Colour variations

When the black and white version of the illustration is pretty far along I’ll start to add colour in Photoshop, confident that I can do this without getting lost in the process. I begin by making sure my file is in RGB mode, then use the Selective Color window to adjust the white, neutral and black values of the image. The colour options won’t do anything at this point because there’s no colour in the piece yet, but it does set up a subtle tri-tone of colour, and is a cool or warm foundation for your image’s colour palette.

You can now repeat this process as many times as you like. You’ll be able to use some of the colour sliders because now there’s some colour in the image. This will only take you so far with colour, and you’re still going to have to make some colour decisions, so at this stage I add a Color layer and paint colour on top of the tri-tone layer. This layer can be adjusted in the same manner as you did with the initial greyscale layer with the Selective Color window. I might add another Color layer to carry out some more colour experiments, or a Multiply layer to add some colour and also to darken certain areas.