Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:42 am Post subject: Changing grayscale to transparency
Hi. It's the first time I post in this forum. Sorry if I have some mistakes: I'm Spanish and my English isn't perfect at all.
Well, I'm coloring a comic with Photoshop. The first thing I did was copying the image in the PDF (it's an online comic) to Photoshop, and then I removed the white with the RGB channel in order to colorize it in layers placed behind.
The problem is, around the black lines there's still a bit of grey, which isn't transparent, and that can be somewhat annoying. For example, in a mountain, the black lines are the shape of the rocks, but around them there's some grey which doesn't match with the color of the mountain.
That's why I wanted to know if I could add some transparency according to the darkness/lightness. For example, if the color of a pixel is #FFFFFF (pure white), it should have a 0% opacity. If it's #000000 (pure black) it should have a 100%. If it's #7F7F7F (a middle tone of grey) the opacity should be around 50%.
And yes, Multiply, as well as all the other options work with everything.
If you're doing a bunch of comics, another tip is to modify>expand the selection a couple pixels to hide or "trap" the color under the black lines. Also, fill the color solid under sketchy black line areas.
It's a good idea if your stuff is printing on a press. (No holes or lines if the black is out of register or doesn't fit properly.)
The truth is, the comic is going to be printed, but in black and white. The comic is a parody of a japanese manga named Naruto, and the parody is named Raruto (it has a translation into English: look here). The comic was originally released for free through the Web in PDF format.
Now, the author wants to release the comic in paper grouped in "volumes" with some extras, and some pages in color; but he wants it not to be very expensive, so the pages in color will finally be "shadowed" pages (I don't know if it's the right word: it's the colors in B/W). Then he made a thread in his forum to ask which users would want to color it. I said I could color some pages, but the method I used before didn't look professional at all. That's why I asked.
You could ask: "Coloring to be in B/W? What kind of nonsense is that?". Well, look at the difference:
That animal which is falling is supposed to be a squirrel.
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