"Use HLS to Easily Add Various Colors to Your Works"

Hello everyone, my name is LiyanLyf! The theme of this tips is "Colorful Illustrations".

Speaking of colorful, I wonder if you have ever had this experience: choose green for the leaves, brown for the tree trunks, blue for the ocean, and white for the snow... It is a situation of "choose whatever color the object is"?

This kind of color matching often confuses me, especially when I see works with countless colors and I have no idea how those colors are added.

So, I spent some time researching and finally compiled a set of my own methods. I hope it can be helpful to you and inspire new creative inspiration.

The methods introduced in this tip can allow you to enrich the color changes in the early stages of creation or in the later stages of creation. Whether you use grayscale coloring techniques or directly select colors, you can do so without changing the overall sketch relationship. Case in point, add a variety of your favorite colors!

[What is HLS? 】

In CLIP STUDIO PAINT, there are two color spaces to choose from: "HSV color space" and "HLS color space".

You can switch by clicking the button in the upper left corner of the color wheel, or by clicking the icon in the lower right corner.

HSV: consists of Hue, Saturation, and Value.

HLS: consists of Hue, Saturation, and Luminance**.

The difference between the two is Value and Luminance

 

Here is a simple example to help me understand the difference between the two:

We select red as the hue, and with the Value and Luminance at 80%, we start to increase the saturation to 80% to see what effect it will have.

We can see that the red color of HSV is very bright, but the red color of HLS is light pink.

Although we set the saturation and red hue to 80% in both color spaces, why does the red in HLS look so light? We can switch the image to grayscale mode to view:

(Grayscale mode converts pictures into black and white, allowing us to quickly distinguish the sketch relationship between objects and colors)

We can find from the above that when the saturation increases, HSV gives people a darker feeling in grayscale mode.

HLS will not change the original sketch relationship, ★ means that no matter what your saturation is, as long as the brightness remains unchanged, HLS will maintain the same objective brightness.

※From the above, the difference between HSV and HLS is:

・ HSV: Value (Value) indicates the change of color from black to light. It refers to the brightness or darkness of the color. It is a subjective visual experience, such as from dark red to bright red, but it does not Become pure white or pure black.

・ HLS: Luminance (Luminance) represents the change of color from black to white. It refers to the actual intensity of light and is an objective brightness, such as from black to deep red to pink and then to white. .

 

※For a more detailed introduction to the panel, please refer to this official article:

https://tips.clip-studio.com/zh-tw/articles/657

[How to check the sketch relationship of a picture]

We first click on the upper left corner of the layers panel (or right-click on any layer directly)

Select "New Hue Compensation Layer" → "Hue. Chroma. Lightness"

Set "Color" to -100 and press OK

And make sure the "Tone Compensation Layer" is on top.

In this way, we can confirm the relationship between the black and white sketch of the work at any time by switching the "Tone Compensation Layer" on and off.

[Add various colors without destroying the relationship between the sketch]

After understanding how to confirm the relationship between the black and white sketch of the work at any time, we come to the focus of this article. How to add various colors into it?

To put it simply:

1.Use HLS color space

2.Use the eyedropper tool to absorb HLS information where you want to add color.

3. While the Luminance remains unchanged, you can freely change the Hue and Saturation according to your own preferences.

4.Draw on it! You're done!

 

This way, you can add colors at will without destroying the original sketch relationship! Isn't it very simple?

However, when I want to add color on a large scale, in addition to painting directly, I will also use two selection tools to help me complete it quickly.

In this Tips, I have prepared two examples:

・The first is when the sketching levels are still in the early stages (that is, when there are not many levels in grayscale mode), I will use the "Auto Selection" tool to assist.

・The second is when the sketch level is very rich and it is difficult for the "Auto Selection" tool to select a large area, I will use the "Color Gamut Selection" tool to assist.

【Example 1】

1. Create layers

First, we first create a new layer, select Normal for the layer's Blending Modes, and open the previously created "Tone Compensation Layer".

2. "Auto-selection" tool (commonly known as Magic Wand Tool)

Select the "Auto Selection" tool and select "Select with reference to other layers". The "Color Error" below is adjusted according to your work. The larger the value, the wider the selection range will be.

3. Create a constituency

Select a large range of dark or light surfaces. Here we first select the gray color that occupies the largest area on the dark surface in the picture.

3-1

At this time we found that some gray areas were not selected. We can select these blocks by holding down Shift. It's up to you how carefully you choose. Of course, if your original colors have different layers, you can easily select them at this time. This example assumes that all layers have been merged, so manual selection is required.

4. Get color information

We use the eyedropper tool (you can also quickly switch by holding Alt in brush mode).

4-1

Left-click where you want to add color and view the HLS value at that location. Since we turned on the "Hue Compensation Layer" and lowered the chroma to 0, the hue (Hue) and saturation (Saturation) are both displayed as 0, and only the luminance (Luminance) has a value. The luminance here is 49%.

4-2

Here we can turn off the "Hue Compensation Layer" and absorb color at the same position.

★ We can see that because it is no longer in grayscale mode, the Hue and Saturation have numerical values, but the most important thing is that the Luminance still remains at 49%.

5. Play boldly with color

congratulations! Next, as long as the Luminance remains unchanged, we can boldly adjust the Hue and Saturation to fill in our favorite colors! Remember to repeat the above steps every time you color in a different position, so as to ensure that the sketch relationship will not be disrupted to the greatest extent!

6. Check sketch relationships

During the painting process, remember to keep turning the "tone compensation layer" on and off, and keep absorbing colors to check the sketch relationship, so that the final drawing can maintain the same general direction as the initial sketch relationship.

There is no need to put too much pressure on yourself to pursue complete accuracy, as long as the overall sketch relationship is roughly the same.

【Example 2】

1. Create layers

As in Example 1, first we create a new layer, select Normal for the layer's Blending Modes, and open the previously created "Tone Compensation Layer".

2. Use the "Color Gamut Selection" tool

Select "Selection Range" on the upper toolbar, and then select "Color Gamut Selection".

3. Create a constituency

Set the "Color Allowable Error" to 0.5~1, and left-click the area where you want to replace the color. At this time, because the screen is in grayscale view, the "Color Gamut Selection" tool will make the entire screen the same Once the Luminance is selected, we can easily use colors with the same brightness to color in the future~

4. Get color information

As in Example 1, use the eyedropper tool to obtain color information (press Alt in brush mode to quickly switch).

4-1

We can see that with the help of the "Color Gamut Selection" tool, he has helped us select the area where the grayscale of the entire picture is between 16~18 (there is an error because we changed the "Color Allowance" in the previous step "Error" is set to 1. If this value is set smaller, the selection range will be more accurate, but it will also take more time)

5. Play boldly with color

The next step is to keep the brightness between 16 and 18, and start boldly adjusting the hue and saturation to paint the color you like!

(Here I first move the normal layer above the "Tone Compensation Layer" so that you can see the result after coloring the selected area. Remember to move it back later)

5-1

After closing the "Tone Compensation Layer", Ctrl+D deselects it and let's take a look at the effect.

5-2

Start repeating the above steps and apply different colors

5-3

Finally, you can also use the "Airbrush" or "Color Mixing" tool to transition some colors to make them smoother. You can also keep some inherent colors (the original color of the object). What I chose to keep here is the skin color of the face. The above choices can be decided according to your own preferences. Feel free to play with colors boldly!

6. Check sketch relationships

Just like Example 1, during the painting process, remember to keep turning on and off the "Tone Compensation Layer", and keep absorbing colors to check the sketch relationship, so that the final picture can maintain the general direction of the relationship with the initial sketch. consistent.

There is no need to put too much pressure on yourself to pursue complete accuracy, as long as the overall sketch relationship is roughly the same.

【Conclusion】

I hope this tutorial can bring you some inspiration and ideas. If you like it, please leave a message or click a heart to let me know ~ Thank you for watching this tutorial, let's draw colorful illustrations together!