Grayscale Shading and Non-Destructive Coloring Techniques for Photoshop Artists
In this series of tutorials, we'll be focusing on painting values in grayscale and how to preserve them when applying color to our grayscale illustration in Photoshop. Software required: Photoshop CS6.
What you'll learn
In this series of tutorials, we'll be focusing on painting values in grayscale and how to preserve them when applying color to our grayscale illustration in Photoshop. We'll begin this process by establishing the direction of our light source and adding some base values. From there we'll explore a layered workflow of developing our shadows and lighting and we'll continue with refining and adding details to our grayscale composition. Finally, we will walk through a process of painting color on our grayscale illustration using various blend modes, allowing us to preserve our values. As we will see, through this process, we can render a grayscale image to completion and paint color in a non destructive fashion. Applying these techniques to your own workflow will allow you to focus on values first and save some time when painting color. Software required: Photoshop CS6.
Table of contents
- Light Origin and Base Values 8m
- Painting Occlusion Shadows to Ground the Subject 7m
- Developing Lighting Scheme 8m
- Building Contrast with Grayscale Values 8m
- Refining and Detailing Grayscale Values 9m
- Final Grayscale Rendering 9m
- Applying Base Color 9m
- Coloring with Blend Modes 10m
- Final Visual Elements 8m
About the author
Kurt is a design tutor at Pluralsight. Ever since he could hold a crayon, Kurt has been in love with drawing. Apart from his dedication to training artists at Pluralsight, Kurt has an extensive background in illustration. He has previously worked for a book publisher, as well as Rhythm and Hues Studios. It was through his extensive industry background that Kurt learned the way of the Wacom, and that the Pen tool is truly mightier than the sword. Along with creating beautiful 2D illustrations,... more