B&W Image Coloring
Here's a tutorial on actually coloring a black and white image. We'll start with this:
and get this:
The image I began with, is one of Mary Grandpre's wonderful chapter illustrations from the American editions of the Harry Potter Books. I snagged the image off of a geocities site, but as it is a geocities site, it's possible they'll get to may hits for the month and it will go down. HP chapter pictures can also be found at MuggleNet. Anyway, after all the babbeling, here's the pic.
crop it to 100x100px... yada yada
Now, in the case of the Harry Potter chapter pictures, when you open the file, it's in Grayscale. You need to go to Image -> Mode -> RGB Color, otherwise when you try to paint, it will stay in grayscale. It will ask if you want to flatten the image. Say yes.
Now duplicate your picture, then set it to multiply. Your initial reaction may be "it's to dark!", but that's ok. Basically what the multiply layer is doing, is it's creating a layer with just the black lines. Turn off the layer visibility of your base picture, and all will be well again.
Now it's time to start coloring. Create a new layer, and drag it between your background, and your background copy. This way when you paint, the black outlines will stay on the top. Just slap some color on where you want it. You don't have to be super careful, as you'll be able to go back and erase. I'm starting with the sand in the time turner, and the color I chose was #F7EAA0. It looks like this:
This is what just the paint layer looks like:
Now repeating the process, I decide to work on the hour glass. Creating a new layer, and drag it between the background, and the background copy. It doesn't really matter if it's above or below the sand layer. I turn off the visibility of the sand layer so I can see what I'm doing, and using #765204, I paint the hour glass.
Last time we paint. Create a new layer, turn off visibility of the brown layer, and using #B5B713, I paint the chain.
Now if you turn on the visibility of all the paint layers, your icon will look like this:
A real mess, I know. That's why it's time to start cleaning things up.
I turn off the visibility of every layer except the background copy and the brown hourglass layer. Turning down the opacity of the brown layer will help you see the black lines better. Now just start erasing away the places where you colored out of the lines. It will now look like this:
Do the same thing with the chain layer...
And the sand layer.
Making all the color layers visable, our icon looks like this.
If the opacity's at full strength, we get this:
Now, personally, I prefer the colors to be more subdued than that, so I just messed around with the colored layer's opacity. I ended up liking the sand at 41%, the hourglass at 56%, and the chain at 29%.
That's it for the coloring part. Now I decided to jazz things up a little with a border and some text. I created a simple black border by creating a new layer, dragging it to the top, and flood filling it with black (#000000). Now, use the Rectangular Marquis Tool, and select a smaller rectangle within the layer:
now hit delete, and you get a simple black border
For text, I wrote 'Hermione's Secret' (the name of chapter 21 in PoA). The font was Parry Hotter and the size was 12pt.
Now here's where personal preferance comes into play again. You can chose to make the background layer visible again, or leave it off. It just depends on how dark you want the lines to be. Here's the difference:
Background Layer off:
Background Layer on:
whatever floats your boat.
That was it. Here's the layer pallet if you're interested.
Also, here are some other possibilities with different borders and text.
Other icons using this technique:
This technique can also be aplied to black and white photographs like this:
The picture's of Drew Barymore, and I haven't a clue where I dug it up.
and get this:
The image I began with, is one of Mary Grandpre's wonderful chapter illustrations from the American editions of the Harry Potter Books. I snagged the image off of a geocities site, but as it is a geocities site, it's possible they'll get to may hits for the month and it will go down. HP chapter pictures can also be found at MuggleNet. Anyway, after all the babbeling, here's the pic.
crop it to 100x100px... yada yada
Now, in the case of the Harry Potter chapter pictures, when you open the file, it's in Grayscale. You need to go to Image -> Mode -> RGB Color, otherwise when you try to paint, it will stay in grayscale. It will ask if you want to flatten the image. Say yes.
Now duplicate your picture, then set it to multiply. Your initial reaction may be "it's to dark!", but that's ok. Basically what the multiply layer is doing, is it's creating a layer with just the black lines. Turn off the layer visibility of your base picture, and all will be well again.
Now it's time to start coloring. Create a new layer, and drag it between your background, and your background copy. This way when you paint, the black outlines will stay on the top. Just slap some color on where you want it. You don't have to be super careful, as you'll be able to go back and erase. I'm starting with the sand in the time turner, and the color I chose was #F7EAA0. It looks like this:
This is what just the paint layer looks like:
Now repeating the process, I decide to work on the hour glass. Creating a new layer, and drag it between the background, and the background copy. It doesn't really matter if it's above or below the sand layer. I turn off the visibility of the sand layer so I can see what I'm doing, and using #765204, I paint the hour glass.
Last time we paint. Create a new layer, turn off visibility of the brown layer, and using #B5B713, I paint the chain.
Now if you turn on the visibility of all the paint layers, your icon will look like this:
A real mess, I know. That's why it's time to start cleaning things up.
I turn off the visibility of every layer except the background copy and the brown hourglass layer. Turning down the opacity of the brown layer will help you see the black lines better. Now just start erasing away the places where you colored out of the lines. It will now look like this:
Do the same thing with the chain layer...
And the sand layer.
Making all the color layers visable, our icon looks like this.
If the opacity's at full strength, we get this:
Now, personally, I prefer the colors to be more subdued than that, so I just messed around with the colored layer's opacity. I ended up liking the sand at 41%, the hourglass at 56%, and the chain at 29%.
That's it for the coloring part. Now I decided to jazz things up a little with a border and some text. I created a simple black border by creating a new layer, dragging it to the top, and flood filling it with black (#000000). Now, use the Rectangular Marquis Tool, and select a smaller rectangle within the layer:
now hit delete, and you get a simple black border
For text, I wrote 'Hermione's Secret' (the name of chapter 21 in PoA). The font was Parry Hotter and the size was 12pt.
Now here's where personal preferance comes into play again. You can chose to make the background layer visible again, or leave it off. It just depends on how dark you want the lines to be. Here's the difference:
Background Layer off:
Background Layer on:
whatever floats your boat.
That was it. Here's the layer pallet if you're interested.
Also, here are some other possibilities with different borders and text.
Other icons using this technique:
This technique can also be aplied to black and white photographs like this:
The picture's of Drew Barymore, and I haven't a clue where I dug it up.