[ How to tone in Adobe Photoshop 7 ]

Tutorial by Animetor Lily

Welcome to my toning tutorial... XD I've decided to make my second tutorial, how to add tones in Adobe Photoshop 7. Of course, this tutorial will work if you have the latest version of PS, but if you have an older version.. I think up to version 6 or 5.5 it's still fine. If not... Well.... ^__^;;

START!!

You can't tone without some tones to start with, eh? =3 You have two options... Download some tones from the net ( you can find some good ones HERE ) or make your own tones. I'll explain how to make your own home-made tones in the EXTRAS section later. ^ w ^

Assuming you downloaded the tones from Psycobob's website... You'll need to unzip the tones into a certain folder inside your Photoshop program... If you don't have a software to 'unzip' the file, you can download it for free at www.winzip.com

1) Using Winzip, Extract the file to Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Presets\Patterns (this depends on where you installed your Photoshop program.. by default, it is as stated there ^^ ) You should now have the file *.pat in the 'Patterns' folder =)

Now that's done, we're ready to rock! X3 or... ready to tone. ^^;; eheheh... *SWT*

2) Preparing the Lineart

Before you start toning, you'll need to prepare the lineart you're going to tone... The steps are the same as in my previous CG tutorial. Here's the sample pic I'm going to tone for this tutorial:

Whoohoo... Daryl is in trouble here... Yeah, it's a scene from my online manga, Magician's Quest... XD It's copyrighted to me, so... O____<

3) Base Color Fill

All right~ Now Step 3: You need to fill in the non-toned areas with color... or rather, shades of gray ^^; Most comics are in black/white. Use the same techniques as in my CG tutorial (polygon lasso tool). So you get something like this:

4) Toning + FX

We're going to tone the hair first, so make a selection of the hair area using the same techniques as above. Make a new layer below the first and click on it, we're gonna fill in the hair tone on this layer. With the hair area still selected, do Edit > Fill , the Fill window will come up. Now, usually you use either Foreground or Background color to fill in colors, right? For tones, you need to select Pattern.

A new set of menu items is available now... =D You can choose what type of 'pattern sets' (which is what Photoshop calls its tones..) you'd like to use by clicking on the small arrow. For example here is a list of all the tones that I have in my computer, which we had placed in the Photoshop Patterns folder earlier in step #1. ^__^ You can use a lot of different tones simply by selecting the tone's group name in the pop-up window. When you've selected a tone you like, click OK.

Tadaah!! ^o^ BTW, if you don't like the result and wanna use another tone instead, no problem, just Undo (CTRL + Z) and repeat step #4. Remember, keep the area you want filled with a tone selected during the process. Otherwise you might end up having the entire page being filled with a tone O___O

5) All right, give yourself a pat on the back for coming this far >w< Now, let's add some dimension to the tone we just added by creating some 'shaded' areas...

First, do some selections on the parts where the darker area of the tone should be... Then, while still keeping the selection, do Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast

Pull down the Brightness tab to the left to make the selected area appear darker... You can play around with the contrast too, if you like. Like so....

Now you should have the hair toned, with proper shadows added~ It looks a lot nicer than just adding a flat tone, eh? ;) You can add in highlights if you feel like it. Just remember not to overdo it~ =P There IS such a thing as over-toning something, you know... ^^;;; Now you know the basics... GO WILD!!!! X3

6) Extra Tips + Hints

i) In addition to the Brightness/Contrast technique, you can also go over the tones by filling them with a gradient.... Remember to change the Gradient setting to Multiply tho~

ii) You're not limited to using only one tone at a time... Why not overlap one on top of the other? Fill the first layer of tone normally, then do Edit > Fill again, only change the setting from Normal to Multiply. So you get a double layered tone! Cool, huh? ^w^ Of course, it would make sense to use two different tones that would show up well against each other..... And note too that overlapping tones creates a more darker atmosphere for the filled area.

iii) Want to use tones you created yourself? No problem! I'll show you how to make your own tones...

#1 : Make something that you want to be converted into a tone on a blank, transparent layer in Photoshop... For example, I did a pattern of leaves using the leaf brush...
#2 : The tone you create will be automatically tiled by Photoshop when you use it, so remove any patterns that go outside the borders to avoid creating an odd looking screentone... Here I've deleted the leaves at the top.
#3 : Next, click the Marquee tool, right-click on the canvas and choose Select All. Then do Edit > Define Pattern, and this small window should pop up, prompting you to give a name for this pattern/tone. I called mine autumn leaves, then click OK.
#4 : Now to test your new pattern, make a new blank canvas ( File > New ). Select an area of your new canvas, and do Edit > Fill, you should see the pattern you made just now in the list. Pay attention, this is important. Each time you create a new tone, Photoshop does not automatically save it. You need to save the new custom tone yourself, otherwise you'd have to Define Pattern again each time you need to use the exact same tone. Because Photoshop will replace the current tones set if you select another tones set from the 'Fill' sub menu. To save your custom tones set, click the small arrow and choose Save Patterns. Give it whatever name you like, and press OK. So after this, should you choose a different tone set to use and want to use this particular set with the leaves tone in it, you can just click the arrow and choose Load Pattern. ^__^ You can add more of your own custom tones in this set too, but remember to save the pattern file.
#5 : Let's try using this tone now... XD Fill it with your new leaf tone~ And so....

Okay, I guess that's all I can teach you guys for now~ =P Feel free to experiment with this new technique, and if you've discovered something new, or made something using my tutorial and wanna share it with me, drop me an e-mail~ ;) Questions & Comments are also welcome.

Good luck!

--Animetor Lily [ http://www.magiciansquest.cjb.net ]