tutorial #07
FINALLY I got around to writing the coloring tutorial I promised at Ask the Maker 3.0. There's a lot of rambling and it's disgustingly image heavy and full of annoying faux-witty commentary, but I do hope you can get something useful out of it. Also please open this in the default comment window or it's going to look disgusting. :|
Featuring Curves, Levels, Selective Coloring, Vibrance, Variations, and other nifty things to lay down the base of you coloring.
For a sucessful coloring, you only need one thing: Knowing yer tools. Getting to know your tools can be a long - and also fun - process, but it's what gives you the power to do anything you want with whatever program you have.
I use Photoshop CS4, and because of this, this is going to be a somewhat specific tutorial (but I'll try to lave some tips along the way for non-PS users, so stay tuned~). Next guide shall be more translatable!
There are many many comprehensive guides about many many tools around, lots of them much better than mine, but this is my ~way of doing it (a messy one too). Bear in mind that I say all of this with no technical knowledge whatsoever; whatever I say comes uniquely from playing around in (various versions of) Photoshop since I was thirteen or so. Still, I hope it can be somewhat useful to you!
The basics of manipulating colors is at least knowing the color wheel. I assume many of you are familiar with it, but I'll insist on talking about it because I'll refer to it many times during this guide.
This is the wheel, according to your 4th grade science teacher.
Whenever you use a tool to correct or enhance color, what you'll do is either add the complimentary color (opposite color on the wheel) or the same/adjacent color. So if you have a red icon you want to be less red, you add blue; if you want more red, add red, if you want a less overwhelming red, you add either orange or pink.
Depending on the brightness of the color you use, that can also shift the light in the icon, instead of using specific tools (such as curves or brightness/contrast). When you want to brighten up a dark icon, try using a light color on soft light. Light Yellow, Green and Blue are usually good for these purposes. Play around with the mechanics of colors and you may come to interesting results!
FINE CECE, that's elementary physics that I ALREADY KNOW. The problem is how to add or subtract those colors.
This is where our tools come to play! You can do that through many many different ways, and I'll go through some of them here. Let's have a hardass start with...
Curves
THE FEAREDDDD CURVES ADJUSTMENT LAYER. Firstly you'll meet and greet the Curves window and know what does what. The diagonal line in the middle is what you're going to tweak. I won't get into technicalities because, well, I don't know them :P, and would rather dive into the practical aspects of it.
The bottom point (little square on the end of the line), as well as the black arrow in the gradient along the horizontal axis, controls the shadows (dark parts of the image), and the top point controls the highlights (light parts of the image).
Lemme grab a cap so we have visuals, cropped and resized to 200x200px. Forgive me the bland croppings, but we're focusing on coloring here!
The place in the line where the bottom point/black arrow determines the darkest part of the image. So if you slide it to the right, Photoshop will understand that is the darkest point in your cap and it'll sort of "shrink" the light and dark amount proportionally. The same thing works backwards, regarding the highlights.
Tl: dr: Black arrow to the right, shadows become darker. White arrow to the left, highlights befome lighter.
You can also create new points along the line to edit midtones (basically the "middle" colors, not too light nor too dark), which usually means a harsher effect because it shifts the entire curve. Creating more points means more control over your curve (and some cray effects if you're up to it). S shapes are pretty intersting, contrast-wise!
That's basically it for contrast and light. But BOOM BOOM REVELATION you can also use it for coloring! This is where things start to get interesting. Drop down menu, pick the other channels and let's play with them too~
They work a bit like the main RGB layer, except not. Instead of adjusting only shadows and highlights, the little arrows will also adjust colors. Let's take the Red layer as example. The vertical axis is Red and the horizontal is it's complimentary, Cyan (remember the color wheel!). If you move the black arrow to the right, the shadows will become... Cyaner AND darker. If you move it upside, the shadows become Redder AND lighter. You can also move both points at the same time! And create a point in the curve for a smoothier effect.
Same thing works for the other channels! Green is for Magenta and Green, and we'll play with it next. Notice that if you use the White arrow, you're coloring the highlights. So if you bring it all the way down, the highlights will become darker and more Magenta. If you slide it to the right, they become lighter and greener. And then you go crazy and try different points because you can.
Blue/Yellow Channel is my FAVORITE because COOL EFFECTS.
You can also adjust more than one channel in the same adjustment layer, of course.
I normally use curves on the beginning of the icon, to adjust general contrast and make it more uniform. Then I lower the opacity of the layer and use a blurred screen layer on top of it, so the light is softer. Finished icon with an accompanying .psd, using curves to lay down the coloring groundwork.
Tips!
1) Curves are used by me on the "beginning" of the icon, to deal with contrast and light troubles.
1) Use one layer for contrast/light and another for coloring, this way you don't have to start from scratch if you're unsatisified with the coloring.
2) Use curves for color correction! If you think your coloring looks too red, add a bit of blue using the appropriate channel, and so on.
3) Feeling lazy? Hit Auto.
Levels
Next up, levels! They're much the same as curves regarding to how they work with cmplimentary colors, except that it's a slider instead of a curve. I use it more for contrast than anything else, so I'll focus on that. They're great for B&W graphics as well.
Next up, who's that girlllll it's Jess
The white slider controls highlights, the black slider controls shadows, the middle slider controls midtones. If you slide the white arrow to the left, the image becomes lighter, if you slide the black to the right, the image becomes darker. If you slide the middle arrow closer to the black arrow, the "light" range grows and the image becomes lighter, if closer to the white arrow, the midtones becomes darker.
Sliding the highlights arrow to the left, we instantly get a brighter image. Easy as pie! And I'm not sure why this expression exists since pie's aren't easy to make at all. Anyway, I thought it was a bit too red, though, so I fiddled a bit with the red and blue channels.
Went on making the icon, and came to a point where I was satisfied with the coloring but not with the contrast. So I whip up a new Levels layer and slide the shadows arrow to the right, and the midtones a bit to the left. BAM great contrast!
>
>
Levels is specially awesome for Black and White icons as well! Alicia and Will rolling in the hay as a base
>
>
>
Tips:
1) I use Levels at any moment necessary mostly to adjust contrast: sometimes when you pile up layers of coloring, it becomes washed out or too light. To fix this I use a combo of the "Increase contrast" and "Darker" presets to fix contrast, adjusting opacity and fine tuning as necessary.
2) The "Darker" preset is also great to fix washed out icons! Works best after a solid color screen or lighten layer.
3) Feeling lazy? Hit Auto [2] :P I'm lazy a lot of the time.
Selective Color
The infamous Selective Color! Used wisely, selective color can up your game like nothing else. I definitely abuse it. Different from the other tools, it has 9 channels: Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, Magentas, Whites, Neutrals and Blacks. Each channel has four sliders, Cyans, Magentas, Yellows (notice how they're the complimentaries of Red, Green and Blue, the channels present in other tools) and Neutrals. And what each slider does is increase or decrease the amount of each color in theat color channel.
Like, if you increase the amount of cyan in the Red channel, the reds will become less red and more cyan. Neutral sliders darken or highlight the color of the channel, so if you decrease the "neutrals" in red, the reds will become lighter (not pink, more like less saturated and whiter).
Here I've modified only the Red channel, leaving all the others to default.
>
>
>
Neutrals has the biggest impact on the overall icon, since it changes the midtones. Here I've changed only the Neutrals channel.
>
>
>
Now changing Red, Yellow and Neutrals
>
This is ugly tho so don't do it. It works on another images, I SWEAR.
Keep in mind that it's not a matter of exact values and numbers, but more of sliding sliders around until you get what you want. So go ahead and have lots of fun with it!
Of course, selective colors work only with the colors already existing in an image, so in more colorful bases the effect can be quite different, since there are more colors to change
>
+
>
+
+
+
+
>
+
+
+
>
+
+
+
There's not much to be "taught" (not that I could teach anything to ANYONE I'm the worst teacher you could possibly have and also the dumbest, but bear with me) about selective color, you only get the hang of it by experimenting.
Tips:
1) Selective color is the middle-game of an icon for me, what comes out of it will more or less define the coloring direction. Adjust Neutrals first and then the rest.
2) The channels I use most are Reds, Yellows and Neutrals. Usually because Vibrance tends to make the yellows and reds cray cray, so I use this tool to tone them down. Yellows and Reds are also good for skin colors.
3) Up the Blacks for a vintage-y oir painty effect!
4) Lower the Neutrals for a ~faded look
5) Adjusting Cyans in the Neutrals makes for deeper shadows.
Variations
You probably know about this already but let's do it because it's fun! Again, it can be used for color correction or for coloring in general. I use it usually already when finishing up the icon, for slight changes in coloring or to fix parts I don't like. And some other times just for the sake of it.
First you need to clone stamp the image and use variations on the image that comes out, since it's not an adjustment layers like the others. Variations has sort of an "Auto" function that works wonders and makes your job easier. But you can also go rogue and go around clicking until you're satisfied. The function "adds" color to the icon, and to make it do what you want it to do you must know the color wheel above. It also has a slider where you can adjust from "Fine" to "Coarse", which is basically the amount of color being changed, and goes from 1 to 7. Hover to know what was added each time!
|
|
|
|
|
|
>
|
>
>
Tips
1) CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK
Vibrance
Vibrance, probably more infamous than selective coloring. What it does is up the saturation progressively from the darker parts of the image, whereas hue/saturation works in the image as a whole. You can use it either to build up and "thicken", turn deeper, the colors in an image, in the beginning stages of an icon, or to add a pop of color to an otherwise dull icon.
First let's used a base with only a blurred screen and soft light layer. Hover for settings!
>
>
>
|
|
Now using it directly on the base, to build color before anything else
>
>
>
>
>
AND THIS IS WHY WE LOVE VIBRANCE, LADIES AND GENTS.
1) It works best with colorful and well contrasted images. Monochrome-y images don't do so well and you'll need to fix it with other methods first until it's ready for vibrance (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones)
2) Try it on different layer modes than Normal, like Color or Luminosity. The Color layer changes only the color, but not the luminance (contrast) of the image. It results in a saturated but not dark image. On Luminosity, the image becomes usually darker, but unsaturated. I'll talk more about layer modes later.
3) LOWER the Vibrance for muted coloring!
Other Fun Tools
Brightness/Contrast - To well, fix the brightness and contrast?
>
Auto Tone/Contrast/Color - Auto functions! They're fabulous and specially good for a quick fix or when you have no idea where to go with the icon or you're trying something different and go off the rails. You can find them on the "Image" Menu.
Auto Tone fixes contrast as well as color, and it has different results depending on which stage of the icon you're in.
>
>
>
>
Auto Contrast fixes contrast (O RLY) and auto Color fixes color (NO WAI MS OBVIOUS)
>
|
|
Photo Filters
They slightly alter the tone of an image to make it warmer, cooler, more cyan or magenta and all. It's a pretty straightforward tool that relies more on experimentation than explanation.
So many tools bring the inevitable question: HOW DO I KNOW WHICH ONE TO USE?
... uhm
...
I don't.
NO GUYS I REALLY DON'T! There's no set rule for anything. Sometimes I'm in the mood for one, sometimes the other, sometimes I want an specific result and do everything until I achieve it. Try all of them until you like what you see.
Because this is getting way too big, I'm splitting into parts! Next up: Fun with filters, layer blending modes, layer blobs, textures, gradients and gradient maps! Part 2 is much more fun, believe me. While you wait, check those tuts by people who are better at this than me (seriously they're so much better you're gonna regret wasting your time on my guide)
Colouring: ways to make it happen by raiindust
How to Channel Mixer by raiindust
Tips and Tricks by endearest
Selective Coloring: what is it and how does it work? by going_x_crazy
Tutorial: Belle & Donna by ofthesea
Tutorials #11 and #12 by justmyb0nes
Andrew Garfield tutorial by tle_lovie69
Ask the Maker III: part one by imaginary_lives
Beginner's Guide do Color Balance by cardcaptur (I was going to talk about color balance as well but it would become too repetitive: the basics are the same and you just need to move sliders around to get the feel of it. Setting it to Color brings great results!)
Any new questions/suggestions/complaints/typos/broken links you might have about this section, hit me with a comment and I'll do my best to clarify it for you! I'm always open and welcome them :)