Photoshop Colouring!

by: newflower1q

There are many ways of coloring in Adobe Photoshop. Needless to say, my way is one out of many. You can use it…or you may choose not to.

The first thing you’ll want to do is have an outline (duh.) The norm is too sketch, ink and scan. If you don’t have a scanner, try copying it straight onto the computer. If you do that, try zooming up to 700%! It helps tons, trust me. =3 Or, if you have Flash, try scanning and tracing! It’s what I sometimes do. Or you could just draw an outline straight in…it normally ain’t as good, though. Well, you should be able to solve your outline problem easily. ^___^

As an example, I’m going to use Starlight_Blunder’s Babaa, Moo. He’s just too cute! =3 Heh heh…*cough* anyway, the first thing you need to do is flood fill the background layer with a color. Any color, it doesn’t matter. Now, for the outline, switch to the Channels section. You see that little dotted circle? Click it. What this’ll do is select all the white. Now, press delete. Ah, wait! Go to Select>>Inverse. Then, grab that eraser tool and (yepp) Erase your outline! Then, grab the paintbrush tool and set it to 300, and swipe once or twice over the image. This will get rid of any ugly gray splotches near the outline. ~.^ Very handy!

Now, basically, your picture is ready to be colored in! You might have to try a few times with the outline thing before you get it though. o.O

Create a new layer under the Outline one. Grab the pencil tool and change the size to 1-3. I prefer 3. ^_^ Now, carefully outline where you want to color! With this you have to be very, very careful! It also helps if you zoom in. For every color, you MUST have a new layer! (or not.)

As you can see, you’re now ready for shading. ;) (at least, I am!)It’s especially important you do every single color on a separate layer! If you use flash for the outline, doing this makes it look like the piccy came from flash. =3 I think that’s funny. What? Stop blabbering? Oh yeah. -.-’

The shading is done with the paintbrush tool, a little blurring and a little smudging. The fluff of white fur was done a little differently. I set the 9 pixels and randomly did little circles where it was darker. I like the effect. I did blurring and a bit o’ smudging on the wings. Also, you can try smudging on the fur, but I personally am not a fan of that. XD The purple only had two shades – the base color and a color a little darker. It’s amazing how much it sets the color to life! Now, the only thing left with this piccy is my favorite part – the eyes. ^____^

This is the right eye! ^^ In the middle you just put a darker color than the norm. color. Then you do another layer, label it “highlights” or something. Put a light dash of color on where the light is shining. Next step is to set the blur tool to 50% and then just stroke the highlight and VOILA! Finished! ~.^ Then, add a background, and you’re done! Of course, you don’t have to add a background…

the finished picture!

note from oddhatter: Visit Newflower1q's site at http://www.chibipetz.com for more of her really cute art!