Paint mixing in Photoshop

[Datameister]

Hey all. Firstly, I'm new to this site, but from what I've seen so far, I'm going to learn a lot and really enjoy my time here.

I have a question for anyone who uses Photoshop for painting. I'm interested in exploring different ways to mix virtual "paints" in the program, and I'm wondering what techniques you guys like. Personally, I tend to use a blank area of the image as a sort of palette, layering colors as necessary, perhaps using a different blending mode if it seems appropriate. Then I sample colors from this palette, set my brush to airbrush mode with a low Flow value, and build up colors on the painting.

I'm curious to know what works for anyone else who paints in Photoshop. I usually start out with a very rough sketch (for composition, etc.), but I tend to use just a little too much saturation in these early stages, leading to a plasticky and rather unpleasant appearance. In the end, the colors often look much better because of the time I spend tweaking and reworking the problem areas.

For instance, compare an early sketch to my final version of this painting:

http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/2585/molokai21zx.jpg

http://img368.imageshack.us/img368/4467/molokai116tx.jpg

Granted, this was my first digital painting, and the sketch was intended more as a placeholder than a starting point--a habit I'm trying to break. I suppose I'm just looking for advice on better ways to pick colors initially. I want to start off with about the same colors as the end product.

[Datameister]

I was hoping to get some replies...:(

I think I've figured out part of the oversaturation problem I'm having (not with the painting I posted, but my other digital work). The midtones and highlights usually have reasonable saturation, but the shadow saturation is way too high. So that's one problem identified...now I can work on fixing it.

I'm also discovering that I like using both Hard Light and Soft Light for building up colors on my "palette." I've had many uses for both of these blending modes in my non-painting Photoshop projects, and now that functionality is extending to painting, as well.

I'd still like to hear about what techniques you guys use for choosing and/or mixing colors for your Photoshop paintings. I'm sure someone has some interesting input... :overhere:

[darkchild]

I'm still learning PS right now. But I mainly use a soft brush with low flow and low opacity to get the colors I need. May not be the best way but it has worked for me so far. Sometimes I use Multiply along with a low opacity to slowly layer a color tone until I have something I want. Occasionally to soften colors up I use the Overlay command. I'm definitely no expert:)

[Elwell]

Color is far from your biggest problem.

[Datameister]

Color is far from your biggest problem.

Was that directed toward darkchild or toward me? Either way, it seemed a bit uncalled for. If you'd like to give me constructive criticism, I'd love to hear it, and I'm sure darkchild would like the same for his work. But your post didn't really help anyone, no matter who it was directed toward.

Thanks for your input, darkchild. I'd still very much like to hear from a larger variety of members on this site... :)

EDIT: I took a look at your sketchbook, darkchild, and while I'm very impressed with your talent, that fixation with drawing nude and nearly-nude women could be problematic. Was that what you meant, Elwell?

[EricChadwick]

Yeah, that was pretty rude. Some people really let their egos get the best of them.

Anyhow, some tutorials that might help you...
http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials

[Bobby-X]

I like to use varying brush widths when staggering colours, i say staggering because there is no way in photoshop to actually waterdown or mix the colours, except the blur tool which is best employed once you have a background of gradiented colours in place that you want to blend softly together, i find the burn tool to be very useful too, the only problem with airbrushing it being that you end up with tubular markings if you burn too much and it's hard to blend it without changing tools but it's great for adding shadows and such if you slowli build up the midtonnes and use a horse hair brush to seethe the shadow onward.

[nightfend]

I use the ALT key (turns cursor into eyedropper) a lot while painting to sample surrounding colors that I like. That way the very art piece becomes a color pallette I can work from. You might give that a try.

[EricChadwick]

There's a nice color mixer plugin for 3ds max called CoolPicker (http://www.idigitalhouse.com/Tech/dh_tech.html) that I like to use. Wish I could find it for Photoshop!

Anyhow, it has a mixing pane where left-click paints with the current color, right-click smears painted colors together, and middle-click eyedrops a color. Very useful for mixing, a nice digital equivalent to a traditional painter's palette.

[EricChadwick]

FYI, I have some screenshots of this amazing tool in case you don't have 3ds max.

http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/images/coolpicker_mixer.JPG
http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/images/coolpicker_tris.JPG
http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/images/coolpicker_quad.JPG

I would _love_ to find something like this for Photoshop.

[darkchild]

Datameister: Thanks for hitting up my humble SB. The main reason I did so many female anatomy "studies" was because I told myself that I would fill an entire SB (in real life) with women. Now that I'm finished with that book I'm posting other subjects. Feel free to check again. Still on anatomy but not so many nudes now.

Elwell: If your comment was directed towards me (or any others) would you mind backing it up with some examples?

[Shatterdome]

Check out the sticky in this thread entitled "killing lesson" by killing people....lots of good info, but the best is the 3 movies he recorded of himself painting, is really cool to see....but mainly comes down to just using the brush tool at varying opacities and the eyedropper to grab his colors from the painting itself....a very cool process i'm drying to adapt into my own process....can't get used to using the num-pad though, and it changes flow when I prefer opacity to change (if you do stoke with opacity 100, flow 50 you will notice it's like a buncha little circles you can see, but if you go at opacity 50 flow 100 it's just a 50% transparent stroke of whatever color, with the circles barely to not noticeable) anyways, just go check it out ;)