color
The-Gigantic-Photoshop-Coloring-Tutorial-I've-Been-Meaning-To-Write-For-Months, a.k.a. let's see if I can make my photobucket account cry like a little girl.
Using this tutorial, I will show how I turn a black and white manga image into a colored image.
WARNING: This tutorial contains several large images, so dial-up users be ware.
I've tried to write this tutorial several times, and there are several incarnations of it on my desktop. Today will be the day.
I've been working on coloring this image of Seras Victoria from the manga Hellsing for my new layout. I decided that I was rather pleased with the way it came out so I would use it to write an in-depth coloring tutorial. For those that are interested, here is part of the origional manga page.
As you can see, I did a little work to it to give it a clean white background. Here is the cleaned up version.
From here on in, it's all a matter of preference. There are several ways to color an image, this is just how I do it. I decide a basic color scheme for the entire picture, and I give each color it's own layer. I color by using a hard brush and then erasing when I go over the lines, and the method is pretty much the same one they taught us in kindergarten. Some people think this takes to long, but I find it kind of therapeutic. This is my basic color.
I know that the eyes and buttons already have shading, sometimes I shade all in one layer.
Now to begin adding depth. Pick a soft brush in an appropriate size. I was working with ones between 17px and 21px. Obviously, if you're working on much smaller or larger areas, adjust to smaller or bigger brushes. Set the opacity of the brush to about the 12% range. We'll add it on in layers, i.e. the more you paint, the darker it gets. Pick a color that's a fair step down from the base. I went from #BFAE86 (the base of the uniform), to about #A99669 in my first layer. Now, using the magic wand, click on your base color layer. This makes sure that you won't color out of the lines, saving you from a couple hours of clean up. With the base still selected, make a new layer and start painting in the curves and depressions. This line art had some screen tones on it, so that makes our work a little easier. Here's my first of three shading layers.
Now, to do it again. Another new layer and a darker color.
My last shading layer on the uniform base. I actually go lighter than the uniform base this time because I want to do highlights.
a gif. to give you a better impact of what the shading does.
Now the other parts! My finished image, which took me about 4 or 5 hours, looks like this:
Here's the image without the line art to give you a better idea what my shading looked like.
And finally, for anyone that cares, the layer pallet of doom!!!!!
Hope this helps!
Using this tutorial, I will show how I turn a black and white manga image into a colored image.
WARNING: This tutorial contains several large images, so dial-up users be ware.
I've tried to write this tutorial several times, and there are several incarnations of it on my desktop. Today will be the day.
I've been working on coloring this image of Seras Victoria from the manga Hellsing for my new layout. I decided that I was rather pleased with the way it came out so I would use it to write an in-depth coloring tutorial. For those that are interested, here is part of the origional manga page.
As you can see, I did a little work to it to give it a clean white background. Here is the cleaned up version.
From here on in, it's all a matter of preference. There are several ways to color an image, this is just how I do it. I decide a basic color scheme for the entire picture, and I give each color it's own layer. I color by using a hard brush and then erasing when I go over the lines, and the method is pretty much the same one they taught us in kindergarten. Some people think this takes to long, but I find it kind of therapeutic. This is my basic color.
I know that the eyes and buttons already have shading, sometimes I shade all in one layer.
Now to begin adding depth. Pick a soft brush in an appropriate size. I was working with ones between 17px and 21px. Obviously, if you're working on much smaller or larger areas, adjust to smaller or bigger brushes. Set the opacity of the brush to about the 12% range. We'll add it on in layers, i.e. the more you paint, the darker it gets. Pick a color that's a fair step down from the base. I went from #BFAE86 (the base of the uniform), to about #A99669 in my first layer. Now, using the magic wand, click on your base color layer. This makes sure that you won't color out of the lines, saving you from a couple hours of clean up. With the base still selected, make a new layer and start painting in the curves and depressions. This line art had some screen tones on it, so that makes our work a little easier. Here's my first of three shading layers.
Now, to do it again. Another new layer and a darker color.
My last shading layer on the uniform base. I actually go lighter than the uniform base this time because I want to do highlights.
a gif. to give you a better impact of what the shading does.
Now the other parts! My finished image, which took me about 4 or 5 hours, looks like this:
Here's the image without the line art to give you a better idea what my shading looked like.
And finally, for anyone that cares, the layer pallet of doom!!!!!
Hope this helps!