Regency Colouring Tutorial
to
Uses Fills and Channel Mixer
Step One:
Get your icon base. Mine is from the 2007 version of Mansfield Park. I recommend NOT screening your base, as the second step will lighten things up quite a bit. If you need it lighter at the end, you can always come back.
Layer 1: The Base
Step Two:
I want to make a sort of uniform wash of colour over the icon to make a nice base for the colouring later on, so I make a new layer and fill it with a light buttery yellow colour, then set it to soft light. This also lightens the icon, so it's doubly useful.
Layer 2: #FFFEB9 Soft Light Layer
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Step Three:
Now, I make a Channel Mixer layer. I wish I could say I had some sort of logic to this, but I just fiddled with the sliders until it looked good. I was aiming for a soft pastel look. Here's the numbers I came up with:
RED: 164, -58, -15
GREEN:-24, 128, -3
BLUE: -12, 12, 116
Layer 3: Channel Mixer
Step Four:
It's looking pretty good now, but I really love it when the highlights of an icon (the white, light parts) are a purply blue colour. It gives it a cool contrast and, here, takes some more of the yellow away to make the colouring softer.
So, I make another Channel Mixer layer with this setting:
RED: 100, 0, -12
BLUE: 0, 0, 112
(leave GREEN alone)
You can double or triple this layer if the effect is not quite what you need.
Layer 4: Channel Mixer
Step Five: (optional)
The colouring is finished now, but you make have noticed that Edmund's hair is looking very red. This is a result of the channel mixer - it will sometimes make black turn red. Here's how to fix it.
Make a new layer. Select a nice soft, smallish paintbrush and make sure black is your foreground colour. On the new layer, paint over the too red areas with black. It doesn't have to be perfect.
It looks ridiculous now, but wait, there's more! Put the Blending Mode to Hue (L), Saturation (L) or Color (L). You can experiment to see which looks the best. You can also set it to Soft Light if you want something darker. Erase any areas where you might have made a mistake.
Still looks ridiculous, so lower the opacity of the layer, until it looks more natural. This should take out the red and make it more black.
Step The Last
Once you're done all your colouring and correcting, merge visible. (Layers > Merge > Merge Visible) Sharpen and Soften the skin if needed. And you're done!
A Final Note:
There is a Channel Mixer Layer by x_robotlove @ wonderplanet that I use way too often. But it's gorgeous and you can drop it onto so many things and have it look great. So, as a final tip, you can drop it on top of this tut, for something a bit different.
SETTINGS:
RED: 125, -30, 0
GREEN: -15, 115, 0
BLUE: -58, 130, 40
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks for dropping by!
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All caps used for these icons are from angelfish_icons.
