separating colors in photoshop???

anyone know of a better way to do this than i am using?

i'm currently using the select color range option with sampled colors or the grey scale thing and then making a new layer and pasting onto it, then i print it out. is there a better way?

btw: i'm working with a greyscale currently, but i'd like to know how to do it with either greyscale or color. don't know if there are two different techniques or not.

any help would be appreciated.

I've never found an easy way of doing it..I've done it just like yourself for many moons..

Are you talking about color shading or picking out individual color pallettes? I just read an essay on how the colorist from the comic book "Powers" uses Photoshop to do his work so maybe I can be of some help.

cluetwo: i'm speaking of separating the colors into different layers. right now, i'm trying to get this one stencil cut out, it's a four layer. but i need the greys on individual layers.

fementor: the shading.

i'm still googling, so if i find something, i'll post it here

i found this on a forum, but i already knew about it (i admit, i had forgotten, though)

still no help in separating a greyscale.

"You can go under channels and split the graphic. That will break down the picture in its appropriate plates (C,M,Y,K) or (R,G,B). You could convert the image to a monotone and pick a color, or a duotone and pick two colors. You have to convert to grayscale before monotone or duotone. The broken plates will be in grayscale, but I believe if you print them they will only print their appropriate color."

Image > Adjustments > Posterize

Tends to work nicely with certain images. You could always select a color range and then posterize. Or outline certain areas (shadows) with the polygon lasso and then run the 'select color range'.... different shit works. I've found no perfect method.

yeah, i did posterize it so it kinda separates into different colors, but i want indivdual files for the layers.

anyway, i think i figured it out. i just posterized into 3 colors instead of four so i could do the "select color range" thing all proper llike.

thanks for all the help and reassurance, though.

it is really reassuring to know that there isn't one perfect technique for doing this. i was starting to think i was being a dumbass about it and there was some method i wasn't trying.

i'm still searching, though,

This is from the back of the 4th Powers trade, where Peter Pantazis goes into detail about how he colors in the black and white pages of Powers in Photoshop. What he is working off of is a scanned image of the black and white inked art:

"Finally, the coloring begins, I set each page up with what we call colorist call channels.....

RGB/RED/GREEN/BLUE/ and LINE ART. That last one is the key, it acts like an overlay, that....holds all the art...while I see the art, I am actually working underneath it, not touching a thing yet...I set up each page with what is called "FLATS", and that is a basic color layed down, to seperate skin from clothing, background from foreground, and all imbetween......it can be tedious at times...

...when the setup is complete, I can finally get down to rendering each page....."

On special effects:

"There are basically two popular ways of acheiving these effects, the "normal" way and the "layers" way (which I prefer) actually adds another layer on top of the art, where I can do any type of effect.....and easily retouch it."

Hope that helps you because I had to type that whole thing out...if you want a good idea what he is talking about, take a look at one of the Powers trades or issues. The whole coloring process is done in photoshop and it looks awesome.

that's actually alot of help. thanks, fermentor.

want a gmail account?

Haha, no thanks man, iloveboxcars already got me one and I have three hotmail accounts to go with it.

casek..

i've found that for stencils, the easiest and most time consuming way is to just print out the image as many times as there is layers. that way you can cut each layer out and you actually have more control over the final image. i now this doesn't answer any photoshop questions, but even if you work it out perfectly on the computer, when you cut it you're going to see a way you could have cut it better. although i don't know what your image looks like(post it up if its not top secret). make a registration mark for all the colors and cut cut cut.. sorry if this doesn't make sense but it works.. it actually takes more manual work to make stencils work. and i would like to see it.

how many people actually did the postcard project 2? i totally flaked out but i still have the addresses.. bring that shit back.. im going crazy tonight

edited because i don't have a gmail account...

edited again becaus i forgot to ask fermentor what the book he was reading was called. i've read some powers but is it a diffent book that explains color choices or what?

holler

can't help you casek...but maybe you can help me. i remeber you answering some of my audio questions before. i am recording onto my cpu into soundforge 7 and it just stops recording at random times. do you know what could be causing this? anybody? so annoying... just finished a mix....super happy with it, then realize it stopped short on sf7. fucker!!!

Originally posted by nomadawhat

can't help you casek...but maybe you can help me. i remeber you answering some of my audio questions before. i am recording onto my cpu into soundforge 7 and it just stops recording at random times. do you know what could be causing this? anybody? so annoying... just finished a mix....super happy with it, then realize it stopped short on sf7. fucker!!!

It may have something to do with the latency settings, but I doubt it. I've never dicked with Soundforge... but you can get Cakewalk Sonar Producer's Edition 3 off me if you have Soulseek.

nomadawhat, might have something to do with not having enough RAM or HD space. Could be a bug in the program. Maybe not enough RAM alloted to SF7 in the preferences? Other than that I can't help you, I use CoolEdit.

jbrsh: yeah, that makes alot of sense, actually. i'll post this stencil as soon as i'm done with it. it's not really top secret, just a flick of some movie star i found to be kinda cool. i did the test sprays today and it looks "ok" but i need to clean it up.

what i ended up doing was the old method i used of selecting color ranges. fucking had to convert to a three tone, but i fucked up the third layer while cutting. also saw some places on the stencil that need to be cleaned up a bit.

i guess this is what i get for moving on from standard one layer stencils to multiple layers, huh? haha. like everything, practice makes perfect....

thanks for the insight, man. any knowledge is helpful as far as i'm concerned. bouncing ideas around helps alot with creativity, etc., too.

nomdad: ok, have you got enough HD space? a small hard drive can cause it to do shit like that. i actually have sf7 and use it, but i don't dj and record into it, most mixes are via acid, fruityloops, etc. i'll try and replicate your problem later. what i'm thinking is that you might want to check free space, ram, try a defrag...etc.

try this, too: open up your command prompt (accessories/command prompt), now, without closing it, hit ctrl-alt-del, then on the command prompt type this:

del index.dat /s

it cleans up your indexes of stored garbage on the computer. kinda useful. it may free up some memory, too. also, find system mechanic on kazaa. it has a great little resource for freeing up ram and defragging it, too.

lots of things you can do...

ok, here are two good links

http://www.soniccontrol.com/tech/midi/arti...wtweaking.shtml

http://www.funklogic.com/pcaudio.htm

i knew i had typed too much. enough time for two people to reply to your question...haha. oh, well.