Coloring Tutorial #1
This is my first tutorial I`m posting here. I loved this picture from Lara Dutta and before I made a blend with it I had experimented with the coloring. So I got this. It works got with pictures that have a bright background or if the person is wearing bright clothes. Under this tutorial I have 2 other examples, that involves one curves layer more. You can change every step. This tutorial will help you to understand how you get a nice blue- effect, but every picture is individual and sometimes you need to change the values. Hope you enjoy this tutorial and please let me know how you liked it. Englisch is not my motherlangague, but I hope there won`t be any understanding- problems.
I started with this picture:
I copied it and paste it into a new 100x100 px document und resized it until I liked the position. If your picture is very darken then bright it up. You can use the curves layer or duplicte your base and set this duplicated layer to screen. Whatever you prefer.
Then go to filter => Sharpen => Unsharp Mask and used this settings:
Amount: 50 %
Radius: 1,0 px
Threshold: 0
This will helps you to sharpen your picture soft without let it looking oversharped. If your picture is sharpen enough then you can skip this step.
Now go to Layer => New Adjustment Layer => Curves, call this layer "curves 1" and use this settings:
RGB: Input 1: 102 Output 1: 101 | Input 2: 189 Output 2: 176
RED: Input 1: 91 Output 1: 75 | Input 2: 176 Output 2: 179
GREEN: Input 1: 64 Output 1: 73 | Input 2: 168 Output 2: 174
BLUE: Input 1: 69 Output 1: 82 | Input 2: 158 Output 2: 168
This will darken your picture a little bit and put some red in her face and blue in her hair.
Go to Layer => New Adjustment Layer => Selective Color and use this setting:
REDS: -100 +37 +100 0
YELLOWS: +100 -19 -100 0
WHITES: +100 +23 +18 +31
NEUTRALS: +15 -10 -19 0
The reds will put some red on her lips and the yellows take away the much red color on her face. The whites will put some blue on the white parts of the picture (in this case the white of her blouse and some red in the bright parts of the picture. The neutrals add some green and blue in her hair. The biggest eyecatcher are now the red lips.
Now go to Layer => New Adjustment Layer => Channel Mixer and use this settings:
RED: +94 +1 -9
GREEN: -1 +99 +4
BLUE: +7 -3 +97
I love using this layer. You don`t need to change too much for getting a visible result. This channel mixer adds a bright blue shade into the white parts. And her skin is getting softer and has now a touch of green and is now not so red. Now it seems that only her lips are the red part in this picture.
Make a new color fill layer with a dark brown color. I picked #3a2006. Set the layer mode to Exclusion 49% opacity.
I often use Exclusion- layer. The let the picture appeal soft and give them a warm shade. In this case it will makes the blue of the picture darker and everything will be looking softer. But now the red lips have lost a lot of his color and the skin is also looking very boring, but we wil fix it with the next step.
Now go to Layer => New Adjustment Layer => Hue/Saturation and use this settings:
MASTER: 0 +21 0
This brings back the red of the lips and laras jeeks have now a red touch.
And now you are ready :)
If you want to make this examples:
then you should go to Layer => New Adjustment Layer => Curves, call this new layer "curves2" and use this settings:
RGB: Input 1: 83 Output 1: 93 | Input 2: 175 Output 2: 202
It will bright up your image.
and then move this layer until it is above the "curves1"- layer.
If you let it on the top, then it will bright up the hole coloration, but I wanted to bright up only the base.
Hope you enjoyed it. :) Please comment.