Hi, Folks!

Today, I’m discussing how I put together my color swatches in Photoshop.  Before I dig into that, though, I think it’s best if I explain why I went to the trouble to make these color palettes. 

Photoshop comes with a bunch of swatches, be they Pantone, or Trumatch, or what have you.  These are perfectly fine, depending what you use them for, and they offer interesting ranges of hues for you to use.  All well and good, I suppose.  But, what if you wanted to use a color again and again, such as the grey in the whites of eyes, or the color of your character’s cloak, or the candy apple red for a car you draw again and again?  Suddenly, a huge collection of colors to pick and choose from seems kind of useless.  It did to me, at any rate.  I didn’t want to search through my swatches again and again to find the exact hue I needed—I wanted to establish my palette and keep it!

I’ve never heard of anyone else doing exactly what I’m going to describe, and I’ve read lots of tutorials and probably all available books on computer coloring.  Maybe it’s a deficiency in me.  Maybe no one else cares enough to get it just ‘right.’  Whatever the case, I started to put together a custom swatch that I’ve used, added to, and updated as the years go on.  In it, I’ve got ranges of colors for everything on humans, as well as often used tones like metals, cityscapes, and materials I use often.  I’ve also got the costume color schemes of all my characters saved as well.

Before I go on, let me explain the concept of “local” color, a.k.a. “mother color.”  That’s the color of something in neutral light.  An orange, for example, has an orange hue, although in bright light, or colored light, or deep shadow, or reflected light, that orange’s hue can change to many other colors.  In neutral lighting, however, it’s simply orange.  That local color is what I put in my swatch, because I would rather control the lighting conditions later when I’m actually rendering the image.

When I began to build my custom swatch, I didn’t just randomly fish for colors that I thought seemed appropriate.  Instead, I went to the internet, found examples of what I was looking for, and used the eye dropper tool in Photoshop to sample that color.  It’s fine to use subjective, crazy color choices when you are making something up, like a monster’s scales, or a heroes’ mask, but when it comes to real world objects and their colors it is best find samples and pick the color accurately.

That cover’s my basic approach and my thinking about it.  Next week, I’ll explain how to set up a new swatch, save the colors, and organize them.  This is fascinating stuff, so I look forward to seeing you then.

Scott