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malagraphic2013-09-11 08:48 pm
corinthian) wrote in malagraphic2013-09-11 08:48 pm
Entry tags:
Quick tips & tricks!
AS A DISCLAIMER MOST OF THIS I FOUND THROUGH TRIAL AND ERROR AND MAY BE INCORRECT OR MY TERMINOLOGY IS BAD. I'M SORRY.
=> 
SATURATION
Generally "make the colors stronger" -- the major drawback to this is that it tends to make the images look very orange/red/yellow.
I find that I can usually push it up to +20 ok on my PS (I have CS6! But on CS5 and lower I couldn't really bump it more than 5-10 so it may . . . vary . . . it definitely varies per image!)
But see how it's kind of. . . weirdly STRONG YELLOW? That's one of the consequences of saturation. You can correct this with curves or color balances sometimes. I generally don't use saturation unless I have smaller 'make it brighter' tweaks I want to do.
BRIGHTNESS
Generally makes things lighter -- the major drawback to this is that it ends to make the images look washed out.
I prefer to bump brightness a little and then bump contrast up a little to try and keep them even. I use this only for very very small tweaks.
LEVELS
ARE MAGIC. If you clean manga you probably already use them but you can use them in anime images as well! Basically the black arrow when dragged right makes the darks darker and the white arrow when dragged left makes the lights lighter.
I use levels a lot in deck making. It's a really good way to imitate the saturation boost (or brightness boost) without losing as much color. To me, anyway.
SOFTLIGHT
This is something I use in almost every colored manga image but it works really well on anime too.
Select the image (ctrl+a) and then paste it (ctrl+v) as a new layer. Then go over to the layer selection and change it to soft light.
Adjust opacity if needed and then flatten the image. I find this often works for dull/washed out/older anime in giving them a little pop and vibrance.
It's often trial and error and just fiddling with any of these options that yield the best result! For the image on top I used soft light and levels to make it how it was. But you could get there a variety of ways!
CURVES
Basically they also adjust the intensity and lightness of colors.
By pulling a point of the curve up to the left it generally gets lighter.
By pulling a point of the curve down to the right it generally gets darker.
Pulling different points in different directions yield different results!
I use curves for different things, but tbh I mostly use them for trial and error and in terms of the RGB curve (which is shown above! Influencing all the color values in a given image) pretty rarely.
HOWEVER it's pretty fab if we have things lliiiikkkeeee . . .
Yuetsu no Basement. Also known as the Basement of All Lighting Evils.
So we can go and just select the R CURVE (for red!) and tug it downward, getting rid of some of that HELLO THIS BASEMENT IS COVERED IN THE WARM RED GLOW OF BASTARDS.
Wow this image is still really dark! Luckily we can do the same thing we did with SOFT LIGHT only use SCREEN this time which will make the image a lot lighter.
Flatten, tweak the levels (a little more dark, a little more light) and then pop the saturation (about 5-7 notches up).
(You can continue to tweak an image with all the techniques above into oblivion XD just stop when you start feeling too frustrate or it looks moderately what you want it to look like . . . haha. . . )
COLOR BALANCE
We can also achieve the same de-redding effect with color balance, tbh!
Tada. Color balance works on a scale so the less red it is the more cyan it is etc.
Color balance is often useful and less finicky than curves! However because curves lets you adjust not just the overall redness but also different points on the curve of redness . . . curves is often more versatile overall! (But! Color balance is easier to use, so it's really a YMMV sort of thing).
SCREEN+SOFT LIGHT/SCREEN/WHATEVER ELSE
As I mentioned above screen will help make things lighter! Often if you just use a screen layer at 100% it will be WAAAYYY TOO BRIGHT and/or lose a lot of the blacks/dark tones. You can compensate by lowering the opacity on the screen layer or bumping with levels after you merge the image, etc or you can do some other things.
![](https://i.imgur.com/eiSwGrt.png")
Wow what a gross image.
So by selecting the image, copying it as a new layer and setting the new layer (LAYER2) as screen. And then pasting another layer and setting that layer (LAYER3) to soft light I've been able to lighten the image and then NOT lose as many of the blacks and dark tones! Then you have to play around with opacity and other adjustments.
I moved the soft light saturation down a little, merged, bumped saturation about 7 points, did another round of screen/soft light layers both at really low opacity, resized and sharpened a little. It's still not very good, but it's A LOT better than the original image.
But he looks pretty washed out.
So here I've put a color burn layer with skintone over his skin!
Added a really low opacity background color (erasing over where the character is, so just the background has the color on it).
And gently bumped the saturation.
This makes him stand out from the background and look less washed out.
OBVIOUSLY ALL OF THESE STEPS ARE "you have to tweak and finagle pretty heavily" since no image is going to obey the same rules!
I often find the low opacity background trick works well for characters who stand in front of SUPER BRIGHT backgrounds or characters who blend into the background for whatever reason.
SHARPENING
When sharpening I never use sharpen! I always use smart sharpen which looks like this:
This lets you control how much you sharpen and keeps things from being TOO SHARP.
ADJUSTMENT LAYERS
ARE COOL. AND LET YOU DO THINGS LIKE TWEAK LEVELS BUT FOR ONLY A SMALL PART OF THE IMAGE DEPENDING. Also make it so you don't have to flatten/merge layers just to add some levels or other things to it.
I hope you found this helpful!
=> SATURATION
Generally "make the colors stronger" -- the major drawback to this is that it tends to make the images look very orange/red/yellow.
I find that I can usually push it up to +20 ok on my PS (I have CS6! But on CS5 and lower I couldn't really bump it more than 5-10 so it may . . . vary . . . it definitely varies per image!)
But see how it's kind of. . . weirdly STRONG YELLOW? That's one of the consequences of saturation. You can correct this with curves or color balances sometimes. I generally don't use saturation unless I have smaller 'make it brighter' tweaks I want to do.
BRIGHTNESS
Generally makes things lighter -- the major drawback to this is that it ends to make the images look washed out.
I prefer to bump brightness a little and then bump contrast up a little to try and keep them even. I use this only for very very small tweaks.
LEVELS
ARE MAGIC. If you clean manga you probably already use them but you can use them in anime images as well! Basically the black arrow when dragged right makes the darks darker and the white arrow when dragged left makes the lights lighter.
I use levels a lot in deck making. It's a really good way to imitate the saturation boost (or brightness boost) without losing as much color. To me, anyway.
SOFTLIGHT
This is something I use in almost every colored manga image but it works really well on anime too.
Select the image (ctrl+a) and then paste it (ctrl+v) as a new layer. Then go over to the layer selection and change it to soft light.
Adjust opacity if needed and then flatten the image. I find this often works for dull/washed out/older anime in giving them a little pop and vibrance.
It's often trial and error and just fiddling with any of these options that yield the best result! For the image on top I used soft light and levels to make it how it was. But you could get there a variety of ways!
CURVES
Basically they also adjust the intensity and lightness of colors.
By pulling a point of the curve up to the left it generally gets lighter.
By pulling a point of the curve down to the right it generally gets darker.
Pulling different points in different directions yield different results!
I use curves for different things, but tbh I mostly use them for trial and error and in terms of the RGB curve (which is shown above! Influencing all the color values in a given image) pretty rarely.
HOWEVER it's pretty fab if we have things lliiiikkkeeee . . .
Yuetsu no Basement. Also known as the Basement of All Lighting Evils.
So we can go and just select the R CURVE (for red!) and tug it downward, getting rid of some of that HELLO THIS BASEMENT IS COVERED IN THE WARM RED GLOW OF BASTARDS.
Wow this image is still really dark! Luckily we can do the same thing we did with SOFT LIGHT only use SCREEN this time which will make the image a lot lighter.
Flatten, tweak the levels (a little more dark, a little more light) and then pop the saturation (about 5-7 notches up).
(You can continue to tweak an image with all the techniques above into oblivion XD just stop when you start feeling too frustrate or it looks moderately what you want it to look like . . . haha. . . )
COLOR BALANCE
We can also achieve the same de-redding effect with color balance, tbh!
Tada. Color balance works on a scale so the less red it is the more cyan it is etc.
Color balance is often useful and less finicky than curves! However because curves lets you adjust not just the overall redness but also different points on the curve of redness . . . curves is often more versatile overall! (But! Color balance is easier to use, so it's really a YMMV sort of thing).
SCREEN+SOFT LIGHT/SCREEN/WHATEVER ELSE
As I mentioned above screen will help make things lighter! Often if you just use a screen layer at 100% it will be WAAAYYY TOO BRIGHT and/or lose a lot of the blacks/dark tones. You can compensate by lowering the opacity on the screen layer or bumping with levels after you merge the image, etc or you can do some other things.
Wow what a gross image.
So by selecting the image, copying it as a new layer and setting the new layer (LAYER2) as screen. And then pasting another layer and setting that layer (LAYER3) to soft light I've been able to lighten the image and then NOT lose as many of the blacks and dark tones! Then you have to play around with opacity and other adjustments.
I moved the soft light saturation down a little, merged, bumped saturation about 7 points, did another round of screen/soft light layers both at really low opacity, resized and sharpened a little. It's still not very good, but it's A LOT better than the original image.
But he looks pretty washed out.
So here I've put a color burn layer with skintone over his skin!
Added a really low opacity background color (erasing over where the character is, so just the background has the color on it).
And gently bumped the saturation.
This makes him stand out from the background and look less washed out.
OBVIOUSLY ALL OF THESE STEPS ARE "you have to tweak and finagle pretty heavily" since no image is going to obey the same rules!
I often find the low opacity background trick works well for characters who stand in front of SUPER BRIGHT backgrounds or characters who blend into the background for whatever reason.
SHARPENING
When sharpening I never use sharpen! I always use smart sharpen which looks like this:
This lets you control how much you sharpen and keeps things from being TOO SHARP.
ADJUSTMENT LAYERS
ARE COOL. AND LET YOU DO THINGS LIKE TWEAK LEVELS BUT FOR ONLY A SMALL PART OF THE IMAGE DEPENDING. Also make it so you don't have to flatten/merge layers just to add some levels or other things to it.
I hope you found this helpful!