Leonidas Wip

[miascugh]

And how would indexed palettes help in masking out colour shapes?

I think he means that with indexed palettes you simply need to select the according index and adjust the color with the sliders, which will take immediate effect on the whole image. I've never pixelled with ps, what do masks do? Sounds sort of... troublesome.

About the process, you usually don't really need to worry much about the colors being final when starting out. All of the programs I've tried so far offered a way of changing single colors easily, so adjustments can be made at any time, or afterwards.

[Serena]

For the girl in my avatar, I shaded her all in b&w, then I went into photoshop and added a "Color" blend-mode layer overtop the sprite, and used the pencil brush and a solid hue to block out the colors over the shading.  It worked very nicely.  Just make sure you use a hard-edged pencil brush.

[Gil]

Yep, that's what I was talking about too Serena, it's very easy...

Miascugh: wouldn't you change that gray value for the whole image. You'd try to make lips pink, and all the same grays in the image would turn pink, no?

[Serena]

Yep, that's what I was talking about too Serena, it's very easy...

Miascugh: wouldn't you change that gray value for the whole image. You'd try to make lips pink, and all the same grays in the image would turn pink, no?

Oh, ok, I thought you were talking about an actual hue/saturation Adjustment layer, which wouldn't be as flexible.

[miascugh]

Gil: Yeah, well, you would have to make a new index and fill the lips with it. I hardly ever really work from greyscale though anyway.

[Helm]

I find working from grayscale is counter-intuitive for pixel art with small, compact palettes of 16 or so's. Just not enough space to make straight ramps of 4-5 colors each to color in with layers. Too much work and it breeds bad habits. Every color should be chosen by hand and optimized, I propose.