Introduction

This tutorial will help you learn some tricks to visualize and correct your values using Clip Studio's correction layers. In layman's terms, values are the levels light/darkness in a picture. Let's get started. This tutorial is recommended for intermediate and advanced users, though the ''Additional Correction Layers'' section works for beginners as well.

Starting Process

As with any other painting, I'll start with a simple sketch, something really simple and rough. I will describe this section briefly since the focus is on the layer magic this time.

After that, I add some flat colors and a multiply layer for shadows. Notice that the picture is in color and not grayscale.

Posterize and Saturation layers

Value is best seen when simplified, no saturation, and not a lot of range. We'll achieve this by adding a Posterize layer on top of the character's layers, the number of gradients being just three (you can add more range if you wish to, but the simpler it looks the easier it will be for you to fix the shadows)

Now the image looks extremely saturated and simplified, but this won't do yet, so we need to add another correction layer on top of this one, so, go to New Correction Layer> Hue/Saturation/Luminosity and tone down the saturation until everything looks grayscale, only the values will be visible now.

Now these layers should look like this, for reference:

But why do all of this? See, it's easier to spot your mistakes when the image is simplified like this. You can see that my values need some work in this stage. it's just not very convincing yet. This extra step will allow you to skip the grayscale to color technique because that is so time consuming!

Just hide the correction layers when you're ready to work on your colored painting again.

Rendering and using the correction layers

So, I start rendering this sinister looking guy, hiding and showing the correction layers so I can spot my own mistakes.

With the correction layers you will spot what works and what doesn't work. I noticed the body language of the guy wasn't very convincing and he looked older than I intended, and the shadow distribution wasn't what I hoped. So, what you have to do is keep painting, using the layers at you own leisure and correct until you're happy with the result.

I added a background and additional details as well!

This is the posterized version, for reference.

Additional Correction Layers

The rendering is pretty much done in this stage, so I didn't paint anything else, however, adding more correction layers can help you give your paintings a certain mood. My favorite is Color Balance. So I added a color balance layer and gave it a reddish/yellow/green tint. But you can add whatever layer you like the most ;)

He somehow looks meaner now, which is pretty much what I wanted. It's all done now :)

 

Now there's something interesting here, the color balance layer slightly changes the value, I will show this below.

Notes

Thank you for reading this, I hope it somehow helps you visualize the values and improve your paintings.