Beautiful details! I agree, the Painter one looks better, maybe tweak the color or contrast in Photoshop to get that affect maybe...? I'm not sure.

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Thanks. :D And I'm afraid tweaking the colour contrast in Photoshop doesn't quite get the same effect. It's one of those subtle things that can't be helped I believe. :(

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Wonderful piece of artwork! the face came out amazingly! :)

Photoshop has some sort of special CYMK representation, which is apparently more accurate to how it would look in print. It's usually best to go with Photoshop's version of how the file will look.

I saw the first volume of The Dreaming when I was visiting a friend's house recently, they had it in their comic collection. She really likes it! :)

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Thanks for dropping by! XD And I've embedded the Painter colours into the PS file, so HOPEFULLY it should come out decent in print. Oh well...

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Hello Queenie Chan!^_^ The cover for volume 2 is great!! I think the cover looks a bit brighter huh?

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Thanks! The cover, in a way, is more eye-catching than the first one.

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Oh yeah!In Volume1, the Africa Information page, makes me wanna go there!!^_^ It sounds really cool! (In a way..) Oh!! I almost forgot! This may sound kinda weird, but i don't know how the little dolls work!!!!-_-{.....} Im Serious..0_0

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It's Australia...but never mind. And I have no idea how the dolls work either. :X

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Hi, I just recently bought the dreaming, and I found it so interesting, im a twin myself haha. Me and my sister cant wait for volume 2 and I really like the cover for it you did, I hope thats what you'll be using.

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Hey, great!! XD It's wonderful to hear about twin sisters reading about... twin sisters. I hope that's the cover I'll be using too - there's no guarantee, but so far the art department hasn't said anything (and these guys have the last say).

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Wow, that Scholastic Print run is crazy, but seeing as Scholastic owns the 1-6 market, and book fairs in Junior Highs, it's not out of the ordinary. The cover to Book 2 is quite keen :)

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Thanks! There are a number of books with Scholastic runs, including Peach Fuzz. I was surprised by those numbers too. O_O At least it's surprised in a good way.

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Woooooooow...THAT'S CRAZY COOL!! Nice job, Queenie :) GREAT grasp of a light source.

I have no clue about this difference in CMYK, except that CMYK sucks ;) Rikki said a lot about that here, if that helps at all...I know he'd probably know the answer to this.

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Thanks for the link!! :D My answer is mostly answered. At least I know to go after Rikki Simons for his wisdom now, should I have further questions.

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Yup, he's definitely the coloring guru :)

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The info about the print runs is mighty good news. Congrats.

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Thanks! :D

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Heehee, I'm Dock's friend who has The Dreaming in her manga collection ^__^ I'm looking forward to vol 2 muchly! Congratulations on the extra print runs!

Hmm, why am I not surprised that it was Photoshop who ran away with the saturation levels? :/ The colour differences are visible, but it would have taken me a little while to notice if you hadn't pointed it out and compared them to each other in close proximity. To be honest though, when it goes to the printers, it's probably not going to come out as saturated as the photoshop version looks like on screen.

Though to be safe, I'd play with the colour balance ever so slightly on the photoshop one (if that's the one that will be submitted) and reduce the amount of magenta a teeny bit, I think that's the main culprit of change.

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Thanks! I think all the UK manga people must know each other, kind of like the Australia ones. XD

And actually, the more saturated version was the original picture. I opened it in Painter to have a look (because Painter decided to work all of a sudden), and I was surprised by how much better the colours looked. Doesn't work for other pics though... just a stroke of weird luck. I've tried getting the same combination in Photoshop by screwing with the hue/contrast/etc functions, but it was fruitless. As far as I can tell, it's a fundamental shift in palette colours, and not a change in hue or anything. :|

And I sent the Painter version in. As long as they use the embedded colours, it shouldn't suck. I hope they do. I ASKED them to. Oh well. :X

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The reason things look different is, as you discovered, because of the different color spaces being used. sRGB is intended for computer screens but is also common on consumer devices such as printers and digital cameras. CMYK is intended for print output, and Adobe RGB (1998) is a versatile color space designed with CMYK printed output in mind, but at the same time also catering to RGB devices such as screens and more sophisticated/expensive digicams.

There's heaps more color spaces available, but these are some of the more popular ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sRGB-AdobeRGB1998.htm

CMYK looks "duller" because it's intended for printed output. No computer screen can ever display CMYK completely accurately since the color gamuts are very different (and RGB is additive color mixing, whereas CMYK is subtractive color mixing).

Be careful when you convert color spaces, because in some cases you may lose color information.

If you're doing work for print, you should probably stick to CMYK. You can always convert it to sRGB color space in Photoshop if you need to create a sample image for the Web. (Do keep your original file in CMYK though)

Correct color management is absolutely essential if you are working with graphics. This means you need a properly color-calibrated screen (preferrably a CRT), and you need all the correct color profiles for all your output devices, including printer. All professional graphics/illustration software such as Adobe Photoshop is color-aware and fully configurable to manage color workflow.

You can't always trust your screen, but you can trust a correctly setup color-managed workflow.

If in doubt, ask your publisher and print shop for the correct color management settings to use.

Good luck.

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Thanks for all this information! I guess the learning curve will be pretty steep from now on. :O

While I can buy a laser printer everywhere, I'm not even sure where I'll be able to find a CRT these days. Certainly LCD technology will advance to the stage where it'll be the same quality as a CRT?

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Color laser printers wouldn't be much good for producing accurate color output, you'd be better off with a quality prosumer color inkjet from Epson.

As for LCDs, technology has pretty much already caught up to the point where they're as good as high-end CRTs, but you'll have to be picky when buying, and you'll have to pay a lot more for quality. Most consumer LCDs being sold on the market today have rather poor color reproduction (dithering, noticeable banding etc), especially when compared to CRTs in the same price range, and this is something that most reviews don't cover.

"Pro-quality" LCDs from makers such as NEC, EIZO and Lacie typically cost 3-4x as much as the cheap consumer models, but they're a good investment. The Apple Cinema Display series are also worth looking at.

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Right, thanks for the tips. I used to think laser printers are the standard for colour output, but then I'm still living in the 20th century. I'll check out some Epson printers. :D

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This cover looks great! :)

Heh. took me a while to notice the difference between these two pics. I can only notice the difference in the blues on her jacket... thing.

Congrats on the third print run. I'm sure you'll get to at least five before it's done. :)

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I don't think I'll get 5 print runs, but we can always hope. And I like the blue on the Photoshop jacket... blue+purple = mother of pearl look. The Painter version killed it, but I don't really mind.

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If the second and third books are as good as I expect they will be, they'll increase the popularity of the whole series.

Not many people will be buying the second book without the first, that's for certain.

But we'll see what happens.

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I'm really liking how the cover for volume 2 is turning out. I hope it gets approved by the higher-ups. I love how the girl (forgive me, her name escapes me right now) is overlapping the Tokyopop bar. Very dynamic.

Congrats on getting a third print run! I'm glad I got my copy of The Dreaming when it originally came out, as I adore the paper dolls that came with it.

I'm curious, does your editor (also my editor, I believe) tell you about your print run numbers? I ask because I only find out about how Peach Fuzz is doing through my royalty reports, which is of course long after the fact... am I just not asking enough questions? ^_^;;

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Hey, thanks! :D I also recently saw "Peach Fuzz" in "The Sydney Morning Herald"! I was gobsmacked it was in there, because the SMH is a kinda "snobby" newspaper where they frown upon pop entertainment. But it was wonderful and cool to see it in there (in Saturday Spectrum). Congrats!

As for the print figures, I was actually told by Tim Beedle, who isn't my editor, though Carol later told me about the Scholastic deal. Up until Tim's message, I had no idea whether ANY of my books were selling at all. Knowing that there is a demand for it is a HUGE relief. HUGE relief that it's not just sitting on the shelves doing nothing. I suggest you ask your editor about the sales figures - no reason why not to.

And how come I don't get royalty reports?! XD Probably too early for that. :|

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Royalty reports are twice a year, so it probably just hasn't been long enough for your book yet. :)

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XD Oh WOW that cover is amazing!! :adds to list to buy for SURE: I'm sold! MAJOR congrats on a third printing of your book *O*! I don't know what is considered 'good' in terms of numbers but if they have to keep reprinting that seems damn AMAZING to me XD!

What version of painter are you using? I use Painter 6 and I noticed that colors DO get overly saturated when I open the file in Photoshop but sometimes they seem to light in painter. I don't even think Painter 6 is CMYK compatiable... Hmmmm... I'll look into this more for you :D!

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Thanks for that, :D but I use Painter 9, and I think I've figured out the reason for the palette colour changes in Photoshop 7. Differences in the colour preferences or something (thanks to a chat between Rikki Simons and Tenotpet). :D I think you should have a look at that thread, because it may shed some light on your Painter-PS problems too. (it's in my updated entry).

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The cover for volume two is beautiful. I'm glad that I got the first volume with the paper dolls, I actually got the last copy in the store. I think there was only one copy of the book left at another bookstore I tried and both stores most likely started with 5-12 copies.

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I love the cover to volume 2! The color gives it such a brighter look and a bit softer edge. What are you planning for the third book? Suggestion: you should put Amber and Jeanie on the cover, or one of the ghosts along with them. I think it would kinda look cool.


-AnonymousQ

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Jeez, that's gorgeous! Her eyes don't seem to hold any emotion, though, although everything else about her pose seems to look frightened. Did you intentionally make them blank?

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Nah, but I intentionally made it seem stunned. I was explicitly told NOT to make Jeanie look frightened, because "The Dreaming" is meant to be more mysterious than scary. So there wasn't alot of facial expressions to choose from. You're right about the eyes looking a bit "blank" though, but perhaps what you meant was "glassy". I overdid the white reflection on the eye, so I went back and toned it back down to something darker.

If you refresh your page, you should be able to see the change and compare it to version below. :) Now she looks more vaguely "concerned" about something. That's about as much as I can change without giving her an actual facial expression. XD

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Hello! I was wondering, when DOES vol. 2 come out? I MUST GET IT!

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It comes out in November 2006. :D

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I noticed that in Volume 1 one of the chapter pages(maybe 2 or 4) has jeanie/amber. I cant tell which one because her hair is all fancy but she has amber's bangs and Jeanie's side bangs... I was telling my twin sis who noticed it that maybe you were going for the two of them =P

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Hello Queenie Chan, I was wondering, who is the shadow in the background on the cover of volume 2? Please don't tell me 'You'll just have to wait and read' or something like that. Is it part of the school's mysterious past? Who is it? WHO? WHO? WHO?

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it looks like the ghost from volume 1, the one that showed up when Amber was sleeping. Just guessing from the little hat on her head and the hair.

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Aha, you're right about that. I didn't really see the need to tell anyone because what's on the cover isn't related to the plot, but you've got it right!

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heehee..I read your 1st book...and I love it! My fav. graphic noval yet!!So..when is the 2ed coming out? cuz I can't wait!!!!

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It's going to be out in November this year. :D

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hey does someone know when volume2 comes out in holland???????(netherlands) p.s volume1 ROCKS!!!!!!

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I'm afraid not. <:) Not even my TOKYOPOP editor can tell you that, but I'm sure if it's popular enough, it'll come out as soon as possible. Lovely to hear from a fan in holland though! :D

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i like the photoshop version better, the first one looks kinda like teh self tanner she used went awry... u.u

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wow, awesome cover art. ^^ I can't wait til the second volume comes out. *dances* congrats on scholastic ordering another printing *thinks nostalgically about book fairs. ^^

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Ahaha Queenie!! ^_^
I love the cover! It looks really nice.
I can't wait to read The Dreaming 2!
-Karen

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