Black as a color?

I'm having a heck of a time trying to get a shirt I made look like a natural and rich black color. By that I mean being able to see the folds and material texture under the color layer (while in PS). I've tried using various lighter shades of black, but they all look like a muted grey and pure black just hides everything.

I know there's a way to achieve this, since I've seen many good examples of black clothes on the grid... everyone seems to know this secret technique but me.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

for a start your folds should be darker than the base material with a slight highlight on them to pick them up. try starting your base colour at about 85 to 90% black and your folds graduating from around 86 to 95% black. sometimes it may not look like what you want, it may look a tepid black, but by the time it's on a avatar, with contrast to it's surroundings it may very likely actually look like the black your after.

Absolutely right. Look at a black dress hanging in your closet in RL. It's not really 100% black (unless you're standing in the closet with the lights off ). When you are texturing any garment that is supposed to look black or white, always start with a base tint that is 85-90% of that, so that you have room to darken the shadows and build the highlights.

Also, for a rich, dark garment consider using a very dark blue instead of pure black. It will LOOK black to the observer, but will feel much more real and alive than something that is dead black. Same thing with a pure white garment -- use a very light blue to make it LOOK white.

What they said. Only I do everything in grayscale and then use Hue/Saturation adjustment layers over the top to do the colours. Makes it easier in a lot of ways IMO, and playing with the sliders lets you see what different shades will give you without going back and forth filling in colours.

Yes, I do something similar, here's my method:
1.) I paint my garment in greyscale all on one layer (under the template layers) so the highlights and shadows look natural and blend well. Basically the final painting looks like a white garment.

2.) Then I put a greyscale texture pattern to simulate cloth (set to "multiply" above the garment layer.

3.) Finally, I put a color layer (also set to "multiply" above those two layers to add color to the garment.

This works great for just about every color I can imagine... except for black and near black colors. The only thing I've thought of that might work for creating the illusion of a rich black color is repainting the entire garment again from scratch using a darker greyscale palette, so the final painting looks like a dark grey garment (which is what I think Dekka and Rolig were talking about).

Unfortunately, it takes me several weeks to paint a decent garment and get all of the folds to match up correctly, so repainting something I've already done seems a bit redundant just for one color... there has to be an easier way, right?

Yes, there is. Paint all your folds, shadows, highlight, wrinkles .... whatever ... on addition layers above the fabric layer itself. That way, all that painstaking work is independent of the fabic layer, which you can tint any way you like (actually, I do the tinting with an adjustment layer too, so I don't have to mess with the fabic layer except to match patterns across seams).

and if you want true realism, make sure your 'black' is red or blue based (you rarely see green based blacks but they do exist) since almost all dye bases have these tinges (andcan be noticed woth as they fade, and in bright light in the hilights)

I prefer yellow and oranges (read peach) for whites, but blue works good too. peach comes out VERY well for high contrast bright paterns, oddly yellow and blue seem to work well for high contrast with dark colors.

I'm sure everyone does it a little differently, but here is how I usually do it:

1. Bottom layer (set to normal) = fabric

2. Next up = Body highlights and shadows (set to overlay usually, could be different depending on the look I want)

3. Above that are many 50% grey layers for wrinkles, seams, etc. set to overlay

4. Above that are the Hue/Saturation adjustment layers (set to normal)

Sometimes I will switch the highlight and shadow layer with the fabric layer depending again on what creates the effect I'm going for. For something where I just want a subtle weave texture, I might use the fabric as the overlay. If your uncoloured garment is looking white, it sounds like you are working much lighter than I am. Mine are usually light to medium grey. If I need to make adjustments for a particular colour, I will adjust the fill/opacity of an overlay layer or duplicate an overlay layer.

I hope that makes sense! /me is not terribly good at explaining things like this in writing....

Hmmm... looks like I'm going to have to learn how to paint differently. :-/

See, I'm kind of an old school painter and just blob various shades of grey on a single white layer to get the general feel of the garment. Then I use the smudge tool to blend and shape the folds and wrinkles until they look right... here's an example of a finished shirt using this technique:
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh129/Lazerbrain/shirt_example.jpg
I'm not sure I can achieve the same effect using multiple layers for shadows and highlights, since all of the contrasting values use the "fabric" layer for blending. Which is why I was wondering if there was a better way of turning a 'white' garment into a 'black' one.

At any rate, I guess y'all have answered my question, so I'd like to thank everyone for their wonderful help.

Hi Skuz! You don't have to throw all that work away! There are a couple of ways to make a couple of styles of shirt from it.

If all you want is the black shirt, the problem that you are having is that the darks in your white shirt aren't really dark enough. To fix it, just add a Curves adjustment layer.

I would put a Black layer under your drawing, and adjust its opacity to get the black I wanted. (95% in this case.) Then clip your Adjustment Layer to the white shirt (Option/alt and click on the line between the two layers when the cursor changes.) That way, it will affect the white shirt, but not the black layer below it.

Adjust the curves until you have very black shadows on a dark shirt. You can see the effect here.



Not perfect, and it would look better if you drew in some highlights, but that's still less work than redrawing the whole thing.

On the other hand, if you want a silk shirt, you can have one without redrawing anything!

It will look like this.



After you have darkened the White Shirt, as above, make a copy of that layer, drag it above the Adjustment Layer, and set the Blend Mode to Screen. Then double click on the layer (not the name or thumbnail) to open the Layer Style dialog.

At the bottom of it, you'll see a section that says, "Blend if". Leave the drop down menu on gray, and then drag the black pointer on the This Layer slider most of the way to the right. Hold down the Option/alt key to break the pointer into two halves.

What that does is tell PS to hide the layer, unless the gray level is at the step determined by the left most half of the point. Since the point is split, PS will show increasing amounts of the layer, until it reaches the right half, at which point it will show the whole thing. This allows a gradual transition between showing and not showing, which is what we want.

Do the same thing with the White point, on the right, but drag it to the left. We want to hide the very lightest tones, and then show some of them in the middle.

What we have, in this case, is a layer that's totally hidden unless the pixel is at an intensity level of 223 out of 255. Then the amount shown is ramped up until the intensity is 232, all the pixels with intensity between 232 and 239 are shown, then it ramps down again, until 248, after which the pixels are hidden once more.

(The numbers are to the right of the dialog, so you can see what you're doing.)

That Blend If dialog is one of the most under-utilized parts of PS, in my opinion. You can also determine the amount of blending based on the Red, Green, or Blue channel. And you can blend either based on the colors of the layer you have selected, or the one below.

It's quite powerful, once you get used to using it!

You might also want to add another layer at the top of the stack, to touch up the black a bit on the placket and collar (I would.) But that's very minor drawing.

So, hope this helps! I just hate to see good work duplicated. (And I did want to show everyone that Blend If dialog.)

small hint... don't be afraid of white.

many materials have very bright highlights depending on how the light hits them, even when they are dyed very dark, or even black.
do a google image search for "black silk", and (after appreciating Sunny in her black silk stockings ) you should see what I'm getting at.

So consider the material of the shirt you are trying to make - you may want to add some very light grey highlights to make it "pop"

Wow Robin, is there anything about PS that you don't know?

I've tried messing with the "curves" before, but since I really don't know how the tool works (as with many tools within photoshop LOL), I couldn't seem to get anything useful out of it... now I have a better idea of how to set it up.

And that "Blend if" feature looks awesome! I mean who knew that even existed? PS is probably the most versatile software program on the planet and getting better with every version. I've been using PS for over 15 years and still discover something new to do with it every day!

Anyway, I'll play around with your suggestions and see what I can come up with, many thanks!

And yes Ben, light is a very hard thing to understand and master. Everyone should be aware of how sneaky it is.