Digital coloring technique: Channels or layers?

[Mr. Personality]

Hola,

I got a 6x8 Wacom today and started toying around with the included trial version of Painter 8. Sweet.

Then I tried coloring some line art using PS Elements 2 and the layers method. However, I've read about using channels instead.

My question is: for coloring line art (comic/manga style stuff) are you using layers or channels and can you point me to some good tutorials?

I've read the Pens & Pixels coloring tutorial, but to be honest, he loses me in a few places. I'm fairly proficient with PS, but not very experienced with channels. Most of my previous PS work has been photography related and it's pretty different than coloring line art.

Thanks for any tips you guys might have.

[Jin]

Hi,

The easiest way to prepare black and white line art for coloring is to lift the line art to a Layer and set the Composite Method to Gel. This makes the white background appear transparent so you can see through it when painting on the Canvas or Layers below.

To lift the line art to a Layer, use Ctrl/Command+A to select the entire Canvas (your line art), then using the Layer Adjuster tool (click the F key), click inside the selection. Now your line art is on Layer 1.

Double click the line art Layer, named Layer 1, to open the Layer Attributes dialog box and rename it something like Line Art Layer.

Lock the Line Art Layer so it can't be accidentally moved or altered in any way while you're coloring. To do this, highlight the Line Art Layer in the Layers list and at the top of the Layers palette, click the Lock icon. In pre Painter 8 versions, click the Lock icon to the left of the Layer name.

Paint on the Canvas, or Layers dragged down the Layers list below the line art Layer, or paint on both.