RePeatBog

For a few years now we’ve produced a free comic book for a special collections exhibit at UCSC. The first exhibit was on the work of Marie Severin, one of the most important figures in the modern comics era. Marie passed away this week and we thought people might want to read a little about her groundbreaking career. 

Unpopular fact: minimum wage was conceived to be the minimum amount of money a person would need to support themselves and their families when working 40 hours per week.

Unpopular fact: minimum wage was created because working men and women in this nation fought–figuratively in the negotiating room and literally in the streets–for a fair working wage, with sweat and blood and tears and death.

Unpopular fact: military service personnel are not the only people who have fought and died for your rights as American: labor leaders and common workers laid down their lives so that you could have a 40 hour work week instead of 80 hours; so you could have a 2 day weekend instead of none; so you could have lunch and bathroom breaks instead of going hungry and shitting your pants,; so you could have a three day weekend in September.

Marie Severin: cover prelims for Thor #181 and Sub-Mariner #31 (1970)

Mush Druid.

Dip

Region of origin: Catalonia

A black dog myth from the Catalan region, but unlike other stories of black dogs who serve as death omens but rarely directly interact with the people who see them, the dip is a vampiric beast in the employ of the Devil, descending in packs from the mountains and attack anyone they come across to drink their blood. The dip has become particularly associated the town of Pratdip, coincidentally named but etymologically distinct, where the dog is featured on their coat of arms and an annual celebration, the Pratdip Llegnedari, is held just before the weekend of All Saints, featuring stories and games symbolically hunting and rounding up the creatures.

[Sources referenced: X | X | X ]

Google: did you mean “wicker alligator”?

Me: …well I do now

…in Photoshop.

I do all my Photoshop painting in RGB mode, then flatten those files and convert them to CMYK when it’s time to send them to my publisher to go to the printing press. Here’s why.

Let’s look at an image in which I’ve used a layer (handily named ”Screen”) with its blend mode set to “Screen” in order to simulate the light bloom from a big ol’ bonfire. This is the same document with the same layers, only the “Screen” layer ON and OFF. I painted it in RGB mode. It’s in RGB mode right now.

Let’s take this same layered file, and just change it into CMYK mode.

(First this happens: Photoshop doesn’t support my “Levels” adjustment layer in CMYK mode, so it’s going to throw it out during the conversion process.)

After the conversion, we get this:

… now we have the original layered document in CMYK mode. Note the differences between the ways Photoshop accomplishes the Blend Mode rendering in each colour mode.

I’ve added some junk to help clarify. Again, notice how Photoshop handles that “Screen” blend mode in the RGB document versus the CMYK document.

If we take away all the other layers…

… you can see the “More Screen” layer is essentially identical, even though PS renders the Blend Mode effect differently.

Photo Filter adjustment layers operate differently, too…

Compare left and right. RGB on the left, CMYK on the right.

To send our painting to the printer AND preserve the original look of our Blend Mode and Adjustment Layer effects, just flatten the image before you convert the colour mode…

Photoshop “bakes” all our layer effects into one layer of definitive pixels, which can then be safely converted to CMYK without losing all the sweet juiciness of our original effects.

Now, CMYK can’t do everything, because the four-colour ink process (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK) just can not replicate the complete range of colours that the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colour mode can produce. Welcome to “Colour Gamuts.”

All you can do is keep this information in your mind. Remember that those hot pinks, rich teals, and deep purples will not survive the conversion to CMYK. But that’s okay – colour is relative,* so working within the CMYK colour gamut is no great pain. 

[ * This is a topic of discussion for another day. Or, you know, look into it on your own. ]

Here’s an example of an image I painted that didn’t play well with CMYK:

It may be hard to see, but the deep colours of the water turned bland and desaturated after being converted to CMYK. Oh well, you make adjustments and move on with your life.

Happy painting!

TL;DR:

Blend modes look better in RGB

Adjustment layers look better in RGB