adding tones for Buick shirt in PS

[lemorris]

ahhh....finally get to finish these damn things.

You know the cars here's the layout. It's insanely simple, but that's what they wanted. I did the logo years ago and it will go on the front of the shirts.



Now comes the fun part. The cars will have to have tones added to make them pop on the shirt. The tones will be printed in like a 70% grey and the major lines will be 100% black. I decided to start on the 48 because it would be the toughest one.

I scanned it in at 300 dpi greyscale and then placed it into Illy. Once in Illustrator just like I did on the 69 I added lines for reflections and stuff. I did the lines on a separate layer then I copied the line layer to PS.

Once in PS I duplicated my base art layer (solid blacks) and merged the duplicate layer with my lines. (Of course I nuged the lines into place first). This merged layer will serve as my selection layer.

Speaking of selections that's exactly what comes next. I select an area I want to put tones in with the magic wand tool, or the polygonal lasso tool. Then I expand the selection (select menu-modify-expand) by about 2 pixels. I know if the selection is in an area with black lines this will trap what will eventually be my grey in that area.

Next I pick a couple cool greys like a 20% foreground and a 80% background and using the gradient tool on a new layer I drop the fade in. If necessary I brush in some grey or dodge and burn it till I'm happy then I move to a new area.

Now...This is not done so don't get you panties in a bunch. I'm kinda working through it as I go along. Sometimes I don't follow the "rules" sometimes I go by what I think will get a second look, followed by a wow.

Here's the 48 with some tones and my selection layer showing:



As you can see I'm working my way through the side and bouncing back and forth. It's a work in progress....right section...sa-weeeet.

Here's the same file with the selection layer turned off:



Big difference!! I know what kind of dot gain to expect so I try to compensate in my tones. Also when I dup the tone layer and convert it to halftones it should smooth out nicely. I'm still working on the door and all that stuff but so far it's coming out ok.

more soon

-Lemorris

[lemorris]

Here's the tones alone.

It's always cool to see.



One thing you can do is change the mode to RGB, and then do a image-adjust-hue/saturation. Check the colorize box and you can slide the hue slider and see what your tones would look like in slate grey for example...or maybe a bluey grey thing.



fun fun fun

[lemorris]

Here's the latest.



I have a few white areas that I'll make a 15% - 20% grey. They fall on the selection lines for the most part so I'll select the actual outline then brush in the tone on the halftone layer. I set the airbrush to about 80% and feather by 2 pixels and it comes out great.

-Lemorris

[Mshkttck]

Wow. That PS stuff you've got going on is amazing. There is only one problem; Buick

[lemorris]

Remember....Old cars + Old Guys = Old Bank Accounts.

People are willing to pay for what they remember.

lololol

[mike@af]

Looks real good.

How about this equation. Old farts+retirement=lots of money.

[lemorris]

old farts...I just made one of those...lolol

anyway

Here's the mostly done thing:



I still have to tone down the side whites and the hot spots in general, but I can do that in the final stage.

You can see how I maintained my simplistic approach throughout. The whole time I'm adding tones I'm thinking about how they tie into the initial simplified shapes. Once again I took some liberties with physics, but I want people to look at it. I'll sacrifice realism for a ooh or an ahh once in a while.

Here's the tones alone:



You can really see how the black line traps and punches the tones. I know this will look great as halftones.

I will post a detailed tute of how it's done Al.

A nice range of tones like this gives printers a chubby....big time.

Here's an example of one of the advantages of doing this in PS. Wanna see how it would look with blueish tones and black?



How bout green?



or hey I know...my client trips on shrooms daily so lets give him a rainbow



I'll probably go with the blueish thing. What's nice is that I can change the tones on the fly and print out what I like, and then have my printer match it.

Oh the entire tonalization took about 2 hours. I started it when I started this thread.

-Lemorris

[lemorris]

I went ahead and did the other 2 while I was at it.

Here's the B&W:



Here's a duotone type version:



Overall I'm ok with it. I'm likin the 69 in the back there.

Tomorrow I'll halftone everything, and then I can reward myself by starting on the shirts for the Artic Aircooled VW club.

-Lemorris

[lemorris]

Alright...this next section is for my main man Al.

Just so you guys understand...you need film to do shirts. You can't take a pencil drawing to a printer and tell him to put it on shirts. (Unless you want a transfer, but that's not "printing" is it?) In any case each color in your design needs to be on a separate sheet of film positive. Take a close look at your race car shirts and you will see tones or little pattern lookin stuff. These are halftones. You use halftones to translate gradients and other non-black items to black. You need black to burn the screen.

Here we go making the halftones.



After I got my file all set up I have a black line layer, and a tones layer. This will be a 2 color shirt so I can leave the line layer alone.




Right button click on the tones layer and select duplicate layer. A box will pop up. Select New from the drop down list. This will copy your layer to a new file with the same size settings...dpi included...sweeeeeet.


In the new file select Image-Mode-Bitmap. (remember if your file is rgb which it shouldn't be at this point you must change the mode to greyscale first then bitmap).

A window will pop up and ask you if you want to flatten the layers. Click OK.



Another window will pop up showing you resolution and method. In the sample capture it's at 72 ppi and halftone. In my actual file it is 300 ppi (same as my file resolution) and halftone.

Click OK




Another window pops up asking you about frequency angle and shape. Normally I go 65 dots per for my freq, 45 degrees for my angle and round for my shape. Another T-shirt car friend told me she uses 65/25/elliptical so I'm gonna try it.

Click OK



PS will transform your greyscale image into a bitmapped version.




Here's acloser look at it. This is very very cool. In the old days I had to hand cut tones using shade film and stipple in tones with my koh-i-noors. Not anymore. PS is a bad mutha....shutcho mouf!!

anyway



Convert your file back to greyscale Image-mode-greyscale make sure it's 1 to 1. You want it to be the same size as your original tones. Then line it up next to your original file.

Use the black arrow tool and drag your halftones into your original file.

This will create a new layer in your original file.




Make sure it is above your original tones layer and change the halftones layer propertiy to multiply. This drops all the white out of the image and allows you to see your other tone layer under it. Look carefully and use the black arrow tool to move your halftone layer into position. (it may actually kinda snap into place because of your layer property)





Once you drop it into place click the eyeball on your original tones layer. You don't need to see it anymore. You got halftones!!




To finish up for a printer save each layer as an individual black and white tiff file. You can do this by duplicating the layer converting it to bitmap, and doing a file save as tiff. Yes you could have just saved your halftones that were already bitmapped anyway, but then you wouldn't have gotten to see them in your design.

whew

That's it man. Hope it answered your questions.

-Lemorris

[Ra_15]

Wow, you must spend ages writing step by steps of what you do. Someone should stick this in the tutorials. Great job with PS btw, I would never be able to do that!

[xyfalconsrock]

how long does it take to cartoonise cars from original pics?...

[Jeep_Rubicon]

I agree with Ross, that must take a while to learn how to do all that stuff, you got some cool stuff going on there. There's soo much stuff you can do with PS, just need to learn. I like the blueish tone the best but I would probably like darker grey tones better. Great job on that.

[lemorris]

That's fellas. Learning PS just takes a little time. I find great tutorials all over the net.

In my regular job I develop animations and simulations for e-learning so it really doesn't take me too long to write this stuff. I just wing it.

I do have a correction to make.

The settings for the bitmap should be 55 ppi 25 degrees and elliptical. Jeri just corrected me.

http://www.motorsportsillustrated.com she's cool.


oh to answer xyfalconsrock:

You know I wouldn't call these cartoons as compared to other true toons I do. These are more "realistoons". In any case time is the unanswerable question. Each car is different each piece is different. I milked this one forever because it's not due till November, but if the money's one the table I can draw my a_s off!

If I just sit it through I can go from photo reference to line art in about 4 hours. Fortunately my job affords me the ability to not depend on this as my sole source of income so I just fiddle around when I feel like it.

The next one's gonna be real cool.

[lemorris]

Oh also if it doesn't snap into place when you drag your tones back into your original file. Go to View-Snap and that'll do it.

[bonzelite]

thank you sir, may i have another.... tute...

i'm printing out this puppy.