Видео

Hey Tyler great to hear from you! Hope you're well. Yes, so many people dread going to work; it's an incredible blessing to love what we do.

Hi great question; no need at all to flatten the image. Just make sure the gradient map is above all layers you want to apply the colorization to.

@@russgrayillustration8734 Thank you so much!!

Great questions. So, if Illustrator is not letting you recolor it, my guess is that it must not actually be a bitmap. (Obviously I could be wrong, it could be something else, it's just hard to say without seeing your files. I just haven't had an issue with a bitmap not being allowed to be recolored in Illustrator, so it would have to either be something other than a bitmap saved as a PSD, or some circumstances I haven't run across). With regard to image tracing: there are two ways to accomplish that (at least). One method (and to my experience, probably more precise) is to create the paths in Photoshop (see this tutorial for more info on that ruclips.net/video/sIU1YTPse1o/видео.html; start at maybe the 2 minute mark or so). The other method is to use Image Trace in Illustrator. In order to not include the background, one way you can do that is to go to "Window > Image Trace" and within the Advanced settings there, check "ignore color". The default should probably be white, and if not, change it to white. Now it should eliminate the white background you're coming across.

@@russgrayillustration8734 Thanks so much. It's possible it's not actually a bitmap. I will review all your suggestions.

@@russgrayillustration8734 I saved it as a TIFF file and imported it into Illustrator. This time it let me change the colour. Before it was a PSD file

@@LouiseCarota Interesting! Never yet had that issue with a PSD; perhaps a setting in the way the PSD is saved? Not sure. At any rate, glad you got it solved.

Great! I'm glad this helped.

Thank you! So the illustration is based loosely on a scene from one of the movies, but was all created from scratch. It was all created in vector (just the basic shapes) and then "painted" over in Photoshop. Someday I will show more process-oriented videos like that. But in a nutshell, in Photoshop, I make the illustration larger (sometimes double or more) the intended final size, and make sure the vector smart object is not anti-aliased (see my tutorial on eliminating hairlines for more info). Then I simply use the magic wand to select the areas to paint, using the selections as stencils. You could also make the selection using Selective Color, or some other method, but the magic wand gets the nice crisp edge. Then I simply paint in the selection, using custom brushes, or any combo of the "Kyle" brushes included with Photoshop.

Fixed it! I saved it to the cloud and not my computer and simply couldn't find the file, rookie move, come on naw...

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for saying.

Hi Gabby, good question. Those would have been created by making a pattern brush. Yes, there can sometimes be hairlines. I deal with them in the same way I describe in the video, if bringing into Photoshop. But if printing from Illustrator, I don't sweat it because -- as dumb as the hairlines are -- they truly won't print, from my experience. In terms of the distortion: yes, that can be a real challenge and limitation. I don't have any easy work-around for that. Even on the Star Wars cards, if you look closely, you can see some of the shapes you're talking about (such as some overlapping circular shapes around Leia's collar) are not perfectly circular. I had to make the overall curve radius of the brush path much larger to diminish the warp effect. I wish it was possible to avoid those issues. Anyway, hope that helps!

@@russgrayillustration8734 Ahhh, so it's not me that's the problem! That's very interesting, I'll keep this in mind. Changing the radius of the brush is definitely something I'll try. Thank you so much for taking the time to write such an informative response, you definitely helped!

So my process depends on the project, but generally when I do sketches, they are in Photoshop, using a Wacom Cintiq tablet. For actual execution following the sketch, it's almost always Illustrator followed by Photoshop.

Hi Cela, I'm actually happy to hear that; all I ever really hope is that this is at all beneficial to someone. So I'm glad to hear it is. Thanks for your comment, and I hope this ends up being helpful in your own work.

Glad it was helpful! Thank you.

Hey Italo! Yes, that's great. Thanks for your additional idea. I also learned something new. Only limitation I could possibly see of the rasterize>bitmap method is that it seems you are not able to apply color to the bitmap, without perhaps overlaying a layer and changing the transparency mode to "lighten"; but maybe I'm wrong? Either way, you are right, I love that there are so many different ways to do anything in this software. I'm sure there are countless others still untapped.

Yep! Likely not to go away any time soon. (If ever). It has to do with how Illustrator deals with anti-aliasing, and when I've ever heard it addressed by Adobe over the years, it feels more like a justification for the status quo rather than a realization of the headache it causes. So ... a change doesn't seem likely. In the meantime, workarounds! Note: some have said that, within Illustrator, unchecking "anti-aliased art" (Preferences > Genera) solves the problem. That has not done anything for me, but maybe it has worked for some!

Definitely can't argue with you there! Plenty of things that could be improved in Illustrator in general. That said, no matter what they do, or no matter what the software in question, I think we will always be pushing the software to do things it wasn't originally engineered for. I think that's just the nature of what we do, to push those limits. I would love them to improve the brush workflow, but I have a feeling there will always be looks we want to achieve that just aren't possible without "hacks" like this. In any software. But I sure would welcome those and other improvements!

Hi Cheeky Pirate, thanks for the feedback! Yes, her method is good for certain instances too, and I do the same at times. However, this means you have to make your vectors essentially uneditable. (In the case of her example, the pattern is no longer a pattern swatch; also her specific method also doesn't address patterns with transparency, or other complicating factors; there are ways to expand those patterns too, but it's much more time-intensive and difficult). In some cases that's fine! But especially when I might anticipate needing to modify the vector for any reason, it is necessary to maintain the editability. In both our methods, they are simply workarounds for a problem that exists in the Adobe workflow. It's good to know the core reasons for the problem, and any and all workarounds so that you can use as needed in any given situation you may run into. Thanks for your comment!

​@@russgrayillustration8734 Yes, you are absolutelly right - it's destructive method and it's not always convinient. I liked hers explanation of the origin of the problem though. Guess we have to find the best matching solution for every speciffic task.

Glad you liked it, hope it was helpful. Y ... me encanta Argentina! Extraño la patagonia

Sure thing; glad it helped. And just so you know, these bitmap textures can be converted to vector as well, if needed. (I might make another video on that at some point; one method is using Illustrator's "Image Trace". But you have to create a custom preset).

@@russgrayillustration8734 i was revisiting this video again and only saw this now oof! i would love to know how to convert these bitmap textures to vector because sometimes work requires me to deliver a fully vector file 😅

@@crispypasta Just saw your reply now! Well, it's too complex to explain in a comment, but basically you'll use image-trace in Illustrator. But you can create a preset once you dial in the settings, so it's only a couple clicks in the future. I'll possibly add a followup to this video explaining it. Basically: go to Window > Image Trace and choose Black and White under Mode. Then under Advanced check "Ignore White" (so that it won't trace the white background, only the black). Also under Advanced you will probably want to crank up "Paths" to High. You can play around with "corners" and see what suits you. Then: save a preset (the little menu over to the right of "Preset" up near the top). Hopefully that kind of explains it.

@@russgrayillustration8734 thanks so much for this! will try it out! ☺️✨

Hi Shyam, yes I did do that illustration (thanks), but so far this channel is more about principles and ideas that can be used in your own illustrations, rather than beginning-to-end tutorials. However, I do plan to do a handful of those types of tutorials eventually.

@@russgrayillustration8734 Its really nice. Where can I learn this?

Glad to hear it Italo. I've been using both for years as well and there are always new things to learn, I find.

Thank you!

Glad it was helpful! I will try to put up more soon.

I probably won't be sharing files here on RUclips. But hopefully I've shown how easy it is, you can make custom ones for yourself that work even better.

Thanks; hope they're helpful!

Great to hear, thanks! Glad it was helpful.

Glad it was helpful!

Great question. Often I will bring vectors into Photoshop for doing these types of things. However, in some cases I'm required to deliver vector artwork (in which case I can convert the bitmaps to vector if needed), and other times, I simply want to keep them easily editable in Illustrator. Plus, sometimes I love the crispness of the bitmap textures that is sometimes harder to replicate in Photoshop.

I don't convert them to vectors. Well, not usually anyway. To convert them to vector would create so many points that it would just bog everything down. I have occasionally done that when production needs warranted it. Not sure what you mean by the quality problem ... if the bitmaps are created at a reasonable resolution, they work great. You'll know if the resolution is too low if you have to enlarge the bitmap when you bring it into Illustrator. Generally, make it a minimum of 300dpi at the needed dimensions.

Glad it helped!

Hi James, good questions. So yes, the texture brushes do slow things down a bit. Anything in Illustrator that adds a lot of points will tend to slow it down. However, even with these heavily textured posters, I didn't find it overly prohibitive. Generally I will simplify the textures just a little (Object>Path>Simplify) while keeping the detail level high, which helps. And yes, I think the brushes are more flexible than the bitmap textures, simply because you are able to manipulate them more easily. But when textures get overly complex / detailed, I find the bitmap method works better. When vector textures get overly detailed, software performance begins to drop.

Hi Paritosh, mostly I try to demonstrate concepts and principles that can be used an adapted, but I will try to add some full tutorials as well. Thanks for the suggestion.

@@russgrayillustration8734 Looking forward to seeing them!😍

@Russ Gray Illustration don't forget to do this 😭

Thanks Abbos! Hope it was helpful.

Glad it was helpful!

Thank you! Hopefully this has been somewhat helpful. I'm still just learning how to do this, but will be trying to launch videos fairly often.