Shading Cartoons in Photoshop

Shading cartoons with Photoshop takes some creativity at times to achieve the results you want, especially if you change your mind (or the client changes it for you) after hours of work. If you’ve used a color in a large area that doesn’t look quite right after you’ve added texture, highlights and shadows, it probably won’t be easy to go back and recreate or repaint that area from scratch. Well, with a little forethought and the help of layers, color, blending modes and levels, you may be able to save yourself some time and avoid completely reworking the area. This can do wonders for your sanity and blood pressure if you are up against a deadline.

I use the Magic Wand on the line art layer most times to make my selection and expand it if necessary into the line art to insure I have the entire area covered. Once you have your selection made, create a blank layer above it in the layers palette. Choose a color and fill the area that you need to alter. The color at this point doesn’t really matter, it’s essentially a placeholder for the final color we will be using in the next step.

Neatness is always nice, but since we are using a completely separate layer for this step, we can easily go back and use the eraser to cleanup what we don’t want. When you have the area covered, erase any stray marks that are outside the area to be altered. It may help to add a white bottom layer as a temporary measure to see the color areas you want to erase. Now in the layers palette, lock the transparency of the new layer with the color you’ve just laid down. You will be changing the color on this layer to something more suitable to your needs, if it isn’t already.

If you need to lighten the area, choose a color similar to the area to be changed, and fill the locked layer with this color. With the transparency of the layer locked, only the areas colored already should fill with color. Then change the layer blending mode to Overlay in the layer palette.

To darken, choose a similar color and fill the locked layer, but change the blending mode to Color Burn instead. Remember that you can experiment with the Opacity setting in the layers palette to fine tune the blend mode results. In addition, it’s easy to try different colors and blending modes since our color is on a layer by itself and the layer transparency is locked, making color changes a simple matter of picking one and then hitting Option-Delete.

Often I will use this method as a way of adding shadows and highlights to my cartoons without being destructive to the underlying color. Being on a separate layer, it has the added benefit of being able to easily put continuous shadows and highlights across areas of different base color with a natural look.

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