I use a minimum of four for a basic cel-shaded pic (background colour/palette/lighting indicators, base colour, shading, lineart), but usually more, expecially if i'm putting special effects or glowing bits in. More still if there's a full background. The maximum i've used on a drawing is eleven or twelve- although it'd probably work out more if I didn't merge some minor layers as I go along. Any more than that and the PC starts slowing down and I risk photoshop crashing. x.x Like Sunstorm said, I use layers mainly to prevent irreperable errors... if I got the shading wrong and it was all on a single layer I'd have to start over, but if the shading and colouring were on different layers it would be much easier. And you can also change the opacity of the shadows and highlights, which comes in handy.
I use different layers for different colors and occasionally the lineart. Although seeing as my pictures are never that detailed it makes around 20 layers maximum, usually less than 10.
Layers eh... well, given that I really only make sprite comics, I'm not sure if my statement is valid, but layers I use tend to depend on a number of variables.
The formula is this:
c(a + 2b)
Where a is the number of characters appearing per panel, b is the number of text boxes per panel AND number of speech bubbles(text boxes and speech bubbles operate on seperate layers but always end up being the exact same number of components), and c is the number of panels. Even then it isn't always exact, because of, say, extra characters showing up and panels where akwards silences are a neccessity. Lately though it comes to around 23 layers, but I like keeping things clean so I usually flatten layers as I go along. In that case, the most number of layers I usually have at a time is 5.
Haven't done digital painting enough to use layers though. So far I only use one layer when CGing. Maybe that's why everything I color looks like crap...
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Like Sunstorm said, I use layers mainly to prevent irreperable errors... if I got the shading wrong and it was all on a single layer I'd have to start over, but if the shading and colouring were on different layers it would be much easier. And you can also change the opacity of the shadows and highlights, which comes in handy.
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The formula is this:
c(a + 2b)
Where a is the number of characters appearing per panel, b is the number of text boxes per panel AND number of speech bubbles(text boxes and speech bubbles operate on seperate layers but always end up being the exact same number of components), and c is the number of panels. Even then it isn't always exact, because of, say, extra characters showing up and panels where akwards silences are a neccessity. Lately though it comes to around 23 layers, but I like keeping things clean so I usually flatten layers as I go along. In that case, the most number of layers I usually have at a time is 5.
Haven't done digital painting enough to use layers though. So far I only use one layer when CGing. Maybe that's why everything I color looks like crap...
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