How do I color comics pages?

[Joe Saxe]

Is there a tutorial for how to do this? I have a hand drawn ink drawing that I've scanned, and now want to color like a comic book using AP. I just started with AP and can't figure out how to do this.

 

I'd like to first change all the ink lines to 100% black, and the background to 100% white, then fill in between lines with several flat colors. Should be pretty simple, but I'm lost...

[toltec]

I don't think there is a tutorial but it is fairly simple. 

 

But first, what do you mean "change all the ink lines to 100% black". What are they at the moment ?

 

It would be very helpful if you could post a sample. It saves having to post lots of "what ifs"

[Alfred]

If the scanned image is currently greyscale but you want it to be black and white without any shades of grey, you can achieve that easily by applying a threshold adjustment. Add a new layer on top and set its blend mode to 'Multiply' so that the black lines show through.

 

[Mithferion]

There are several ways to do this.

 

• If you scan your lineart. You can open the file in Photo (I downloaded a random image from the somewhere).

 

• Go to Filters > Colors > Erase White Paper

 

• You will notice the transparency

 

• Add two more layers. One to fill with white and another one to start painting

 

If you think your line art is too greyish, just duplicate that layer and move the opacity.

Best regards!

[Joe Saxe]

Thanks, Mithferion!

Now how about selecting areas and coloring them? I'm trying to use the flood select tool and the selection brush tool - I was able to select areas before, but now I can't?! I want to use the color picker to use colors from other images, but can't seem to import these colors into my image...

 

I attached my image so you can see what I'm doing.

-Joe

FoF artwork 72 dpi.afphoto

[toltec]

First thing, the black is a bit grey (?) so I would suggest you apply a Levels adjustment layer to boost the black, but once adjusted "Merge" the layer.

 

The reason you can't use the fill tool (for colour) is because the image is greyscale. Go Document > Colour format > RGB

 

You can then use the flood fill tool. Very rough example below.

 

 

 

 

 

[Joe Saxe]

Yes! Thanks, toltec! I really appreciate the help.

-Joe

[Scungio]

Hey Joe,

I did a 10+ minute video showing how to color your art using Flats. If you go to YouTube and search for K Michael Russell he has a ton of video tutorials on this subject. He is a professional comic book colorist. He uses Photoshop and also Procreate on his iPad Pro but I have translated some of the techniques to show how to do it in Affinity Photo.

 

 

In the process of using ScreenFlow to record this video I forgot to save my progress while using Photo, and then I ended up having a crash (probably due to ScreenFlow) and lost a good bit of the work I did in the Affinity Photo file. Sorry about that, I will include the Flats file but it shows the work in a much earlier state. Enough to see what I was doing anyway, hope it all helps, if you have any questions just ask.

Flats.afphoto

[Mithferion]

Hi there. I will show you my approach. A friend who is a Pro taught this workflow to me.

 

• First I do as I told you before to have the line art with transparency. As you can see, I have duplicated the resulting layer several times to have a more solid line art.

 

• Select and Merge those layers, if you will. (Make invisible the original background image before the Merge operation)

 

• Delete the Layers used in the Merge operation. You will end with a single line art Layer

 

• You can use the Shapes to star coloring large areas, like in the following examples (later you might want to rasterize them, to make it all pixels, but that's up to you)

 

• Here I combines two Shapes

 

• Some adjustments using the Node Tool, after converting the rectangle to Curve

 

• Here is where Vector capabilities shine: make a rectangle then convert to Curves in order to adjust the Nodes

 

• It's starting to take form

 

• Now the tricky part. Here I used the Pixel Tool to do this (consider using the Click then Shift + Click technique to make straight lines in order to work faster)

 

• Why soing it that way with that Tool? Because later you can just fill the inner part with the Flood Fill Tool

 

• Do that on different Layers to do the flat colors part and here is the end result

 

So, there are several ways to go around this. The benefits from this is that you can treat eache part separately, so you have flexibility to work with the colors. I've attached the AFPHOTO file.

Best regards!

 

FoF artwork 72 dpi MITH.afphoto

[Mithferion]

On of the benefits of working th Pixels like that is that you can easily change the colors with no effort, using the Flood Fill Tool.

[Alfred]

24 minutes ago, Mithferion said:

On of the benefits of working th Pixels like that is that you can easily change the colors with no effort, using the Flood Fill Tool.

 

Going by the colour of her face, I don't think she should be eating that! 

[Mithferion]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

 

Going by the colour of her face, I don't think she should be eating that! 

Maybe that's the cure!

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, Mithferion said:

Maybe that's the cure!

 

Ah, good point! I hadn't thought of that!!

 

[Joe Saxe]

You guys are awesome. Thanks for all this help! Toltec's solution for making the original line art blacker seems best, because when I duplicate layers to darken it, I also get an undesirable splotchy gray in the white background area. I think the "erase white paper" option retains some very light grays from the original paper I did the drawing on.

 

BUT, because I'm such an amateur, I'm still stumped on one fundamental issue: 

 

After darkening my line art, I create new layers for my color, and then I can't use the flood selection tool when that layer is selected. The flood selection tool only seems to work on the layer with the original line art... which makes sense, because the new layer is empty and has nothing in it? But I would like to create different layers for different colors, and text, so that I can go back later and make changes.

 

What am I not getting?! How do I create a new layer that will just have, say, the color of the woman's skin on it, and nothing else?

 

-Joe

[toltec]

After you select an area (original line art layer !), press Control + J. That will duplicate the selected area onto a new layer.

 

Go, Edit > Fill and fill it with the colour of your choice.

 

Sorted 

[Alfred]

27 minutes ago, Joe Saxe said:

How do I create a new layer that will just have, say, the color of the woman's skin on it, and nothing else?

 

You can use the Flood Select Tool ('magic wand') to select the white or transparent areas without the surrounding black lines; to select only one such area at a time, go to the Context toolbar and make sure that the 'Contiguous' checkbox is checked. You can then duplicate the selected region and flood-fill it with your chosen colour.

 

[Joe Saxe]

Aaaaahhh. Thanks! I had tried this, but I was filling the color BEFORE I pressed command J, so the color was on the original line art layer, too. 

[Mithferion]

On 6/12/2017 at 11:54 AM, Joe Saxe said:

when I duplicate layers to darken it, I also get an undesirable splotchy gray in the white background area. I think the "erase white paper" option retains some very light grays from the original paper I did the drawing on.

YEah, that's what happens with scanned images from real media lineart. You can use a mix of the techniques explained here to achieve the desired result.

 

On 6/12/2017 at 11:54 AM, Joe Saxe said:

After darkening my line art, I create new layers for my color, and then I can't use the flood selection tool when that layer is selected. The flood selection tool only seems to work on the layer with the original line art... which makes sense, because the new layer is empty and has nothing in it? But I would like to create different layers for different colors, and text, so that I can go back later and make changes.

If you create and select a new Layer, the Flood Fill Tool will color the entire Layer.

 

Now, if you have a Layer where you made a circle using the Pixel Tool like the blue one in the following screenshot, when you use the Flood Fill Tool, it will paint that inner area only. Just make sure that the correct Layer is selected. I recomend doing it this way so that you have flat colors that allow you more flexibility..

 

Best regards!

 

[Mithferion]

The advantage of working the colors below the line art Layer is that you can avoid this.

 

And instead you will have this.

 

Best regards!

 

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Mithferion said:

The advantage of working the colors below the line art Layer is that you can avoid this.

 

The important thing is to put the colour on a separate layer. It doesn’t matter whether you put the colours below the line art (with the blend mode set to ‘Normal’) or above (with the blend mode set to ‘Multiply’).

[Affinity-Inspiration]

On 12/6/2017 at 2:20 PM, Mithferion said:

Hi there. I will show you my approach. A friend who is a Pro taught this workflow to me.

 

• First I do as I told you before to have the line art with transparency. As you can see, I have duplicated the resulting layer several times to have a more solid line art.

 

• Select and Merge those layers, if you will. (Make invisible the original background image before the Merge operation)

 

• Delete the Layers used in the Merge operation. You will end with a single line art Layer

 

• You can use the Shapes to star coloring large areas, like in the following examples (later you might want to rasterize them, to make it all pixels, but that's up to you)

 

• Here I combines two Shapes

 

• Some adjustments using the Node Tool, after converting the rectangle to Curve

 

• Here is where Vector capabilities shine: make a rectangle then convert to Curves in order to adjust the Nodes

 

• It's starting to take form

 

• Now the tricky part. Here I used the Pixel Tool to do this (consider using the Click then Shift + Click technique to make straight lines in order to work faster)

 

• Why soing it that way with that Tool? Because later you can just fill the inner part with the Flood Fill Tool

 

• Do that on different Layers to do the flat colors part and here is the end result

 

So, there are several ways to go around this. The benefits from this is that you can treat eache part separately, so you have flexibility to work with the colors. I've attached the AFPHOTO file.

Best regards!

 

FoF artwork 72 dpi MITH.afphoto 7.48 MB · 30 downloads

This is a really good little tutorial, that I have just found, and it's very handy. I've been putting off learning Colouring for ages now, and I really want to develop my Comic colouring skills on Affinity. I'm still torn between Designer and Photo, but in either case Colouring is just so different digitally than by hand.

I really appreciate the time you took to do this tutorial for the original poster, and I thank you for doing it also. It's been a long time since you did this, but it's still good and works today.