The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

100 The Professional Photoshop Book

TONE AND COLOUR

ESTABLISH CORRECT VALUES AND RICH COLOUR AS A

BASE FOR TEXTURES AND PHOTO OVERLAYS

In the next phase of your piece you will focus on

establishing greyscale values and then

overlaying colour. As a general rule, you should

never paint in pure black or pure white. These

values should only be used when illustrating the

brightest part of the Sun, its reflection, or the

black of space. Values and tones should also be

defined and detailed like your line art. First,

research photographer Ansel Adams and

painter Thomas Moran’s work, and study the

values in their work. Both were experts in

representing aerial, or atmospheric perspective,

and a wide range of complementary tones.

When working on your piece, remember to have

darker, warmer colours and values in the

foreground and lighter, cooler ones in the

background. Since the city in this tutorial will

incorporate a lot of glass and reflect tones from

the sky and the surrounding landscape, you’ll

also want to research reflective light.

01

ESTABLISH GREYSCALE GRADIENT

Let’s start off with some aerial perspective.

Create a new layer, title it ‘Value’, then tap (G) for

your Gradient tool. For your left colour enter hex #

555555 and for the right enter hex # d7d7d7. Drag

your gradient out from the bottom right corner to

the tip of the right building, and change the layer

blend mode to Multiply.

02

MASK OUT SKY

Next, we want to mask the sky out. Click

the line art layer and select the Magic Wand tool

(W). At the top, set your tolerance to about 30 and

click a point in the sky, and Shift+click any empty

space. Ensure the lines in your landscape and

buildings are all connected, or the Selection tool

will creep in. Hit (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I) to reverse the

selection. Now, click your Value layer and then the

Add Layer Mask button.

Distant mountains will

gradually fade to blue, and

foreground elements will be darker

with higher contrast

Digital painting

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