Hiring a colorist is one of the smartest things I ever did. And I’ve worked with two of the best — Ed Ryzowski and Alex Heberling.

Recently a Webcomics.com member asked how he could check his colorist’s work — to make sure it would look good when it was printed. My first impulse was to get a look at the original PSD file — with the layers activated. By colorists are reticent to release their original files — for fear of a well-intentioned collaborator going into the file and trying to change things. So many colorists only release a flattened TIFF file.

Luckily, Alex Heberling, who does a marvelous job of coloring my stuff, stepped in to share her expertise. With her permission, I’m publishing that information here for the greater membership who may not have been following the forum discussion.

This post has been submitted by Webcomics.com member Alex Heberling, creator of The Hues and colorist for Evil Inc.

From Alex:

I can offer some tips for checking over the flattened files. First, if you open this TIFF in Photoshop, you’ll see in the little document tab that it’s saved in CMYK color. So far, so good.

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