Coloring

In comic books a colorist is responsible for adding color to black and white line drawings. For most of the 20th century this was done using brushes and dyes which were then used as guides to produce the printing plates. Since the late 20th century it is most often done using digital media, with printing separations produced electronically.
Originally, comics were colored by cutting out films of various densities in the appropriate shapes to be used in producing color-separated printing plates. The typical colorist worked from photocopies of the inked pages, which they colored with special dyes. Dr. Martin's Dyes was a brand notable in this field within the comic strip industry. CMYK codes were written on the page to indicate the final printed colors, and these hand-colored pages were used as guides by the engraver. Tatjana Wood was the main colorist for DC Comics' covers from 1973 through the mid 1980s.
More recently, colorists have worked in transparent media such as watercolors or airbrush, which is then photographed, allowing more subtle and painterly effects.