Digital Screen Toning - Avoiding Grayscale Mode and Moire Effect

[Mike Dutton]

So most of my question is laid out in the subject line. I've got a possible gig doing screen toning for comicbooks. Here's what they want:

* excellent understanding of manga toning style, shojo and shonen
* Photoshop
* ability to manipulate bitmap tones (unfortunately, files may NOT be changed to grayscale for layering, as this leads to moiré.)
* ability to lay tone without creating moiré
* understanding of pixel sizes
* ability to adjust brush stroke sizes, vary and soften edges of lines, etc. to avoid “computer look” to finished work
* understanding of how to create depth and 3-d effects using tone
* ability to add tone without changing overall design of art
* must be able to access our FTP with your Internet provider

So my issue is that the sample page they provided is in a TIF bitmap, which I can't seem to edit, paint on, work layers.... pretty much nothing. I have to convert it to grayscale to even mess with it... which goes against items three and four above, right?

Here's what I've done, and I'm pretty sure I've screwed up: I converted it to grayscale, and moved the image onto a new file, preset to RGB color. I then used the pattern stamp to apply screen tone patterns that I found online (not gonna buy any of these).... only to realize that the patterns vary in type from indexed, rgb, to grayscale. And yes, there's a moire effect already on my sample page.

What I'd like to do is use the sample patterns they provided, but they're also TIF bitmaps, so I have to screw them up the same way. From there I use a clone stamp. The main issue here is that they haven't provided the range of values I need to really do this.

So to sum it up.... I've got a firm grasp of how to tone an image the old fashioned traditional way, but not with digital screen tones in photoshop. Because the pay is very very low, I can only afford to go about doing this digitally, and very very quickly. I can do this job very easily if I have the tools and technical know-how. Is anyone willing to help me gain the tools and know-how?

Thanks!

[softocean]

I saw a book on creating screen tones with flash at Borders the other day. Maybe you can check it out - its from the drawing manga series.

My sketchbook is here