Fic Illustration from "Disaster..." by ladybracknell

[fthpfthpfthp]

Have been hard at work on light and shadow. This attempt, inspired by the first chapter of the exceptionally fine Remus fic "Disaster: See Also, Remus J Lupin, Love-Life Of" by the incomparable ladybracknell, is just about right.

Comments

[lady_bracknell]

Oh, that's awesome! I just want to run in there and give him a big hug :D. I love it - you've really captured the sense of despair I imagine him having at points.

I'm not sure I can help from an artistic point of view, but have you tried using different blend modes for layers, rather than straight opacities? Sometimes if I want a vivid colour when I'm working with something that'll end up CMYK (for posters and the like), I'll darken or multiply the layer, and then put a curve on it to put the light back where I want it. I've no idea if that's even applicable for art, though, lol.

[fthpfthpfthp]

Whew! So glad you like it. My thanks to you for the excellent read!

Thank you for the tip. You'll have to forgive me for being a pathetic newbie with photoshop.

The shadow and light layers are both on "layer attributes: multiply" is that what you mean by "multiply the layer"? Or... I saw a tutorial once in which a layer was copied several times and then overlay-ed-ish (Gee, I need a whole new vocabulary to talk about this) over the original layer.

I just googled curves. Yikes! Intimidating! I have a lot of reading to do now but that seems like it might be helpful for adjusting the colors to get a better result with the lower res files.

When you prepare an image for (CMYK) printing and make all these adjustments, does it still look right in photoshop or are the colors way off and you have to guess if it'll work in print? Or is the image just more vibrant in photoshop?

[lady_bracknell]

Oh, either, lol. This is where it gets confusing, I think - I normally use the multiply blend mode for when I'm merging two images together (like in this icon) to kind of sink one into the other (sometimes it really does give them a feeling of being drawn, but it also makes the stronger colours pop out), although something else I do quite a lot of is make multiple copies of an image and apply different effects to each layer and then rub out the bits I don't want on each one. The benefit of that is then that you can put specific effects on specific layers (although I'm an adjustment layer junkie and most of my .psds are frighteningly huge, lol).

Some people are really anti-curves, but I love them because you can really put the light exactly where you want it, without bleaching out or darkening the rest of the image.

When you prepare an image for (CMYK) printing and make all these adjustments, does it still look right in photoshop or are the colors way off and you have to guess if it'll work in print? Or is the image just more vibrant

[fthpfthpfthp]

Good idea: comparing the two side-by-side (Why didn't I think of that?) so you can see the differences as you apply changes. Thanks for the tips! I'll try this stuff on my next project.