Monday 28 December 2009

Sketch-Tinting Tricks with Photoshop


When I have a bit of time, I sometimes play with my pencil sketches in Photoshop. I have recently been tinting my sketches from the Manchester train:


In the past, people have asked how this is done. It's easy if you are at least a little familiar with Photoshop. Why not find yourself a drawing and have a go...


1: Make sure your sketch is RGB, not greyscale, then create a new layer above the drawing.

2: Choose 2 quite different colours. For the sketch above, I chose these:

3: Use Gradient Fill to create a colour blend on the new layer:


4: In your Layers Palette, change the light filter setting for the new layer (where it says Normal): set it instead to Color.

And there you go: Bob's your uncle! (whoever Bob is...).

For a more subtle tinting, that also won't pick up so much of the paper's 'background noise', try setting the light filter to Soft Light instead:

It's fun to try out the various filters when you're playing, as unexpected things can happen. Here are a couple of other immediate effects created by simply setting the filter to Screen and Linear Light:


Also, when I use wording on my sketches, I quite like to colour it in. For this I create another new layer to draw my colour on, and set the light filter to Multiply. I generally try out tints of the colours already used.


I think I like the third one best, created simply by changing the layer order, so that the new coloured wording was dragged between the other two. So here's my final piece:

9 comments:

Jill said...

Thnaks for the info Lynne

Lisa Graves said...

Brilliant!!! thank you for sharing this information. I'm going to try this out!

Robyn Sinclair said...

I like this very much. Thank you. I found you through Rose's blog. I would love to be able to do more with my Photoshop.

Lisa Graves said...

Had to come back and thank you again... I tried it and it worked wonderfully. What a difference this makes!!

Lynne the Pencil said...

Excellent news Lisa - glad it worked!

Laura Frankstone said...

Great info, Lynne! I am such a fan of your work, tinted or un.

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thanks Laureline!

M J Muir said...

Thanks so much for sharing this little trick. I am having so much fun with it. So easy!

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