How to Flat Comics Properly: A Flatting Tutorial for Photoshop (Used in Digital Comic Book Coloring)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.ย. 2015
- In this flatting tutorial video, I'll show you to a correct way to properly flat comic book art for coloring! Flatters, if you are used to only getting hired once and not again by the same colorist, this video is for you!
There are a lot of wrong ways to flat! Make sure your lasso tool, bucket, and magic wand's anti-alias is OFF. Feather should be 0px.
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To answer everyone asking about the settings on the tools... they are at the top of the screen. Uncheck all the settings on the lasso and bucket tool.
Question... can't you just use Medibang Paint or ClipStudio Paint Bucket Fill tool, which lets you expand your fill over lineart by couple pixels, and doesn't escape through gaps? Just remember to on a new layer below your 'main' flats also fill empty space 'within' the thicker lines/blacks to create rich black?
There are a lot of ways to do all of this in various apps. In my experience, most professional art isn't drawn in a way that makes "special" fill tools like that faster.
@@colorwithkurt Another question: does the color of the flats under the lineart matter? I mean, actual colorist will not actually touch that in the end, it's just there to create rich black as far as I understand...
Rich black doesn't have anything to do it as far as I know. The flats layer is there for selections only.
@@colorwithkurt Oh, okay. Interesting. I guess I've been misinformed.
I cannot like this enough. Been going through several dozen videos about digital colouring and no one was showing useful flatting info. They all skipped that to get right to the fancier stuff and it's pretty critical when you're brand new. Thanks so much for this!
Ah yes, I remember flatting for about 7 different colorists. Most time-consuming part of the process. Actually got my mom to flat with me and we could turn books out pretty fast! :-)
Hello I know this is 3 years ago but is there an efficient way to find work as a flatter?
@@telavia577 Unless you like working 6-8 hours a day for $5-10 a page, forget it. Fast way to get burned out. But if you DO want to pursue it, reach out to comic colorists and offer to flat for them. Audition. Then go from there.
Sounds like the flatting experience! Thanks for your time in the trenches. :)
Flatting technique:
Go from the biggest shapes (like the whole panel) to the smallest (the eyes) to make sure there are no ways for white gaps.
Psh, I know how to flat...
*watches video*
So much more efficient than what I've been doing Dx
I'm glad I found this. I was looking for a way to shorten (imo) the most boring part of the process. Hand-coloring everything made sense when it was all traditional, but now I'm working digital. Might not do the same approach of making everything a different color. I'm working with a limited palette, so a lot of things are just going to be the same color.
I use flats of different colors even if working in black and white. :) It saves a lot of time.
So glad I found this video. I'm not a flatter or colorist, but trying to do flatting for myself on my own comic and I see where I'm messing up and wasting time. This is such a time-saver. You're very good at teaching as well. Subscribed now, thanks!
Finally someone who knows what they're talking about. lol
Still the best flatting tutorial on TH-cam
An oldie but a goodie. :)
I've colored a lot of stuff, but never knew the bit about going from big to small in making the selections for the flats. Duh. Hugely sensible. Thanks!
I’ve fallen down a colouring rabbit hole here. You’re awesome. (Ps, it was nice sitting next to you at Thought Bubble! Thank you for the tips.)
That was a great tutorial straight to the point with good info, I am a Penciler and the way the market is I am needed to do more and more of the work. You are very on point and that is great.
thank you so much.. ive seen other tutorials but you went into a true lesson.
I really love your classes. I started coloring and sometimes i get confused with it, but you explain everything so good i can't have doubts. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge^^
Best, most professional flatting tutorial I’ve seen. Thanks!
Saving money to do your course. Thanks a lot for the tips, Mr. Russel! 😊
＊ This is really useful! I’m making a comic right now and I’m mostly using flat colors (since I’m doing it mostly by myself). I wouldn’t have known to do a lot of these things, so thank you for making this video!
This seems so much easier than the channeling method. Flatting always seems so daunting because I couldn't understand how channels worked, but this is much easier to understand
you're so cool. and it totally looks like you love what you do! thanks for teaching me and a whole lot of other persons how to color a comic book in a proper way!
Thank you very much Mr. Russel, your tutorials are very helpful
Thank you so much for your help and thank you for giving us tutorials
if I ever finish my comic idea I'm going to give you a special mention, I learn alot from your vids....I've only managed 6 pages in a year though so don't get too excited lol.
I have been working as a flatter for some months and now I've discovered that I was making a lot of mistakes xD Thank you very much!!
Thanks! Exactly what I need to know.
Thank you so much for this! This is incredibly useful!
Man ! I have landed upon gold !
Subbed instantly. Thx.
I love it! Great stuff!
I learned alot! Thank you!
Fantastic lesson, thank you!
Thank you so much for making my life easier
awesome, pretty much the way I ended up doing em for myself. (although im starting to get antsy about the time spent flatting lol. I'm drawing the pages and working in BW + tone) The only other thing is I'll keep copies of the flat layers at varying complexity to allow me to select large areas quickly, max 4-5. so the first one is prob just whole figures and bg, and the last will be full complexity with small details. I like to be able to grab bold elements of the composition/scene as quickly as smaller parts.
and thanks a million for you marvelous work on spiderman! pages are sparkling 😍😍😍
thank you bro... I really loved it
Thanks for the video. Will this technique work as well with earlier versions of Photoshop?
This was so flippin usefull omdz thank you
Love your videos!
thanks for this!
To think, this is just a simple tutorial but makes a lot of sense, helps me alot! thank you so much! *subd
Great information!
Thank you Micheal!
Great tip about the alt (opt) and space bar - Thanks
Oh WOW - I've just sussed (worked out) how you did the selection
and only part of it changed - You locked the paint layer pixels ! That's huge.
Hmmmm ? Looking at it again you didn't - now I am confused - sorry
whatever I'm doing it's working but then I am only on CS3
Great Tutorial !
Great tutorial
Hi there. At around 8:15 you say you dont need to trace the entire outline because of the way your tools are set up. Do you mind talking about what settings you have to have in order for this to be the case? Thanks!
same problem. Did you resolve this trouble?
Thanks for all your videos! They are great!
I have a question... I am not able to do the changing between the polygonal lasso tool and the free hand lasso tool... Although I press alt..it just remains the same as before...Do I have to work with some settings? In my photoshop, I can see the sign of the lasso tools when I make the selection, not the cross, as in your video...
very helpful, thanks a million
+K Michael Russell you are such a generous mentor, I whatched your videos hungrily 😉 they were just awesome, and I used your techniques! they really work awesome !
+saeideh rad He is my new mentor too!
thanks for sharing!
This is pretty easy! I have a question. For other programs such as correl paint and medibang does it work pretty much the same way?
Thanks a lot michael soon I'll be good
youre a wizard man! dig it!
I'm a wizard?! I always wanted to be a wizard. :)
@@colorwithkurt Well the way you work that lasso and magic wand I'd say you're a cowboy wizard
Hi !
Thanks a lot for this video.
I'm flatting a lot and I use quite the same method.
2 principal differences are :
- I use the polygnal lasso and press alt to switch to the free one. In this way, the selection doesn't close if your pen has no more contact with the tablet.
- Futhermore, by default, I check the "additionnal selection", so I can select several parts and fill them in once. (contiguous must be unchecked)
I appreciate a lot your channel. Thanks a lot for this share.
What tool settings did you use so you didn’t have to reselect?
Really helped now i learned how to do flats , thank you very much sir. I've done my flats, and duplicated flats layer renamed it to colors, changed the colors that i will use for final look, but still need to know what to do next, i wold like to see a complete page process on how you do light/shadows etc... and what should be done first and what last that would be good to see, thank you!
Hey K Michael Russell, great tutorial! Thank you so much.
In time: Do you have any tutorial about how to scan and clean up the lineart before coloring?
+K Michael Russell, thanks for the reply! I'm going to check it right now!
Do you have any tips for flatting comics with traditional mediums, namely (in my case) alcohol markers and ink?
Thank you!
not a comic book flatter, but a newbie illustrator here, I'm used to flat with magic wand before and playing with its tolerance, then part by part i have to clear the white pixels for each edges after..which is tiring and time consuming.. I'm always having a trouble for the left out pixels under the lines. that why I came here to see how professionals do it properly, thanks man helps a lot,saves my time.
You can use the magic wand tool. You just have to expand the selections by a couple pixels before you fill so the colors sit behind the lines.
That makes sense. I only speak from experience coloring my own work.
how could I have not seen this channel before?
This was a game changer for me. Do you have anything in Procreate.?
How do you color two different color objects over a background? I get background color showing up between the two.
I'm kinda glad I use Krita because it has a color auto-fill option. Still makes mistakes, but it's better than doing everything by hand IMO.
Cainmak photoshop also can auto fill, I used to auto fill but then you get uncolored parts under the inks which can cause issues, that’s why you should do it by hand
can you explain your tool setup? are you talking about unchecking anti alias and contiguous?
what about new selection vs, intersect, add or subtract selection. are those all unchecked?
thank you so much! :’)
Hi this might be a super newbie question but it would be most appreciated if you could answer it. I want to start flatting for other artists but I don’t have photoshop I have an iPad and procreate. Will I have to use a special file specific to photoshop or does the file type even matter? I really just want to know if using 2 different apps will affect file compatibility.
+K Michael Russell and one more question. In PS CC, when I am using the lasso, and I press space bar hoping to get the hand, I'm getting the magnifier. Is this a setting I can change? I can't move around when zoomed in. I am using option to make straight lines, but I don't think that matters...
That's one part, yes. I guess where I was heading was that if you do everything yourself, and would make only digital version, and wanted to save time, would it be possible to just fill with bucket, since the size is so small,that one couldn't see the edges.That said, I AM flatting.
I like It!! Thanks a lot.
great vid.
Would you happen to have any advice on how to find work as a flatter?
do you have a link to set the tool settings to be able to do this? please :)
Awesome video! Been working for years by myself doing this and just learned the term "flatter" today. Great discussion/explanation.
Question: So I've got my page flat-ed, and I want to select a shape and change it's color in Hue/Saturation panel. If I make a big change like red to green, there are 'lost' pixels where they meet, at the shape borders. I find this true using both the lasso tool or using the brush tool (set at 100% hardness).
For the most part, these borders are covered up by the inks, outlines, etc., but sometimes not. It seems to limit the whole usefulness of flatting, though I'm still using it daily.
Any thoughts?
@@colorwithkurt You are the man! Had the zero feather going, but even though I've been using Ps for years, I had no idea about the anti-alias!
"what not to do"
-shows exactly how i've worked up until now
Whatever works! :)
I´ve just learnt something new thanks to your video.
1- We share a similar name mr K Michael Russell (K Michael Rowsell)
2- That flatting exists and how to do it porperly!
Great video! Thanks.
(I've edited out my dumb questions, so I look smarter).
Somehow this process seems very satisfying. I'm gonna find me some digital coloringbooks to mess around with. :)
I'm guessing this is done in 300dpi for printing purposes?
For the actual artist, does every selection have to be in a different color? For example, does the eye-color from one person have to be different from the other so you can individually select them? (I guess that would make sense).
Thanks again man.
Great tutorials, thank you! I was wondering- if you would do a comic only in digital format- would you still do the flattening?
+K Michael Russell righty right..i wrote that with my morning coffee.. I've read in couple of places that, it's basically done for printing only?
no, i know what flattening layers is. : )
Is this the same way in Clio Studio or can you link a video to the clip version.
Whos the artist that made the line art which is excellent and what comic is? thanx in advance great tutorials.
These videos are amazing!
Question: When I make a section and fill using the bucket tool, small lines of underlying color remain. I can clean them up with the brush tool, but I'd rather figure out what I'm doing wrong. I've played around with the tolerance from 0-25 but it has no effect.
Anti-alias on the lasso was my issue.
Is it acceptable to do flatting using color channels instead of layers?
Questions:
1. Is ti ok if I use pentool instead of the lasso tool?
2. Is your style of selscting only works on CS6 or higher version of Photoshop?
I flat using the pen tool sometimes, but I find it to be more time consuming, and all I gain is the ability to make multiple selections and not have to worry about accidentally erasing them by forgetting to hold down shift, (although ctrl-z alleviates that worry as well, so idk)
I have Procreate on my iPad. Can this method still be used on Procreate?
whos the artist that made the drawing line art? ps dont know if its yourself I have to say its great
When I flat my images, I tend to get these pixels in between different flat colors, which makes it hard to use the blender brush when I'm rendering. How can I avoid this so the flats look clean like this? 17:10
how are the settings set for the lasso tool? would really help and make things faster. Thanks
Everything is unchecked on the lasso.
Does anyone know how you get the bucket tool to fill in two separately selected ares at once? Like with the eyes, and the phone, how he only clicked once, but both of the eyes were colored at the same time?
Hello Mr. Russell!
I was trying to follow your tutorial but I found a different setting out of my lasso tool: when I press the space bar it doesn't go straight but turns into hand tool.. Is there some setting I didn't set properly, or there some step I missed?
Thank you for your helpful tutorial!
this might be SUUUPER late but check the shift button!
Same happened to me. I Googled and I found this: To switch between freehand and straight edge segments, Alt-click (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and click where the segments should start and end. Good luck!
I usually flat the base color and then clip mask layers for each color the rest but I've noticed you flat everything in one layer. Why do you recommend doing it that way?
videoception! thanks :D
I really appreciate the videos you're making. I don't check them all out, but the ones I've seen have been very helpful. I have some questions about flatting though, based on what I've seen.
When you're getting something ready for print, don't you flatten or merge the layers? Wouldn't this eliminate any issues with white spaces appearing?
When I've watched some videos (not necessarily yours), people tend to overlap their color flats. How do you clean this up? No one seems to cover this in any videos I've seen.
Thanks for your help!
It seems like a lot of people do it the way you explained it. So, that either means it's the right way or, as you mentioned, an old way that people haven't let go of.
I'm trying to do my own comic and I have the whole thing colored. But then I watched a number of videos and thought I might not be doing it right. At the very least, it seems the colors are better when doing it the way I've seen in videos.
By overlapping, I mean they'll "color outside the lines" so that, if you were coloring Superman, the blue of his costume will go outside of his figure. These videos never explain how to clean that up. I'm assuming it would be the eraser tool, but a lot of what I thought would work is being questioned now.
Also, why can't you use the want tool and then just fill in? It seems like it gets the same results as using a brush, especially if the layers will be flattened into one for print.
Another thing that came to mind is the issue of working in cmyk. I think you mentioned in one of your videos to use that, but I was wondering about a couple things.
It's been awhile since I colored my comic, but I think I recall going straight to RGB. Videos I've seen have converted to greyscale first, and then either went to RGB or, in your case, to CMYK.
Is there any reason why you do greyscale first and then another mode? Also, if you start out in RGB, have you heard about using to option to convert to profile instead of changing to CMYK by going under image/mode?
I know that's a lot, and I appreciate any insight you can give. Thanks again.
What about people using the lasso and brush tool vs using the wand and paint bucket tool? Why do you use the former instead of the latter?
Hi when I color it in, it doesn't end at the dark lines like yours. So I have to painfully trace everything instead going around some areas. How do you do it? :(
how much do you pay flatters? never knew that was a thing.
Awesome ! :D
Where can I go to get a job as a flatter? I"ve been practicing it for about two years or so now and I think I've gotten good enough at it.
Great!
tytyty!
Love the video and your channel. I am also looking at your courses. I am curious though, how does one find someone to flat for? I don't think I have ever seen a call out for flatters or maybe I've just missed it.
Wow thanks for the quick reply and the suggestions. I will check it out, just started digitally colouring in Procreate in April of this year.
Awesome and thanks again.
I have the same Sin City poster in my work room ^^
Is there a certain website you use to get flattening jobs and to set up like your portfolio
I'm curious, is there an advantage to using the Bucket tool over Command Delete (Control Delete on a PC, I think)? On Mac, when I have a selection to fill I hit Command Delete and it fills the selection with the background color. It seems faster to me because A. I don't have to switch tools, B. I don't have to move my pointer inside the selection and click, and C. I can just move on to my next selection with the Lasso tool. The drawback is selecting another color and having to switch it to the background color with X.
True, in Photoshop there's usually four different ways to do the same thing. :) Everyone figures out what works for them.
This is what I have always done too, and only now realized the benefit of using the bucket tool. Because the bucket tool has a colour tolerance, and doesn't just fill the whole selection. For example when K Michael Russel selects the character's hair, and he just does a wide selection over the BG to close the selection. He can do this because he uses the paintbucket to fill.
So it may take longer to perform the fill, but it saves time because you do not need to refine your selection as much.
Thanks~!
My number one question about flatting:
It's the flatters job to differentiate the characters, so characters with the same skin tone or hair color will have different colors right? But what about uniforms? Like the Fantastic 4, in which they all wear the same blue jumpsuits? Or Johnny Storm and Sue Storm are designed to have the same exact skin and hair? Should the flatter really choose different colors to represent each jumpsuits in the team? Or can they rely on the colorists knowing that they all wear the same color? Or would that tick them off.