Photoshop Tutorial: Simple Way for Coloring Manga

^{Pre-post Note:
I actually planned to post a photoshop (PS) tutorial entry at least once per month, with this entry become the third for this year (it has been so since last January). Though, businesses have been ruthless (including academics and else); rendering me unable to post this on time. This was meant for March’s entry, though.}

I’ll probably post another tutorial for April around the end of this month. My apologies to those who have waited — hey, is there any?. ^^;;

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First off: The Concepts

 
A little different from US comics (DC or Marvel Comics being prime example), Japanese mangakas finished their works uncolored — leaving their works to rely only on inking, tone, and artline to impress viewers. As you may have grown familiar to, there is *usually* no fancy computer-aided coloring to look at when you’re reading manga.

Examples:

^{top: picture taken from promotional poster for “Heroes” TV series, colored with the same style as its comic adaptation
bottom: picture taken from “Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle” by CLAMP, chapter 6}

 

From the image above, it’s clear that while the US style emphasizes on the atmospheric coloring, Japanese mangaka (in this subject, CLAMP) show their strength in doing high-detail artlines. It is also apparent that the upper picture has less-detailed artline.

Apart from that style-difference, however, one is inclined to ask. Can manga pages be colored, so much that it shows both exquisite artlines and colors?

Well, in fact, all you need is a modern photo-manipulation program. Either it is GIMP, or Photoshop, or else — as long as they have “multiply” blending mode, then everything will be just fine.

What is “multiply”? It is basically a mathematical operator which multiplies a layer’s color — in hexadecimal value — with another layer’s color. A simple example goes like this:

Black is #000000; its binary is #000000000000000000000000

Anything multiplied with zero will always result in zero. So, the multiply won’t affect the black color. (you can try it yourself =) )

 

Now, let’s go with white. Its hexa is #FFFFFF, which is #111111111111111111111111

Any color number multiplied with that will result in that same color. Why? It is on the binary multiplication. I won’t explain it here since it belongs to Digital System lectures — however the essence is quite simple. If you multiply white with a color, you will get that same color.

 

So, if you multiply black with any color, you get black;
If you multiply white with any color, you get that other color.

So, what’s the bang?

Manga is colored in black and white, right? Black always wins on multiplication, and white always gets lost. So, with multiply, you can splash any color on manga pages — and they will be there along with the BLACK lines!!

Hmm, splashing all the colors without obliterating the outline? Is it possible?

Well, let’s get going…

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Notes:

1) These steps were done on Adobe Photoshop CS. Techniques can be applied on other software by doing adjustment on the layers’ blending modes.

2) As this post’s title suggests, the coloring method here has been simplified, only to cover its basics. Please keep in mind that there is no absolute way in coloring sketches and/or artlines — it’s all up to the artist’s style, techniques, and preferred tools.

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Alright, now I have an image from School Rumble by Jin Kobayashi. The image is taken from chapter b25, in which Tsukamoto Yakumo was depicted wearing a witch outfit. The scan is quite clean already — we can directly go to the coloring steps.

Step 1: Do The Basic Coloring

 
As explained above, blending mode Multiply only affects white areas, while the black outlines stay intact. Now we’ll create a new layer and do the coloring on it.

The first step can be summarized like this. Below, we have the raw material aforementioned.

 

 

Then, let’s start to pour these colors (see figure below). All are on Multiply blending mode, with opacity at 100%.

 
^{[please click on the image to see larger picture and additional details]}

 

Step 2: Adding Shadows

 
Now, we need to apply shadows. In this project, I intended the lightsource to be on the right, and a little to the front. So we’ll have to draw shadows on the left part (also remember the body’s 3D contour).

The color we choose here is black, with blending mode Soft Light. The opacity is set to 71%, respectively.

 
^{[please click on the image to see larger picture and additional details]}

 

Step 3: Adding Lights

 
The shades are done. Now, we need to apply lights.

Because the light source is (supposedly) on the right part, we need to emphasize the lighting there. Don’t forget to consider the body’s 3D contour when doing this step.

The color is set to white, blending mode at Soft Light, and opacity at 59%.

Note: Black background is applied below only to distinguish with the white color to be applied. Don’t go with that BG in actual coloring. (~_^)

 
^{[please click on the image to see larger picture and additional details]}

 

Step 4: Adding More Shades

 
We’ll try to apply additional shades. This is done to give more feeling-of-depth to the image.

The color is black again; blending mode at Soft Light. The opacity is at 25%. This value is set on purpose — we don’t want it to overly influence the primary shades, which were done at step (2).

 
^{[please click on the image to see larger picture and additional details]}

 

Step 5: Adding a Skin Tone

 
As in photography, human skin becomes more lively when it has a brown-to-reddish tone on it. So, in this step, we’ll add some brownish tone to the character’s skin.

NB: I chose brown here because I imagined a somewhat-dim lightsource. If you like to imagine bright, white lightsource (e.g. 12 PM sunlight), you may want to use pale red or low-opacity pink.

The color used here is brown, with hexa #61380E. Blending mode set to Soft Light, and opacity at 64%.

 
^{[please click on the image to see larger picture and additional details]}

 

And so…

 
Now our coloring project is done. The final result is as shown above, as the step (5) has been accomplished.

For the sake of comparison, below I have created an image which shows the ‘before’ and ‘after’ picture. The ‘before’ is on the left — while the ‘after’ is on the right side, respectively.

 
^{[please click on the image to see larger picture and additional details]}

 
Hmm, is it a far difference or not? Quite a feat in five steps, I guess.

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And, well… that’s it for this PS tutorial session in this weblog; it also concludes our tutorial session this time. Hope you like it.

See you again, and good-bye — until the end of April, perhaps. It should be time for this month’s session, though.

 

 
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Ps:

Suggestion, input, or questions can be inquired by commenting on this post. Feel free to do so.