Tintin Forums

Hello everybody!

Currently I am writing and illustrating a short children's book, and I was wondering what some good online coloring agents, or programs, or whatever the things are called are. I really want to use one that looks like natural coloring, like in The Rainbow Orchid. Any pointers on which to use would be great! Thanks!

Gosh, it's been almost ten days since I posted this. Isn't there anyone here who uses online coloring for their drawings?

I don't have any knowledge or experience of online colouring systems, if by "online" you mean something you're literally using through a website with a live internet connection. However, I have sometimes applied digital colouring to my scanned hand-drawn ink pen work (as opposed to hand-colouring my inked drawings with watercolour, which is my more usual colouring medium). For this digitally coloured work, I've used Photoshop Elements, which I think either came bundled free with a scanner or was installed on my iMac when I bought it (many years ago, so I can't quite remember!)

Thanks Balthazar! I think digital coloring is what I mean, but I know absolutely nothing about it, I just know I'm terrible at hand-coloring, and I've seen digital coloring used in other comics that looks really nice. Does Photoshop elements have shading?

Photoshop Elements certainly has tools – paint bucket, gradient tool, opacity changer, etc – that I've sometimes used to create shadows and shading effects, but in a customised way, rather than simply applying a ready-made shadow effect at the click of a menu button. (And I generally tend to go subtle with any digital gradient effects as my personal preference).

There are certainly more sophisticated digital colouring products though, and I know there are plenty of expert illustrators and cartoonists who draw and colour all of their work digitally using graphic tablets with digital pen and paintbrush tools, producing really excellent and subtle artistic results. And no doubt there are much more up-to-date and extensive versions of Photoshop or similar than the limited version I'm using, which may produce shadows or shading more automatically and less laboriously. Personally though, I like to have full control of digital tools and how I'm applying them, rather than embracing what seems to be a slippery slope towards the sort of AI generated artwork that requires no artistic knowledge, craft or judgment.

That sounds great! I always draw by hand, but as I said before, I'm terrible at coloring.

And on the AI thing, I generally agree with that, but sometimes it is pretty darn fun to play around with AI image generation. But I think AI created comics or illustrations are kinda dumb.