All the recent postings on line art and problems with colorization prompt me to ask a basic question. But first, as they say on TV, some background.
About five years ago, when I started an interest in digital profile art, I did some quick communicating with experienced digital profile artists (Tullis, Styling, etc.) and was surprised to find that although everyone used PS for rendering, about three different methods were being used to lay out the aircraft lines before colorization:
Method 1. Scanned image with white remover in PS (no Illustrator), no paths created.
Method 2. Illustrator used to generate line work from scanned image then imported into PS as paths
Method 3. Paths created in PS from scanned image; paths then made into selections and saved for efficiency.
I started out with Illustrator for digital art, and finally became rich enough to afford PS, so there was a natural tendency to go the second method. Basically I find that available 3-views are often inaccurate, so method 1 doesn't appeal to me, plus modifications are not easily done without paths.
I have been using method 2 for all my profiles, but I'm having second thoughts about this and think that method 3 is the way to go. I find that once imported into PS, I am always tweaking the paths, plus I'm not careful in creating closed paths--resulting in having to use selection tools to re-trace path lines.
I'm a big supporter of the profile method described by Supah in another thread:
"I'd put each colour on its own layer yes. That way they are relatively easy to edit if you ever want to adjust the layout of the paintscheme. What I do is define all the basic parts like wings tails engines air inlets as shapes first. They make very clean selections later on, you can anti-alias them, and this way you always have the same selection. Another hint is to keep your PSD organized by using the groups you can make in your layers pallette. This is sort of like a directory on your HDD, you can put layers into these groups and name the groups. Put all your paths in one, your paintscheme in one, your highlights and your shadows. These makes the file a lot easier to work with. Work at atleast A3 size and 300 DPI otherwise you will not be able to sell prints of it later on."
I think another secret is to form as many closed paths in PS as possible to permit efficient selections to be made and minimize use of the polygon selection tool.
Sorry for being so long, but here's my basic question to you experts:
For doing our type of profile work (and only profile work) does Illustrator give us any capability that PS (V. 7 and beyond) doesn't already provide??
Thanks!
