One of the most useful tricks to master in computer coloring is the ability to create realistic flesh tones quickly and relatively realistically. Nothing ruins the effect of a good fantasy portrait drawing more than a shoddy coloring job on the hero or heroine. How many times have you seen a wonderfully detailed pencil or ink drawing in an Elfwood gallery completely flattened (literally and figuratively) by inept, hasty computer coloring with the Fill and Airbrush tools?
Never fear, though! Make it through this comprehensive tutorial and you'll be able to kiss those skin-coloring blues good bye. Pay attention now, because Professor Maggie is going to share her secret techniques for coloring the fleshy bits of everything from pale snow maidens to dreary drow!
Some General Notes
The techniques in this tutorial work best with finished, shaded pencil drawings. This means that all shadows, details, and modelling are already in place.
The same techniques can be used to color other features as well--from hair to clothing. The key is to have a solid grayscale drawing (or digital image) first! I really can't stress this enough. If your shading skills with pencil or computer aren't up to par, this coloring method won't work for you. A badly drawn figure colored this way won't look like a glossy masterpiece; it will look like a badly drawn figure with a glossy coloring job.
This tutorial uses Photoshop 5.5, but the features required to complete the tutorial are also available in version 4.0.
Although the palettes and menus shown are from Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro 6.0 and above may also be used. Where appropriate, alternate instructions for Paint Shop Pro (PSP) are shown in blue.
1. Before you do anything else, make sure that you have your Layers palette open in Photoshop. If you don't see it in your work area, go to Window|Show Layers to open the palette. PSP: View|Toolbars|Check Layer Palette option, or click .
2. Open your black and white image file. If you originally scanned the image in Grayscale mode, you may have to go to Image|Mode|RGB Color to switch the image to a useable format. PSP: Colors|Increase Color Depth|16 Million Colors or SHIFT+CTRL+0 (zero, not letter "O")
3. Now make a duplicate layer of your image by either selecting Layer|Duplicate Layer from the menu or dragging your background layer down to the New Layer button in your Layer palette. Name this layer Blur. (Tip: In both Photoshop and PSP, you can change the properties of each layer by double-clicking the layer.)
4. Click on the new Blur layer in the Layer palette to start working on that layer. Always keep a copy of the original drawing on one of the layers in case the coloring doesn't go as planned and you need to start over. It is also a convenient to compare your in-progress work with the original to make sure that you haven't altered the look of the image too much.
5. Select the Lasso tool from your Tool palette. Using the Lasso tool, select all the skin areas in your figure. To select non-adjacent skin areas, hold down the SHIFT key while selecting. To subtract from existing selection areas, hold down the ALT key while using the tool. (Tip: It is often easier to select the entire face, and then go back and subtract features such as the eyes and lips using the Alt modifier.) PSP: Selection type-Freehand, Antialias-Checked. Hold down the CTRL key to subtract instead of ALT.
6. Save your selection to an alpha channel by going to the Select|Save Selection... menu. In the dialog box, use the following settings:
Thank you! I´ve been searching for good tutorials a very long time now, and finally i´ve find it! Thank you for not talking in "photo-language", I don´t understand that yet ^^'.
17 Jan 2006
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Thanks so much it works with coral photopaint too and this helped me so much thank you thank you thank you
I just want to say thanks for this - even though I use arcsoft photostudio 5 for my colouring, I still found it useful as it helped me to work out what order to do things in, so thankyou, skins always been the hardest thing for me to colour.
HI! I've wanted to find a simple-looking program tutorial for what seems like years. The last one i tried, I didn't understand right, and I messed up the pic. This one is done so that everyone can understand! And I thank you for taking the time to translate for PSP, for i didn't want to buy a new program if i didn't have to. ^^
In the High School Web Design class that I teach, we use GIMP to do a "colorizing" assignment. I have my students visit this page to get their skin tones right when colorizing. The Photoshop settings work fairly well in GIMP. Thanks for the tutorial. We have all found it very useful.
Thank you so much, you really helped me alot. Ive been trying to learn to color on photoshop on my own for the last few months and this is the first tutorial ive read and i have to say it was very helpful. I decided to redo one of my pictures and its turning out so much better, though i am still working on it. Its nice how versitile psp is once you get used to it. Still learning though...Thanks again!
The collection of art and writing tutorials in the Elfwood Fantasy Art Resource (F.A.R.P.) is a part of Elfwood. The FARP logo was created by Miguel Krippahl (The muscular guy in the FARP-logo) and Thomas F Abrahamsson (The text and general graphic design). Those sections written by volunteers are copyrighted to Thomas Abrahamsson and the respective writer. Elfwood is a project created by Thomas Abrahamsson.
All rights reserved. Unauthorized Reproduction of the graphics, writings, and materials on these pages is absolutely prohibited! You may consider all material on these pages protected and copyrighted, unless otherwise noted. You may NOT use the images found at the FARP or Elfwood pages on your home pages! All of these images are copyright protected! Everything you see here represent the collaborative effort of the Elfwood community and Thomas Abrahamsson. Please read the Legal Disclaimer for more info on warranties/etc for these pages!
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from your Tool palette. Using the Lasso tool, select all the skin areas in your figure. To select non-adjacent skin areas, hold down the SHIFT key while selecting. To subtract from existing selection areas, hold down the ALT key while using the tool. (Tip: It is often easier to select the entire face, and then go back and subtract features such as the eyes and lips using the Alt modifier.) PSP: Selection type-Freehand, Antialias-Checked. Hold down the CTRL key to subtract instead of ALT.
6. Save your selection to an alpha channel by going to the Select|Save Selection... menu. In the dialog box, use the following settings:
Lyn
thank you thank you thank you
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