Step 08: Getting Ready to Color

Okay, here she is, all inked. Notice that in the graphic on the right the sketch layer has been turned off, so what you are looking at is the Ink layer on top of the white Background layer. Go ahead and do this with your character so you can get a good look at what you have done. Please note that your Catgirl will not look exactly like mine - and it should not as this may be first time you have ever worked with Photoshop. That's OK - the more you work with the program the better your work will become - the only way to improve is to practice.

Now let's get ready to add color. We want to keep the Ink just as it is (we will be using it again later), so we need to get a new layer to put our color on...

1. Open the Cartoon file (be sure you are NOT working with the Progress-1 file - once you have saved Progress-1 do not open it again)
2. Select the Ink layer
3. Choose Duplicate Layer from the Layer palette menu
4. Name the new layer Color
5. Turn off all other layers but the new Color layer
6. The background should go transparent (checkerboard) like the graphic below
   

Now we want to remove all the shades of gray around the black lines so that we can easily fill the areas with color. If we fail to do this, all of our lines will have really ugly halos around them and that will not work. We have a small problem right now in that we technically have no shades of gray, but instead have black with varying shades of transparency. If you try get ride of all the shades of gray right now it will not work as all Photoshop sees is black.

Sooooooooooo, let's replace the transparency with white...

THE STEPS THAT FOLLOW ARE VERY IMPORTANT AND NEED TO BE FOLLOWED CAREFULLY OR YOUR CARTOON WILL NOT COME OUT LIKE IT SHOULD!!!

7. Make sure the Color layer is the only one visible and is selected
8. Click Edit on the Menu bar
9. Click Fill
10. Make sure the settings are:
    Use: White
    Mode: Behind
    Opacity: 100%
    Preserve Transparency: No
    The Behind mode lets Photoshop know that the color we're filling will go behind the contents already in the layer
11. Click OK and the layer's background should be filled with solid white (just like the graphic at the very top of the page)

 Now let's take a look at the levels..

12. Click Image on the Menu bar
13. Click Adjustments
14. Click Levels
15. The Levels window opens
    
16. You'll notice that the center of the graph has little to nothing in it, but there are large clumps at either end. This means that there is a lot of true black and white, and a lot of near-black and near-white, and a few midtones. We're going to move our Input arrows (the top set of arrows) in to a point on the left where the near-blacks taper off (see the graphic above, but DO NOT simply type in the numbers you see in the graphic - your setting will likely be different than mine so keep reading and following the directions), so we're getting true black plus a little bit more (notice how the Input level arrows are now on top of each other - there are still two of them, its just that one is on top of the other). As we do this, you should see the line work get thinner and more jagged as we clear out the midtones.
17. Click OK

Even after going through the above process it is possible that some of the in-between colors have survived, and you will definitely still have a solid background. We can get rid of both of these in one step...

18. Be sure Black is still your foreground color
19. Click Select on the Menu bar
20. Click Color Range
21. Be sure Fuzziness is set to 0
22. Be sure Invert is checked (should select everything but black)
23. Click OK
24. Click Edit
25. Click Clear (or press Delete on the keyboard)
26. Click Select
27. Click Deselect (or Ctrl+D on the keyboard)

The color layer by itself should now be black on transparent again, but with no pixels of varying transparency, giving its lines a sharp and jagged feel. We still have the Ink layer with the nice, smooth-looking edges, but it is invisible now and will be turned on again later. We separated these layers so that the color we apply does not have to compensate for the smooth edges, and we will be able to change colors easily in the finished product if we need to.

Save your Cartoon file!

We are now ready to apply some color!