://www.steeldolphin.com/htmltuts/digital_colorpart1.html
http://www.steeldolphin.com/htmltuts/digital_colorpart2.html
and whenever I fill my background colour into the RGB channel, my black line work changes colour and no matter what I try, I can't get it to stay black. I'm sure it's something basic (I'm not well versed in photoshop). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

[TimothyObriant]

Ok, so you should probably be adding your background color to a designated layer not in your RGB channel.  Either way you should be able to change the color of the line art your working with be double clicking on the picture on your line work in the channel section.  A diaologe will pop up and you can set the color of the line art and the opacity. 

[Unicorn Master]

Thanks for all your advice (this and the tablet).  Worked like a charm. Reason I'm using channels is I've come across a couple of tutorials that advise it over layers as it cuts down on processing resources.

[TimothyObriant]

Glad I could help.

[Unicorn Master]

Here's the result. My first attempt doing color flats (with Photoshop, Bamboo Pen tablet, and my Bruce Timm ECCC 2011 commission).

[TimothyObriant]

Looks great. 

[Andrew Tom]

Looks great.  Any chance that we'll get to see you color some more?

[Unicorn Master]

Thanks guys.  Yeah, I'll be doing more. Really enjoying it. I'm an absolute beginner though, so any tips or advice people have are more than welcome.

[TimothyObriant]

Only tip I have is work smart not hard.  Flatting is tedious work so when you flat start by adding color to the whole object and slice it up from there.  For instance if you if you have a person flatten his entire body including clothes one color, then separate his clothes and hair from the rest using the magic wand and your selection tool.  This way you make sure that your only trace lines once. 

The hard way would be to select a characters t-shirt, flatten it and then select the characters arm and flatten it.  If you do it this way you'll be dealing with the line separating his arm from his shirt twice and trust me you don't have time for that.   

[john_k]

Thanks guys.  Yeah, I'll be doing more. Really enjoying it. I'm an absolute beginner though, so any tips or advice people have are more than welcome.

Hi U.M.,

I found this tutorial to be the easiest when I was goofing around with coloring:

http://www.jmort.com/tutorials/lineart_pt1.htm

[Unicorn Master]

Thanks John. Really dig Jerks In Space BTW   

[john_k]

thanks, Unicorn Master!