Senbonzakura Kageyoshi

This tutorial may be specific to how M7 does grays, but the principles can probably be applied elsewhere. It covers:

• Flat grays
• Gradient grays
• Patterned grays

We’ll start where the Redrawing Tutorial leaves off. You’ve covered the gray area with a new layer of gray. You’ve redrawn the line art on top.

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Select the gray layer and apply the Film Grain Filter with settings 8/0/0. Filter > Artistic > Film Grain. The first slider is set to 8, the second and third are set to 0. For M7, make sure you’re working on the original 3000 px raw so that it resizes properly when you’re done.

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Sometimes, we have gradient backgrounds that go from dark gray to light gray.

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For this, use the Eyedropper Tool to take a 5 x 5 sample of both ends of the gradient (one for the foreground swatch, one for the background swatch).

Next, select the Gradient Tool, which is in the same square as the Paint Bucket. The default gradient is Foreground to Background.

First, put a layer of gray over the gradient. You can either use the Lasso Tool like in the Redrawing Tutorial or you can use the Pen Tool if you prefer.

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Now lock the transparency on that layer so you can only affect pixels that have already been designated a color.

With the Gradient Tool Selected, and the appropriate shades of gray as foreground and background, draw a line in the direction of your gradient.

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Now apply the Film Grain filter like before. You’ll have to tweak the second two sliders a little bit to make sure the gradient isn’t fuzzed out. For this panel, I used the settings 8/2/2.

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Lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of gray patterns, too. In general, they have a swirly or mottled appearance.

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Using whichever method you prefer, copy the mottled gray background onto it’s own layer. Lock the transparency on that layer.
Go Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Move the slider until the original print texture is no longer visible. The reason the layer is locked is so that you don’t blur onto other parts of the page.

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Now add the Film Grain. Like with the gradient, you might want to tweak the last two sliders to prevent the filter from fuzzing out the contrast. Again, I used 8/2/2 for this.

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I’ve come across a few instances where the differences between the grays was very small. This can be troublesome because when you apply the film grain, you lose even more of the contrast. If this happens, make a duplicate copy of your blurred gray layer and place it above the layer that gets the film grain. Now set the duplicate to multiply and reduce the opacity until you get the shades of gray you want. But since you have the extra layer, your film grain is most likely faded now, right? In this case, set your film grain extra strong to compensate for the second layer. For one panel, I had the Film Grain set to 12/2/2 and the top multiplied layer was at 80% opacity.

In some cases, you’ll have a mottled gray background with white spots. You have to be careful because if you film grain white, it’s no longer white. For this, either 1) don’t include the white areas in the gray blur layer or 2) use the magic wand to copy and paste the white areas onto a layer above the gray blur layer.

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