Hello there.
So I got back to digital painting.
My problem is;
As you can see, these blacks and greys are not blended smoothly and I cannot figure out how to do it and why is that. I’ve tried most smooth brushes, tried to change color mode to 16bit - nothing. It’s kind of weird cause I don’t remember this problem from couple years back.
I think it’s some technical matter but I’m not sure what it is exactly. Any idea?
What software are you using?
I’d have several answers if it were photoshop…
But we’d need to know the software, as mentioned above.
It’s Photoshop
If you are using photoshop, try painting with the flow set to below 5% (but with 100% opacity). This will be a slower process, but ultimately you will net out MUCH smoother vignettes. The negative here is that this will introduce a subtle ‘noise’ effect, but with some finesse you can achieve a nice balance of smooth vs noise.
Also, I hope you don’t get me wrong.
I’m not strictly talking about the highlights in there, although, they kind of have the same problem, but it’s not so eye catching (also, these certain highlights are pretty raw anyways, not finished). I’m talking about areas marked here for example;
But, maybe you get that. Ok silence04, I will try that too, thx.
Nope.
I mean, it all have pretty much no effect at all, unless I push the pen really hard, but then it comes out like this;
Like I would draw with mouse, just a little lighter than dark black, even with smooth brush.
EDIT: OR OK, It has some effect… but still, it’s not that smooth. Is it like… maybe it’s just too black? I mean… from a distance, it’s not that big of a problem, but when I get closer, I just see these pixels not blended smoothly… there’s no such problem with lighter parts though… maybe I’m going too dark. I just don’t know.
I ran into an issue similar to this today and it got me thinking about what’s probably happening.
Are you painting white on black? If so, I think the issue might be related to not applying enough white to the illustration. Meaning your white point and all of your shading is so dark that there isn’t a large enough range of shades between the dark gray and black you are trying to blend, resulting in banding. If you open the histogram panel, I bet the majority of data will be on the left side of the graph (darks), however ideally that data is spread out more on the right side of the graph (lights), giving you a greater range of brightness levels to blend between.
TLDR: get your entire illustration brighter and you will be able to blend smoother into black.
google “no more banding photoshop” and check the results
Hope it helps
