#grafix duoshade

[sandyjarrell]

Digital commission prelims. Next, I’ll print the tones and ink ‘em.

[mysterioustransmissions]

DuoShade Photoshop pattern from real scans

I made Photoshop patterns out of scans of old Grafix DuoShade paper. You can download them here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Pab8Y8R2x4a-Hy4tlprsZN-ORZlCsC-/view?usp=sharing (17MB ZIP file)

Grafix DuoShade (often called DuoTone) was a type of paper that had hidden patterns that could be revealed by applying special chemicals. It was frequently used in illustrations in the 80s and 90s. I primarily associate it, as I imagine many do, with the early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics. The small, straight diagonal lines used for shading in some of the illustrations in this post are examples of that. My friend David Marshall writes more extensively about the paper here. Below is a comics page I toned using the patterns I made (from the comic Welcome to Typhon).

These Photoshop patterns were created from a 600pdi scan of a sheet of Grafix DuoShade paper (hand labelled as “240”, whatever that means) given to me by the great Jim Lawson from dwindling reserves of Mirage Studios. You can download the raw scans of the paper here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XHhlgakL_MjZvAY7JRAGaZ4R3VQ204pe/view?usp=sharing (25MB TIF file)

Do whatever you want with these files, but don’t resell them. If you use them, feel free to let me know! ([email protected]) Crediting me (Colin Panetta, colinpanetta.com) would be a very nice thing to do. Even nicer would be tipping me, which you can do here.

Features:

There are two patterns- one with a single direction of diagonal lines, and one with two directions of diagonal lines that cross (as pictured at the top of this page).

Those two patterns can be overlaid on top of each other and will line up.

These files contain the black part of the patterns only. The white part of the pattern (the negative space) is transparent, so the pattern can easily be overlaid on top of any other imagery.

I left the patterns as PSDs so you can monkey with them if you want. Before creating the patterns you can turn them a color, apply further texture to them, apply a background color, etc.

Directions:

Open the pattern files in Photoshop.

For each, go to the menu and select “Edit” > “Define Pattern…” Give them an identifiable name for later reference.

Open or create the Photoshop file you wish to apply the patterns to.

Create two new Layers and set their Fill to 0%.

Apply one of the patterns to each of the Layers by selecting Layer Style (the "fx" icon) > “Pattern Overlay…” and selecting the patterns you just created.

Draw on each of the layers to bring out the patterns!

Notes:

Due to the fact that these patterns are made from scans of the actual stuff, they are full of good ol' analog imperfections. If you want perfection, make a pattern from scratch in Photoshop. (David can help with that.)

I did my best to make these patterns overlay on top of each other seamlessly. But due to the varying consistency of the lines, matching the edges perfectly proved to be a bear and the edges are more visible than I’d like.

It was also difficult to find a swath large enough that the repeating nature of the pattern wouldn’t be apparent. But unless you're applying the pattern in large, flat chunks I don't think it’ll be noticeable.

Tips:

By default your patterns should be displaying at 100%. So, since these patterns were scanned at 600dpi, if your document is set at 600dpi then the patterns will be the size they would have been on an actual sheet of DuoShade paper. If your document is 300dpi, compensate by shrinking the pattern by 50% (by clicking on the "Pattern Overlay" layer style and editing the Scale).

The more you scale the pattern down from its original size, the more apparent the repeating nature of the pattern will be.

You can apply a background color to the pattern by not setting the Fill for the layer to 0% and setting your brush to be a specific color.

And now here are a couple videos I shot of myself using the actual paper.