Thursday, August 30, 2007

Video Try-out

To celebrate Blogger's introduction of video uploading, I decided to try making a demo video showing a quick way of setting up a scanned image for colouring in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I've had some step-by-step stuff on my site for a good few years now, but writing textbooks online is a very time-consuming business; these demos are quicker to do and let the viewer see the process in action.

I'd be grateful for feedback on this process; whether it's worth me doing more of these; whether you prefer written tutorials; whether the fidelity of the streaming video is good enough or whether it would be better to make high-resolution copies available for download.

This demo works with Photoshop Elements, full Photoshop and Corel Painter. I'd welcome feedback as to whether it works with other programs such as Paint Shop Pro.

The demo starts with a scanned image. If you're going to try this yourself, make sure your image is in RGB colour mode (look under Image: Mode in both full Photoshop and Elements).



Demo © 2007 Me.
Created using Ambrosia Software's excellent Snapz Pro X.

10 comments:

Andy said...

I'd certainly welcome more of these video tutorials. Doing them in relatively short bursts works very well. Allowing the viewer time to take everything in. While it's not a lot at the moment I have no doubt later on in the process it will become quite involved.

Thanks for doing this.

Declan Shalvey said...

Wow, that's great!
I was wondering how to do that myself. In photoshop, i have to go and copy the black channel (in CMYK) in order to have the linework visable without affecting it.

These tutorials sound like a great idea. This one was very easy to understand. You spoke quite clearly also, which helps a great deal. Certainly hope you do more.

Best,
Declan.

Unknown said...

andrew - I'm glad the short format works; for reasons of recording and upload time, it's easier for me to do short clips.

Hi Dec! - I'd recommend channel duplication as it gives you more options - especially, it's much easier to do coloured or greyed-out outlines with channel duplication. It's the method I use for colouring.
For a first try at recording a demo, I wanted to do something I could show quickly, and that would work with full Photoshop and Elements.

Anonymous said...

Hi - this is a great thing to give us - seeing and hearing how you do it is a fantastic and useful insight. Many thanks

Dan Fish said...

Great tutorial - And it looks do-able with GIMP too (http://www.gimp.org/ - GIMP is a free application that works a bit like Photoshop)

Mangamax said...

That was really good. Luddite that i am, i can't ever see meself ever using it, but its neat to see something actually done in front of your eyes, rather than having tons of text trying to explain a visual concept.
Like reading about sculpting and watching someone doing it - just not the same.

Manolis Vamvounis said...

great work M !!

I hope you do continue doing this. The first video was mostly stuff i had tro figure out on my own the hard way, it's very useful to have such a thorough step by step process analysis of how PS applies specifically to comicbook colouring...

Anonymous said...

Great!!!
I´m just start working with Photoshop so this´s very useufull stuff.

Thank you!

mike kinsella said...

Hi Matt,
Tutorial in video is excellent, but i like to have sly read of your page at work and watching a video would not be easy! Dont give up the written tutorials completely!

Thanks,
Mike

Anonymous said...

Hello Matt.
I found this short clip incredibly useful. I guess I'm one of those people who find it a lot easier to learn something by watching others demonstrate it proficiently rather than try to fathom it from a book. Many thanks, do you plan to do any more perchance? I know you're generally snowed under with work (adored Lowlife) but any others would be wildly popular. Cheers Kerrin.