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Coloring with Photoshop
By  Gayle M. Bird
First of all, this is only one way to color in Adobe Photoshop 3.04, the way I've been using. There are others, and I think some of them will be posted here, so you will have a choice in what you do. I'm assuming you can at least open photoshop and know where the tools are; if you can't do that, try www.andyart.com for basic tutorials.
 The technique shown here is doing a pencil sketch and scanning it in, (or drawing an outline using your paint program if you prefer) and using the magic wand, fill tool, and layer opacity to create subtle colorings. This particular method won't produce very intense colors without a bit of extra work, but for some people, this could be just right! :) 
Alrighty, let's start at the beginning: Here's the sketch I began with, mistakes and all. I scanned it in and should have fixed up the edges before I started to color, but alas, I didn't. Anyway, YOU fix up the edges: bring it into photoshop, find scraggly spots and zoom in several times. If your background is white, you can either use the eraser with your background color white and the smallest brush chosen, or you can use a painting tool [pencil, paintbrush, airbrush] with white as your foreground color. Touch up what needs touching up, then be prepared to create layers!! 
Create a separate layer for each separate section of color, naming them appropiately so you don't get lost.
Next, I began with the skin tones. Select all areas of skin with the magic wand tool, [shown at right; it selects areas according to their color values. If the tool doesn't select the amount you want, try adjusting the Tolerance level in the Magic Wand Options palette,] holding shift to add to the area. Next, pick a nice light color, but not TOO light, from the orangey section of your color picker. Fill the selection, on that new layer you created for it, with your color. Now pick a color much darker than the skin tone.. here I used a dark brown. Select your light source, in this case, upper right, and use your airbrush to darken what would be in shadow from light in that direction -- here, lower left. In order to soften the transition between the light and the dark colors, choose one in between the two and color over the edge of the darker color, blending it into the lightest. 
Looks a bit nasty, doesn't it? Now comes the fun part: Layer Opacity! On your layers palette, make sure the skin layer is active, then move the opacity slider down until the colors of the skin blend enough and are still visible enough for your taste.In this case, that means 50%. Another reason for lowering the opacity is so the original lines show through. If this fails, you can take a copy of your outline and paste it in a layer by itself on top of the finished product. 
Once you've gotten this far, I'm sure you can figure out the rest, can't you? In any case, I'll post some of the other layers' steps and the final product.
One of the things you can never forget, in any sort of art, is your light source/sources. I am not that advanced an artist, so my drawings usually only have one light source.
For the skirt and the boots, I did it slightly differently; I left the layer at its total opacity and used a very dark color for the folds, and a lighter color to suggest shininess on the boots. For the tail, I selected the area inside it, went to a new layer and filled with the medium brown. Then I selected 'Preserve Transparency' on the Layers Palette. This allowed me to take a dark color and run it along the side of the tail away from the light and not worry about going over the edge. [Preserve Transparency means you can only make changes on or draw over pixels that are already filled.] Then I took a lighter tone of the same brown and did the same thing along the top. It looks more shiny than furry, but this is, of course, just a simple way to color.
I hope this helps! Email me if there are any questions...
---Gayle, Gallery 41
  
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| |  | Inside Adobe Photoshop 5.5
In Inside Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Gary Bouton's learning methodology is set up to give you hands-on experience with Photoshop's features, using either the imagery created in the book or the user's own. Gary goes well beyond simply reviewing the features and grounds his readers in the most practical and useful aspects of Photoshop-the real-world uses of this powerful program-before delving into the more complex, arcane, or esoteric uses of the program. Each chapter includes a balance of textual... read more |
| |  | Adobe Photoshop 5.5 Classroom in a Book
Designed to instruct you on the variety of tools available in Adobe Photoshop 5.5 that will help you produce sophisticated graphics for the Web and print. Each lesson provides step-by-step instructions for creating a specific project. Softcover. CD-ROM included. |
| |  | Adobe Photoshop 5 Classroom in a Book
For those of us who have been trying to learn Photoshop by just hacking around on it, this is a great book. Shows all the shortcuts and options you've been missing, and gives you different types of interesting graphics to work with. The lessons are useful in learning Photoshop if your are both an beginner or intermediate user of the program. And the techniques used in the examples are also handy in everyday Photoshop use. I use it both for it's lessons , and for reference. |
| |  | Adobe Photoshop Handbook
Covers Mac and the Windows versions of Adobe PhotoShop. Tips and tricks you will not find in the user's manual. Includes full color art, step-by-step techniques and more. Adobe PhotoShop has become the industry standard in image-manipul |
| |  | Adobe Photoshop Creative Techniques : Creative Techniques
This book is an excellent example of a title which contains easy, quick step-by-step solutions to fast Photoshop techniques! If you are looking for a book that will give you a quick one-page solution for a creative technique executed through Photoshop, then this is the title for you! Each page contains one fast technique in a simple to follow step-by-step fully pictoral example! Also, Photoshop's many tools are grouped in easy to find color-coded sections. I highly recommend this book for those who need an easy to use, fast step-by-step, fully illustrated Photoshop special effect type title! ENJOY! |  |
FARP Article Guestbook
| Date | Name | Comment | | | 5 Jun 2004 |  Anonymous |  Loading...Likely your photoshop doesnt work because you bought the upgrade. Also all adobe programs are expensive Photoshop and Premier are extremely expensive i suggest looking here ( www.ebay.com ) for a much cheaper version but make sure its not an upgrade. | |
| 16 Jun 2004 | Gustavo | Loading... Downloading programs isnt't that big a hoohaa!! The hell imma pay 1000 bucks for a program i can get for free, no matter how great. And even if the programs out there used for p2p shring are shut down there are infinite more places where to get anything you need. If anyone wants more info on where to get stuff e-mail me , ill help ya out -
P.S. This site is awesome | |
| 8 Jul 2004 | Phantomwitch | Loading... to all downloaders of photoshop: there is a better way. serif photoplus version 5.0 is FREE on THE OFFICIAL SITE and it can do basicallly everything photoshop can do. i recommend it, since my computer doesnt have the harddrive space to use photoshop or paintshop and it works pretty well.
oh, and all the tutorials on this site are AWESOME, even for the photoplus user. | |
| 7 Aug 2004 | Anonymous | Loading... First, I would like to say that this and all other tutorials on this site are very good/helpful. Keep up the good work. But I felt I should comment on photoshop. I am a student who currently works in the software department of our university book store. We are currently selling Photoshop CS(the latest version) at an educational price of $269.95.(Our vendor says that is the lowest price of any of their resellers). Now even though the regular price of photoshop is $600+ I feel that $270 is far too expensive for software, even for students(which usually are dirt poor, btw) Not exactly sure where this rant is going, but we all know that if a great program like this is going to basically be made unavailable to the average person/student because of its price, then you can not be upset about it being pirated. If the price was lowered, there would be much less pirating, and thus, less complaining. Anyway....GREAT TUTORIAL!!!  | |
| 28 Oct 2004 | Anonymous | Loading... Adobe makes plenty of money from buisinesses that have to pay for excelent programs such as photoshop which i might add is perfectly fair considering the amount of money that these buisinesses can make with the help of said program! As an unemployed student there is no way i would even consider buying photoshop. I can use it at uni for free but to learn the program properly it helps being able to have a copy at home. Copies of these and many other programs which are needed for coursework are freely copied and exchanged between students. I would be a fool to spend what little money i have on these programs but equally i would be a fool to caught and sued. But hopefully to adobe and other developers i am only small fry not worth bothering about. | |
| 10 Jun 2005 | Some Guy | Loading... Awsome tutorials, looks liek alot of work has been pu into these ^_^! they helped me alot!! as for the comment made about Kazaa being shut down, check the date, it's like june 2005 and kazaa is still up and running as for pirate software, my friend owns a copy of pirated photoshop, paintshop pro and Flash MX 2004, and no ones busted him. i apologise for ranting lol. on an end note, i have bookmarked this page!! woot keep it up! | |
| 26 Jun 2006 | Amother Guy | Loading... I really don't get why Photoshop and other illustration programs are so expensive, they involve about the same, or possibly even less, amount of work and development as computer games. Adobe etc make most of their money from commercial licensing, game publishers from individuals. Yet games are cheaper. Why? | |
| 28 Nov 2006 |  Thomas Niekel | Loading... I'd like to add another method of photoshop colouring, wich I think many people would find also helpfull. I don't know if only PS 7 and above can do this but anyway, here comes a schematic:
LAYER 1 -> Your drawing in graytones, pencil on paper, important: blending mode (left of opacity) = Multiply. Multiply will render all white pixels 100% transparent, and al black pixels 100% solid. Graytones in between will have a transparency similair to the amount of white in the pixel. (so; the whiter, the more transparent)
LAYER 2 -> Your colours, use the brush tool to fill up spaces between the lines. Adjust the opacity of the brush to make subtile adjustments.
LAYER 3,4,5,6... etc -> add colours, effects, play around with blending modes. Keep layer 1 on top.
Most of the time, having more than 20 layers in your drawing will cause trouble. Categorize your layers in folders, or flatten layers when you're satisfied with some, and don't wish to change anymore. | |
| 15 Apr 2009 |  Nathan j Marley | Loading... I have Gimp2, it’s free and is the same as Photoshop (Almost) and for those of you who want a free Photoshop, use Gimp2 or Gimpshop. This article did not help me much, but hey, I don’t use Photoshop, so if I did, it probably make WAY more sense. | |
| 15 Apr 2009 | Nathan j Marley | Loading... And Thomas Niekel has it down the way I use Gimp2, so that helps me out a lot............................ Thanks Tom!  | |
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