I love having a scratch file to work with. While I have the recurring character colors saved as swatches (which is quite handy), it would be counter-productive to swatch every single color I use at various times per story and page.  So, I pretty much make a separate PSD made of clippings of things I can sample color from.

The scratch file clippings are generally made from flat colored images that include the colored lineart. I don’t bother including shaded or overlayed clippings because I generally have the overlay settings written down, and my shading colors remain virtually the same across each page (#0d004c, the same color as character lineart, only at 25% opacity). You want the most basic colors to sample from, not something with a certain tint or overlay.

Scratch files are definitely not a unique concept, I am sure many other webcomic creators take advantage of them. If you do, let us know, and maybe even show us a picture of what clips you have on it.

Tags: clippings, coloring, how to, hpkomic, photoshop, scratchfile