- Sep 23, 2005
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Yes, it definitely is easier to shade if you can limit it to various areas.
One other thing to consider, one of the most important aspects of shading is the contrast. Most times artists don't get dark enough darks and light enough lights, so they lose the illusion of form. The values and contrast carry more of the image than the colors, and make the image pop. One way to make sure that you are getting this correct is to take your color image that you are working on and make a new copy that you desaturate. Once you can see the greyscale version the contrast issues usually become apparent.
Also, while in traditional media you might have to build up values gradually through layers to get the contrast you want, in digital there are some shortcuts. I can lay in a first layer of my values then adjust levels to enhance the effect, then go clean up the rest of the effect with manual brush strokes.
By adjusting levels you can control the darks and lights separately (as opposed to contrast, brightness, intensity settings which don't quite give the same control over that element). This way you can enhance contrast by deepening the darks without blowing out the lights.
Sometimes after using level adjustments to increase contrast you might need to knock down the saturation just a bit to get back to more understated color, but still maintain the new values.
However, there may be times where you want more understated values or less saturated colors. So depending on what you are going for it may not be best.
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