Clip Studio Paint Tutorial for Beginners

How's it going guys? Welcome back to a new video. So today I'm going to show you how I set up Clip Studio Paint. So if you're new to Clip Studio Paint, this is going to be a pretty useful video, I hope at least. So I'm going to explain all of the settings, all of the customizations that I've set up for Clip Studio Paint. I've done a similar video in the past, but it wasn't really in depth. I didn't show you all of the settings. So this one is going to be a little bit longer and I'm going to show you each individual setting and customization that I've gone through in Clip Studio Paint. So what you see on the screen is Clip Studio Paint as it looks when you open it up for the first time. So there may be a couple of differences. For example, I've already loaded all of my custom brushes and there's some icons you won't have if you open it up for the first time. But other than that, it's going to be exactly the same. So the first thing I want to do is I want to get rid of all of the unnecessary menus that we have on the screen. So there's like hundreds of menus here that we don't need. So let's just get rid of them real quickly. So the way we do this is, for example, over here we have the Navigator, which I don't need. So you just pull it over so that it's its own little pop-up menu. And then you want to hit the X and that's going to close it. And we're going to do the same for the Subview over here. So just pull it over, X. And we're going to do this for all of these items that we don't need. So we don't need information. We don't need layer. We can keep the layer property. We don't need the search layer. And we don't need the animation cells because we're not doing any animations. We don't need the history tab. Same goes for the auto action. Then we have some over here. So we have these little icons here in this row that I also want to get rid of. So we're going to hit this little arrow that points to the left. That's going to pull these little windows out. Drag it out, X. Drag it out, X. Drag it out, X. And we're going to do the same for all of these menus. So this is a little bit repetitive, but there's probably a quicker way to do this. It's just that I've never looked into it. So I'm just going to do it manually. Probably wasting time, but it's all fine. So what we have is we have the layer tab and we have the layer property tab on the right side. So what we can do is we can actually pull the property tab down next to the layer tab so that it's one group. And that's looking pretty good for now. So if we're going over to the left side now, you'll see that we have the subtool tab. This is where all of our brushes are. So we're going to keep this. Below it, we have the tool property. We're also going to keep that. Below that, we have the brush size. I don't like to keep this tab because I like to pick my brushes or my brush sizes manually. So let's just pull this over and close it. Below this, we have the color wheel. We're going to keep the color wheel. I'm not going to keep the sliders. So you can see this is a group of different tabs. So the first one is the color wheel, which we're going to keep. The second one are sliders. I don't like working with sliders most of the time. So let's just pull it over and close it. Next up, we have the color swatches. We can keep them, but for now, I'm just going to close them. Next up, we have the intermediate, whatever. If we're using it, closing it. Approximate color, we don't need that as well. And the color history, which is a cool function, but usually I'm not using it. So let's close it as well. So it looks way nicer now, much cleaner, more tidier. So what we're going to do is I'm going to keep everything on the right side. This is just my personal preference. So I'm going to pull this over because these are my brushes. This is my tool property. So if you pull this tab over to the right side, it's going to try to snap to this menu on the right side. And so I'm going to snap it right to the left of it. And you can see this red line appearing. And so I'm going to make it snap right to it. And I'm going to drag the tool property window on top of my subtool to where the red line appears. And that's going to make it snap on top of it. And then I can just pull it up like this, which is going to have, or which is going to allow me to have my brushes visible all the time. And also my brush settings, because the tool property window is basically the settings for your brushes. So we're just going to keep it as it is. Next up, we have the color wheel. Let's just pull it out and we're going to have it floating. So I'm not going to snap it to any window. So I'm just going to have it free floating in space. And then we have our toolbar. So this is where all our different tools are located at. So we have our different brushes, we have some erasers and the lasso tool, whatever. So I'm just going to pull this over as well. And I'm going to make it snap off to the left side of my right side window. And this is basically how I keep my menus. So I have my layers all the way to the right. I have my tool property window. I have my brushes down below and I have my toolbar. And then I also have a free floating color wheel. So this is basically how I set up my interface. Oh, and one more thing. So down below on the bottom, we have some more, I believe these are like for animation or so, just pull them out and close them. So the next thing I want to show you is setting up some shortcuts and also the custom bar on top. This is, I believe it's called the command bar, which we're going to set up and then we should be good to go. So I would say, let's just look at some shortcuts and then we'll go from there. All right. So to edit your shortcuts, it's pretty simple. You want to click on file. Then you want to go to shortcut settings right here. And this is going to open up a new window. Let me just size it down. And this is where you can set up all of your different shortcuts. So there are a couple of shortcuts that I'm interested in. So for one it's undo and redo. So we're just going to open up the edit menu and you can see that it says undo and redo. And this is usually set to control C and control Y, I believe. And you can see I already changed it to F1 and F2. Again, all of these shortcuts and most of the things that I'm showing you in this video is really based on personal preference. So you don't necessarily need to use my exact settings. I'm just going to run you through how to change these settings, but you don't need to set it up exactly as I do. So anyway, so let's say you want to change the undo shortcut. You just highlight it. And then there's this little gray box appearing here, which means you can press any type of key and it's going to change it to it. So for example, if you want to have it to backspace or to F or whatever, and I'm just going to keep it as F1 because that's what I feel comfortable using because it's on the top of my keyboard. It all comes down to personal preference. This is just what I like to use. So anyway, so the shortcuts that I use or that I set up are undo, redo. These are very important to me because I use them all the time. Then also if we close the edit tab, if we go to the view tab and you scroll down, we have the flip horizontal. This one is super important to me as well. This is allowing me to mirror my canvas and this allows me to kind of see any type of mistakes that I've done in my drawing. So I like to set it to control Y and again, you can set it to whatever you want, but control Y is for me easily reachable and just something that's kind of easy to remember for me. It's something I'm used to because I've been using it for so many years. So scrolling down just a little bit from here, you can see zoom in, zoom out and also the 100% view. So I have to zoom in, set up to F4 and zoom out to F3. So if you think back to the undo and redo, you'll notice that they are all kind of on the same row on my keyboard. So we have the F1 for the undo, F2 is redo, F3 is zoom out and F4 is zooming in and then also F5 is the 100% view. So once you're happy and once you've set up everything, you just hit okay and that's going to close the shortcut menu and you should be good to go. So let's open up a new drawing and just test it out. All right, so this is a drawing that I've done a while ago and let's just test out some of the shortcuts that we've set up. So hitting F4 is going to zoom into our image, F3 is going to zoom out, F5 is going to zoom into it 100%. So this is the actual size of the image. If we hit Ctrl Y, it should flip the image. So you can see how it flips it and that's about it. We also have the undo and redo button but those are kind of self-explanatory. I don't really need to show them but yeah, this is basically how to set up your shortcuts. Pretty easy. You just need to spend some time trying to find the ones that you like. So obviously, everybody has a different taste and different needs. So take some time, maybe an hour, maybe two, play around with some different settings and find some shortcut keys that you like. So anyway, so this is also a good time to look at our menu again. On our interface, you can see that we have the layers all the way to the right. This is really cool because we see all of the layers because the layer tab has its own space basically and it kind of takes the entire height of our display. So you can see all of the different or individual layers. Then also if we go over to the layer property tab, you have some other settings for the layers. So you have some effects and stuff. So moving over to the left, we have the tool property window. Again, this is where we set up our brushes. So for example, right now I have an airbrush selected so I can change the size of it. I can change the hardness or softness. I can change the density, the stabilization settings. So all of these things are very easily accessible for me. Then down below, I have all of the brushes that I may need. So the idea behind this setup or the way I kind of laid this out is that I have everything visible whenever I need it. And so whenever I don't need it, I just hit tab on my keyboard and this is going to hide all of the different menus. Hitting tab again is going to reveal all of these menus again. So this is really cool and a very important shortcut to remember. So just hitting tab is going to hide or reveal all of the menus. And then we also have the toolbar which has all of our tools and we have the color wheel which is super important to me. And also what you can do is, so depending on which software you're coming from, you can change the color wheel from a square to a triangle. This kind of depends on which program you're coming from, which app. I'm kind of used to the square because I originally come from Photoshop. Photoshop didn't actually have a color wheel but they always had the square. So this is kind of what I'm used to. Which also brings me to another very important shortcut. If we look at this little window with our color wheel, let me just size it up for you. So you can see we have the color wheel, we have the square. Down below, we have the HSV settings and also this little button to switch from a square to a triangle. But more important is, over in the bottom left, we have our foreground color and we have our background color. So hitting X on your keyboard is going to switch between these colors. Which is a very intuitive way to switch between your colors. So let's say you're painting skin and you need to switch between the skin color and the shadow color. Well, you just pick your skin color, then you switch over to the background color, pick your shadow color and you can easily just switch between them by hitting X on your keyboard. So you don't have to go back to the color wheel, change the color, blah blah blah. You just hit X and instantly it's going to switch. So this is already pretty exciting. I know this is nothing fancy but for the people who are new to digital painting, this is really something you should pay attention to and kind of get used to. But more importantly to me personally is this little window down here which is the transparent color. So basically this is an eraser but what makes it so special is that not only is it an eraser but it turns your drawing brush into an eraser. So usually what you do is, let me just demonstrate to you how you would usually do this. So let's just open up a new canvas and draw something. So I'm gonna pick a bristle brush and I'm just gonna draw a circle here. So usually what you would do now is if you wanted to erase something, you would have to switch over to your eraser and then erase which is fine and works pretty good. But the issue is or well it's not really an issue but it's just something that I personally don't like is that if I'm switching from my painting brush to the eraser you'll see that it's not the same brush while my erasers are different brushes than my painting brushes. But what I would like to do is erase with the same brush that I use for painting just to kind of be consistent with the texture and everything. So the way to do this is with your painting brush selected you just hit the transparent color and now your painting brush is an eraser. And again nothing big here this is nothing spectacular but once you've used it you don't want to miss it anymore. Here's a cool trick though. So let's say you have your painting brush selected. You don't want to go to your color wheel all the time and hit the transparent button to switch to the eraser. You want to have it more intuitive so there's a shortcut for it which is C. So just hitting C on your keyboard is going to switch to the transparent color and now you have an eraser. Hitting C again is going to turn it into your foreground color. I hope you can see how these shortcuts can really speed up your workflow but I would be so much slower if I weren't using shortcuts. Like honestly these are like the most time-saving tools available. So set up your shortcuts be clever about them and take your time and really get used to them. And so many people actually ask me why do you use Clip Studio Paint over Photoshop and one of those reasons is actually the transparent color. So Photoshop doesn't have it at least not to my knowledge. So believe it or not this is a feature that is so important to me that I wouldn't want to switch over to Photoshop just because it's missing there and I have it in Clip Studio Paint. So moving on we have some more settings that we can change. So if we click on file on top and we go to the modifier key settings we have some settings here that we can change. So to me the only really interesting setting here is the shift button. So make sure that everything on top where it says refine is unclicked. So you don't want to have a tick here anywhere and then you want to go down to shift and change it to change brush size. And what this is going to do is. So before if you wanted to change your brush size you would have to go up to this little slider here and then change it. But now by pressing shift and holding it and then just moving your cursor is going to change the brush size. I don't like going through the menus to change something. So having it set to a key on my keyboard and just having to kind of move my my cursor to change the brush size is really intuitive, really quick and so I love it. Really important to me. So basically this covers the most important aspects of Clip Studio Paint in my opinion. So I just want to show you quickly how to set up a canvas and what I look for. So if we go over to file and hit new you'll have this window pop up. And so make sure that you have illustration selected on top unless you want to create a comic or a magazine or something. Just click on illustration and then for the width you want to pick. Well basically it depends on how large you need your drawing to be. But in my opinion or in my case I rarely print out any of my art but I always want to have that possibility or that option. So I draw on a pretty large canvas. So for the width I have it set to 5000 pixels by 5000 pixels. So the width is 5000 height is also 5000. This gives me a nice square canvas. Then for the resolution I set it to 300 and basically this is your dpi meaning that this affects the quality when you print it out later on. So if the resolution is too low and you try to print it out at a larger size then the print is going to look blurry and it's not going to be high quality. So I would suggest anything above 150 and also you need to look out how much your computer can handle. So it could be that this canvas or these settings are a little bit too much for your computer because I do have a pretty powerful computer. So if yours is a little bit older you may want to pick some other sizes. So at a minimum I would say 2000 pixels by 2000 pixels at 150 for the resolution. Then the basic color expression set it to color. This is going to allow you to paint in color unless you only want to paint in grayscale. So set that to color and then for the paper color I just have it white but you can change it to anything and this is just going to preset the background color for you which you can always change later on but I just like to leave it white and then just hit okay and here's your new canvas and that's about it. So what you can see and this is also cool about Clip Studio Paint it creates the first layer for you automatically. So you have the background layer called paper and then on top you have a separate layer called layer one and this one is empty it's blank whereas in Photoshop this layer isn't created for you. You'll just have the background layer and what happens to me sometimes in Photoshop is I forget to create a separate layer for my sketch and so I draw on the background layer directly and this kind of sucks because later on when you're trying to erase something or try to have your layer separate you'll have the background color connected to your sketch because it's on one layer. I find it cool that Clip Studio Paint kind of creates this layer for you automatically. Saves me from a lot of trouble later on. So this kind of wraps it up for this video. I hope that you found it useful. Again I've done a similar video in the past. I just wanted to kind of film another video where I go a little bit more in depth and show you the settings that I use in Clip Studio Paint because I believe that Clip Studio Paint has a lot of potential but not many people use it for painting. They tend to use it for manga illustration, comics, stuff like that but I just believe it's super powerful and it definitely competes with all the other programs out there and you just kind of need to tap into its potential and you'll quickly find out how powerful it actually is. So anyways guys this wraps it up for today's video. I really hope you found it useful. If you still have any questions then leave a comment below. 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