Medibang Color Window

With traditional drawing, you have to get paint from the tubes and mix it on a palette. With digital painting software, you choose colors from color windows. Let's find out more about Medibang's Color windows.

I. Color window

1. Open the Medibang Color window

When you launch drawing software on your computer, you should notice a color window in the top left corner, near the toolbars.

If you lose it or can't find it on the screen, go to the menu Window -> Color.

2. Change to Medibang Color Wheel.

Depending on each person's preferences and habits, you can choose the type of Color Bar or Color Wheel. 

I feel more comfortable with the Color Wheel when using Medibang, so I prefer to keep it that way. You can go to the menu Color -> Color Wheel/Color Bar to change the shape of the color window.

3. Colors in Medibang

While we're on the subject of the color window in the Medibang, I'd also like to go over certain definitions you should be familiar with in order to use digital drawing software more effectively.

The color you use to paint your picture will be the box that has the red border here. You can switch those boxes in a second with the hotkey.  And when you drag the white dot in Medibang's color window, it will show up in the Foreground box. Even if you switch to the Background color, it will automatically become the Foreground color. 

When you choose a Background color, that color will be used as a base for several specialized brushes. For example, you can use both the Foreground and Background colors at the same time with the Edge Pen.

Because Medibang doesn't have a lot of erasers, you can use a brush you like as an eraser for your painting with an extra brush that we can find in both Medibang and Clip Studio Paint. It’s the Transparent Color. Click on this box, and the brush will no longer fill the color but instead erase it.

II. Learn how to pick colors with Medibang.

The use of color in art is a complex topic that may benefit from an in-depth essay. For that reason, I will only cover the most fundamental concepts here, so that you may begin using good color judgment when painting in Medibang and other digital tools.

Let's use the Color Wheel color box image below to make things clear:

1. Hue:

Let's talk about the outer circle (if you choose the Bar form, it will be a vertical bar on the right). This is where you can change the color you choose by changing a characteristic called Hue. If you have yellow and want to change to purple, you will move the small white circle in this circle to purple. When you move like that, you are changing the Hue value.

However, many people confuse Hue and Color due to their similar concepts.

To be able to tell the difference, you must know that the word Color refers to the color you see in the painting. It can be a deep orange-red color or a light purple-pink color. And Hue is the word most of us think of when asked to name a color such as red, blue, purple, etc. Hue refers to basic color families, not specific shades or tints. For example, red is a hue, not orange-red or baby red.

2. Saturation

If the color you select shifts horizontally from the square box in the Medibang Color window, you have adjusted the location of Chroma. A color with the highest Chroma level (which cannot be adjusted in the Filter) will represent the purity - the origin of that color. So the colors in the Hue ring are the colors with the highest Chroma.

However, in digital art, we can only modify the Saturation parameter in the Filter menu. Also, we can only access the HSV through the color window. That's why just assume that moving the color dot toward the right will also change the Saturation. Or you can let Medibang help you decide the Saturation value based on the Medibang Color Picker window, which I will talk about in the following article. 

3. Value

If you move the white circle up or down in a square box, it means that you are shifting the Value. Value is a picture's light-to-dark scale, showing how the light affects the object you are painting. Because of that, Value is really important when you are painting. That’s also why digital artists often paint in black and white before adding color. With this method, they can easily control the value. 

You can see I use that method in this video:

You can change the Value in the Filter box by using the Brightness slider. When you add Value and Chroma together for a color, you get the Saturation. 

You now know enough about how the Medibang color window works to start painting, right? I'll talk more about the two extra things that the color window in Medibang has in the following article.