Home Tutorials How to Create Ink Bleed

How to Create Ink Bleed

Do you find that your digital art sometimes look harsh or unnatural?

When printing in real life, ink soaks into paper and spreads along the fine grain of the pulp. This creates a feathering effect known as ink bleed. Painting digitally doesn't work this way, so we need to recreate it.

Watch or read the instructions below to learn how you can simulate ink bleed digitally using Gaussian blur. We'll be using the ColorLab Comic Color Kit to demonstrate.

Note: Although this technique is demonstrated in Procreate, Gaussian blur is available in most image programs.

Can't Watch the Video? Here's what You missed:

Select the layer that you would like to be affected.
Tap the Adjustments menu in the top left of the screen and select Gaussian Blur.
Using your finger or Apple Pencil, tap and slide from left to right to adjust the intensity of the blur.

💡Top Tip: When using Gaussian blur to simulate ink bleed, less is more. Aim for about 1.3% (like we did in the video) or less. This will give you the desired effect without ruining the readability of your lines.

This technique can also be used when creating with halftones. Especially when using the ColorLab Comic Color Kit, to not only simulate ink bleed, but to better mix the halftones for a more homogeneous color.

And that's it! Pair your work with the Paper Boy textures included in ColorLab, or Phantom Paper seamless textures to finishe off the effect.

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