Colorist

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A colorist is a visual arts professional - one of a variety of kinds - whose work involves adding or adjusting color in a collaborative work.

Comics

In comics, a colorist is responsible for adding color to black and white line art. Originally, this was done by cutting out films of various densities in the appropriate shapes to be used in producing color-separated printing plates. More recently, colorists have worked in transparent media such as watercolors or airbrush, which is then photographed, allowing more subtle and painterly effects. Most contemporary colorists work in digital media using tools such as Adobe Photoshop.

Colorists may work directly for comics publishers (either as employees or freelancers), or they may work for coloring studios which offer their services to publishers. American Color is a company notable in this field within the comic strip industry.

Notable colorists in the comics field include Jack Adler, Marie Severin, Glynis Wein, Tatjana Wood, Dave Stewart, Jeromy Cox, Laura Martin, and Steve Oliff.

Cinema

A colorist is also an electronic artist who adjusts color and mood during the [telecine] film transfer process or video tape-to-tape color timing process. They have replaced a lot of older style film timers in making color adjustments to feature films. Most commercials, music videos, serials, m.o.w.'s and feature films have been adjusted by a colorist, sometimes to a very large extent. They match scenes shot at differing times and locations, set the mood, create a style or usually all of the above. A music video or commercial is the most obvious place this can be seen. Often the scene was very bland and boring when shot, but can be morphed into a visually exciting product. It is similar to Photoshop, but at real time on moving images. The equipment needed is usually very expensive (millions of dollars). The colorist is usually a large part of the television or film post-production process.

Colorist

Comics

Cinema

See also