Hi fellas. Say you got this kick ass image of Ultra Magnus - BUT - you want to alter it into Diaclone version. What a good method? thank you.
Thanks for the replies. Yeah, Galvatron I know Photoshop would be the tool to use but I wanting to if there was any well known method to do besides just stacking layers, with different tones, hues, diffusions, partial inversions, and blending on top of each other.
Ideally, the preference would be to have the lineart devoid of colors. Altering the colors adds a step to the process you mention here. That said, that's typically the industry standard of coloring illustrations such as these.
a good software to use for photo editing is gimp GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program its free and easy to use.
process, could you discuss your, um process for how you handled this illustration (since the thread topic sort of veers that way)? Be sure to check out our Fan Art Tutorials on Photoshop and GIMP
Gladly. I'll try to make this as descriptive as possible without turning it into a yawn fest. If we don't already have a tutorial in the resources section, I can do a more in-depth write up with graphic support. I use Photoshop CS3, but the technique is probably the same across different versions, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same in other programs. The concept is simple, but the execution is made difficult by the medium. Digital images, especially compressed formats like JPEGs, are notorious for having lots of artifacts. For instance, take the Ultra Magnus image above -- certain parts may appear to be solid colors, but there are actually a myriad of different colored pixels in there. Dozens, if not hundreds, of blues, reds and greys. Thus, the trick to replacing colors is to work with ranges of colors. The larger the range, the more consistently and convincingly you'll be able to swap colors. There are two methods that I use, depending on the state of the image, and what I'm trying to accomplish. 1. The simple method: this works well for images where you have a 1:1 between the stock image and your desired product, i.e., if you had a typical Optimus Prime image, and instead of red and blue, you wanted to make him yellow and blue. This is a two step process: isolate the reds, then change the color. In Photoshop, I typically isolate regions using the Polygonal Lasso tool, manually outlining areas. The color replacement can be done using the Hue/Saturation editor. This allows you to affect the entire selection area uniformly. It won't give you the best control, but you'll get fast results. 2. The complicated method: I seem to do this more, since recolors are usually never simple 1:1 color swaps, and I prefer to have more control over my colors and effects. This method involves stripping away all color data initially, by completely desaturating the image. Then I manually select regions using the Lasso tool as above, copying them to new layers, and overlaying colors. This preserves the shading and linework, like the ink in comic books, while giving you the flexibility of adding any color beneath it. Every different color usually ends up on individual layers, so at the end, it's like working with a collage. This is the method I used to recolor Ultra Magnus, since the Diaclone deco has something of an "overalls" layout, versus Ultra Magnus' more even distribution of light blue. Bleh, wordy.
Yeah, that's great, bud! Certainly, if you'd like to come back and create more of a resource, I can put it in Tutorials as well. We're definitely in shorter supply of Fan Art tutorials than Customs!
