Learn Digital Color with Photoshop

Are you looking to learn the art of comic book coloring and learn the secrets, tips, and tricks that can make coloring comics a fun hobby, a part­-time job, or maybe even a career? This beginner course is great place to start!

This course will teach you the basics of comic book coloring with Photoshop – setting up your tools, flatting, rendering, & special effects.

What is a colorist? After the penciller completes the line­art (and many times an inker finishes the pencils with ink), the art is passed to the colorist (or “color artist” as it’s sometimes called). Colorists, like all comic book creators, can work from anywhere in the world. I’ve worked with artists and writers the world over right from my home office. The Internet makes it easy to connect with collaborators worldwide.

Colorists are the cinematographers of the comic book world. The pencillers are the directors ­­setting up shots, creating the camera angles, shooting the action. Colorists are lighting the scenes, setting the final look of the page, and helping to move the story along with color.

View free videos of this course here

Course materials will include:

• Black and white line art from professional comic book penciller Max Dunbar to color along with the lecture videos.

• Downloadable Photoshop presets (version CS6 or CC only)
  • Color profiles to ensure proper color reproduction for web and print use.
  • Photoshop Actions to automate certain aspects of the coloring process.
  • Color swatches: A palette of preset colors ­­exactly as the instructor uses them for his published work.

• 3.5 hours of instructional videos featuring real-time coloring by professional comic book colorist K Michael Russell

By the end of this course, you’ll have learned the skills required to use Photoshop as a tool to create stunning colored comic book pages, manga, web-comics, or comic strips.

The instructor, K. Michael Russell, is a colorist currently working for Image Comics & Top Cow.

Note that this course was recorded in 2014 and could be considered “version 1.0” of my coloring courses. My course “A Pro’s Guide to Digital Comic Book Coloring” is version 2.0.