I feel like an alien when I read a discussion on flatting, because I do it in a wholly different way and I can't figure out why the (to my mind) more complicated approaches are so widely used. I made a Photoshop action that expands a selection by 2 pixels and fills it with a color on a layer underneath the lineart. What I do to flat is simply use the wand to select all the areas that need the same color, and with a single click to play the action, they're done. It takes me half an hour to flat a page this way, and it only takes longer if there are many areas that require a special color treatment.
Although maybe I'm forgetting that I prepare a very clean lineart that is scanned in pure black and knocked out from the white background... Maybe it's a factor :S

My comic is done in cel-style flat color and the pages are relatively small (1650x2400px), so I flat like I was painting a cel, by hand with the brush tool (with each color on a separate layer). Light and shadow colors are each on additional layers grouped with the base color layer. I move things around a lot when assembling pages, and each panel is drawn and inked separately, so it's very useful for me to be able to treat each shape as a separate element, and move a character or change color/lighting easily.

If the pages were much larger and/or done in a more complex coloring style, this method would probably not be practical.

I flat about the same as cedar, except because I use digital line art I just make sure the lines are closed (which gets easy with practice, though is a little more complicated on fur at first) - then select, contract, fill on a layer beneath. It takes me a few seconds at the end of each figure I ink. I have to say though, traditional pencils are a pain to flat! I helped someone else, and it almost would have been quicker just to ink everything over and flat that way! If you use traditional it's usually very prudent to hire a flatter.

Rather than starting the entire selection over, I just drop a bright red, then replace the parts of the selection that are actually part of the area I was trying to select to a colour that makes sense, but leave the mistakenly-selected areas as the bright red. Then I continue the selection of the proper area, using the red to speed the rest of it up by clicking quickly through it without having to worry about retracing the lines I already painstakingly traced.

Also, after a while, you may develop a sense for the spots in an upcoming selection that are most likely to give you premature double-click-ulation. Start the selection at a point opposite that area so the bad closing crosses as little unwanted space as possible. With enough practice, starting at that point should become second nature.


The vast majority of the time, we are given lines from artists who do not close their areas in the inks. Otherwise, I would use the filters, which would save me the bother of manually selecting each area. Then just tap-tap-tap-tap as fast as I can through the random colours to make them less random.

If you draw the lines yourself, you're free to close the areas, if that suits your aesthetic sensibilities. If you work for someone else, you're not getting paid to clean up the lines, which would usually take just as long as manual flatting.

Also, making the flat colour areas meet under the lines is a factor when working for books that will be printed. Just expanding your selection by two pixels will not usually do that. If any part of a printing press goes slightly out of alignment for whatever reason, if the areas don't meet, you're liking to get a whacky white halo all over the page. To prevent that, there are a number of techniques.

Making the areas meet under the lines is just the most basic, and happens to be part of my job description.

Line "trapping" is the colourist's purview. This is laying a "rich" grayish colour under the black lines to make the blacks print more visually pleasingly than if they were just laid over random colours. No black ink is perfectly opaque, so the colours behind have an effect. Also, the halo, if there happens to be one, isn't as jarring.

Or, just not using black at all, which has been working well lately for the main guy I work with at Marvel.


Not for "flatting," no, but it works for you, which is fine too.

I do much the same as you when I'm colouring, but that's mostly due to a lack of confidence. With experience, having to rely on the crutch of many layers will fade away.


Most comic pages are "traditionally inked", but set to Image->Mode->Bitmap so they're 100% black and 100% white. This makes images containing millions of pixels save as teeny-tiny little files, very quick and easy to send by email.

Pencil art, like Simone Bianchi or Dustin Weaver, are all huge files. Tend to have to be transfered by FTP. Again, with practice, you develop a sense for the optimal "center" of pencil lines, where the meeting of two colour areas is least conspicuous. The darker, the easier, but who relies solely on dark lines when using a pencil? There's no fun in that.

Eagle, your response elucidated many things for me, but I wanted to point out a few things.



I'm aware of registraion (I'm originally a graphic designer) and I do print my books. I have printed a couple of dozen that I colored this way with 3 different printers, without any problem. But my blacks are never 100K, which produces a grayish and is problematic for registration – I use rich blacks which are in fact CMYK (it's the photoshop default for this reason, I believe) so there's no room for the white halo you mention. Wanted to mention that as an additional technique to what you mentioned, and also a way to make the 2-pixel expansion work, if it doesn't otherwise.
I think the printer is also a factor. Mine are extremely tedious, as runs tend to be small. I would imagine that when printing a huge, weekly run, chances of registration not being perfected are much higher.

Yes, flat black ink prints dull.

CMYK is the most common mode for comics to be printed in.

But the rules are fuzzing lately. It's not so dangerous to work in RGB anymore.

If you look at this guy's work: http://eraserx.deviantart.com/gallery/

It's all done in RGB mode, with CMYK preview on, and I've held the final printed product in my hands to compare to his working files. They come out with very clear fidelity.

That's not to say you can necessarily expect that level of leeway with just any printer. However, CMYK is a pain in the ass to work with, for so many reasons. The math behind the colours just seems wonky.

I spent months reading up on everything I could about making CMYK work and seeing what John gets away with in RGB just makes it seem not worth the effort.

This is a bit of a segue, but we discussed Bpelt's MultiFill/Flatten plug-ins before in this thread and I was wondering if anyone using CS4 windows has had any luck at all getting them to work?

Are you using the 64-bit version of the plug-ins? (vs the 32-bit original version)

The 64-bit versions cost just shy of $100, if I remember right.

Are you using the 32bit or 64bit version of Photoshop? The originals won't work in 64bit.

Are you trying to use them on a layer that only has the black lineart pixels without any white pixels between them? You need the white pixels.

The lines have to be "bitmapped", that is %100 black and %100 white, no gray.

If you've got gray or antialiased lines you can use Image=>Adjustments=>Posterize and set it to two colours and that should give you the aliased black lines.

32-bit is what i run, so i tried the 32-bit original files. I put the lineart on a layer with a white BG and used "threshold" to make sure it's completely b/w. most every spaces is joined. I've looked through the list of common problems and can't seem what is going on. XD I head that other people with CS4 were having the same issue, though.

I don't use CS4 anymore, but when I did it worked fine.

Where exactly is it giving you problems? Do the filters show up in the Filters menu? Are they grayed out? If you click, does anything come up? Are you able to fiddle with the Multifill options? Are you able to hit the Okay button? Does it give an error message? When you go into the colour picker and sample the white and black of your lineart, does the picker say they're exactly 100% perfect black and white? Are you working in CMYK or RGB?

You need to be a LOT more specific for me to know anything.

Sorry, Eagle, I'll try to be more specific. XD

The filters load, they are selectable. The colour picker says the lineart I'm using is exactly 100% B/W (with actual white filled background on the same layer, not transparent). I'm working in RGB, but I have also tried this in CMYK just in case.

When I select the proper layer, then the Multi-fill filter, the option box pops up exactly as it's supposed to according to the Bpelt website. I didn't touch the options at all, leaving it on the default. I clicked 'OKAY'. Photoshop acted like it was working... and then nothing happened. The lineart remains just the same as it was before the filter. I've since tried changing the options in various different ways and haven't found any setting that works, but the filter itself is never blocked to me.

It must be something that I'm doing, but after going over the process a dozen times I just can't figure out what it is.

That is weird.

In the History, is there a new state that's created when you run Multifill? If I remember right, it would just be called "Filter" or somesuch.

Try making a new empty file and just squiggle a simple closed shape on it with the pencil tool in black. See if the filter runs then.

I've run it on some supremely complicated pages and rarely had problems with running out of memory, but then you get an error message.

I'll tell you the settings I have in Multifill:

MultiFilled Color: [perfect white]
Tolerance: 0
Color Palette: Random Colors
[Check] Join Areas <= 20 px
[Uncheck] Flag Areas <= 20 px [really bright ink]
Measure size by: Height Width

Check that where I've got [perfect white] yours hasn't been slightly changed. If it's off by a fraction of a percent, it'll run, but won't lay any colours.

Pretty weird, yah. XD

Thank you so much for your help, Eagle -- I can't check this right now, but I will as soon as I get home. You've been really great to help me with this.

Not a problem.

I'm curious how it turned out.

So I've been practicing this because my usual method is pretty close to what Arioch described. I've been working as the little youtube tutorial suggests, and while I'm not pro (right now my hand is a bit too twitchy, lol), I'm sure with practice I can do it faster.

My problems are actually where the flatting ends and coloring begins, and I was hoping you might know how the next step works.

The huge thing I like about separate layers is you can prevent yourself from going 'outside' your lines with preserve transparency. With this method, the best I could come up with is selecting the area I want to color with the wand and doing my larger brush strokes, and then taking the selection off to work in the details carefully. The marquee is so visually distracting that I really dislike having it there while I work. Am I does wrong? >>

What does one do if they finish an area and realize, later, that they need to change it? Last night I realized I needed to remove some of the saturation in an area, and I had an easy-ish time of it because I was working in a cel-style, so it wasn't too hard to reselect everything, but a more feathered brush could have made it extremely difficult and messy to re-grab those areas to paint over.

I also discovered that when converting to jpg, photoshop chose not to save the linework that was saved as a channel but since the tutorial said that was a matter of file size, maybe I'll just keep the linework a layer in the future. Naughty photoshop.

Depending on whether you have Mac or PC, just click CTRL/Command + H, and it will hide your marquee! Super useful. You can use the same tool to hide guidelines, if you use those when working.



Hmm, you might try just duplicating the flats layer(s) and then making them invisible until you're done. Then you can use that to re-select/revert the shapes later.

These are both really smart ideas. Thank you!

Thanks for chiming in, Niki!


Saving the lines in a channel isn't forever. You would normally transfer them back to a layer once you're done the basic colouring [or just keep a layer, but hidden until you need it again]. Then you work on the line holds and whatever special effects go over the lines. These should be your last steps before the file's finished.

Saving smaller files is only really an issue if you're a flatter, needing to send lots of files quickly by email or however.

Definitely keep a layer with just your flats on it. That'll let you easily create masks for adjustment layers later, if you need them.