Comments | ravenous_icons: photoshop basics tutorial: hand colouring 1

raven_feathers in ravenous_icons

photoshop basics tutorial: hand colouring 1

Mar 23, 2006 14:37

part 1: hand colouring an existing black and white image
(please do not resize image and use for icons, layouts, banners, love slaves, etc.)

( general graphic tutorial, biggish imgs )

tutorial, basics, colouring

Comments 9

schip2mylou March 23 2006, 20:58:09 UTC

Dang, I can't use him as my love slave? But I want to!!!!!

Great tutorial, btw!

When you say "layers" do you mean to create a separate layer, or are you just saying the layers of "paint" that you're painting on?

raven_feathers March 23 2006, 21:01:27 UTC

HE'S MY LOVE SLAVE!

layers of paint. this piece is all one photoshop Layer.

schip2mylou March 23 2006, 21:05:13 UTC

::pant pant pant:: I think I'll have to watch Emma this evening.

I haven't done any selective coloring before (at least not successfully) so this is going to be fun even if I *can't* have him as my love slave.

raven_feathers March 23 2006, 21:09:00 UTC

i'm planning two more tutorials (one on over-colouring a colour picture and one on colouring and blending over a line drawing/dingbat), but all the basic tools are in this tutorial.

(emma!ewan=bad wig!)

(The comment has been removed)

raven_feathers March 23 2006, 23:19:38 UTC

oh, i don't have a particularly steady hand. however, i'm very familiar with my history palette and the trash can button ;)

thanks, i'm really liking doing tutorials right now better than making icons. guess i've got a few sets of those to do, too. *sigh*

kryptonkitty March 23 2006, 21:42:23 UTC

I so wish I could pull this kind of stuff off. Well, at least I'm going to have a whole lot of fun trying. =P

And I don't need especially him as my love slave as I've already stole his double from The Island. ;)

raven_feathers March 23 2006, 23:20:48 UTC

it's really such a simple technique, it just takes some practice laying on colour with a single click.

kala_way May 15 2007, 23:17:00 UTC

This is a great tutorial...I know you posted it over a year ago, but I've spent half an hour looking through your fab icons and I thought I'd comment :D

I've tried to do hand coloring several times and always found it a bit messy. If you aren't precise enough to do things in one pass it darkens the colors along your strokes and is just bleh :p clearly you're more talented than me in that regard b/c I don't see any of that in this pic, maybe it's just me.

Do you see an advantage to hand coloring like this over multiple cutout layers of each 'item' with hue/color balance/saturation/etc. altered? IMHO the erase tool is more forgiving...

I'm pretty new to LJ so I don't even know if you'll see this but...anyway
Thanks

raven_feathers May 16 2007, 01:35:30 UTC

hey, thanks for the comment. i have comment notification turned on, so i always get back comments, just for this very reason. :)

i admit that i have quite a steady hand with my mousing. i chalk that up to learning everything in photoshop the hard way. i never knew how to use the background erase tool or a lot of the glossier tools when i first started out, so i learned to erase backgrounds by hand and paint in around them, too. so, yeah, going into it, i do have that advantage. with that said, i do fluff it occasionally and make a bad pass, usually just before i've finished a large and complicated area. i have three tips:

find areas in the image where you can stop a pass and begin a new one without overlapping. a hard edge is easiest. with the overlay brush, true black or true white areas are my fudge zones.
use less saturated colours in multiple layers, rather than going for your final colour all in one go. that way, if you creep over into an area you're not supposed to be in, it's not as obvious.
use your sponge tool on ( ... )