Coloring guide

okay, before I start, you MAY USE thison your website, under 2 condtions.

1. Its not edited (except possible grammer corrections)

2. "~Guide by Zeo of the Gaming Universe" is left in the sgnature.


So you have this really cool drawing you want colored, but you don't know how.

[bold]NOTICE: Do NOT try an re-color a photograph that is B&W, it wont work. This warning is only for actaul attmepts to recolor a photo, if you are planning to make a manip of it, then you can probably recolor if you picture is simple eough, but it won't be photograph quality if you are in need of THIS tutorail.[/bold]


There's 2 Mega-catergories of coloring : "Real" coloring, and digital coloring. I HIGHLY recommend you use digital coloring, since if you screw up a peice in real coloring, it neds redone from sctrach.

On to 4 "easy" digital methods the, wich one you elect dends on the nature of the drawing or scanned image)

A. Two-tone, Light Defraction, Silhouette, Carbon paper, ECT.

Anything with a wierd name probably goes under this category. Essntially, what you are doing is taking the picture an putting it on a different color paper. Use the gradeint tool at 20% transparency or colorize tool in any program, you can do as many colors as you want, but you're playing the game of stacking colors and no regions..


B. Pixel coloring:

This is ONLY for cartoony or simple images, it sukcs the life right out of detailed work. It is also the primary work for sprites (please don't shade your sprites unles you know what the heck you are doing, or plan on having them be used in true color, and NOT using this method.

Method is simple, Using MS paint is best, pick color, use pencil................repeat until image is done..............


C. Selection based color( You can use tablet here):

THIS is for your detail work! There are infinate ways to do this, (one for each tool, filter, plugin, and what ever else you find) but the basics are the same. You have to use the selection tools to pick the boundries between things, and then use the tool of your chioce to colors( or do a precolor texture addition) just that region. I prefer colorize.

The tools are (if availible) freehand select tool, fuzzy select tool, color select tool, and Sqaure/oval/circle select. Bel. curve, Intersect, ect are for avanced users. NEVER use Select by Shape, its almost always unable to do a proper job for this application.


IMPORTANT!!!!!!

MAKE SURE you use the sharpen selection feature AT LEAST twice in a row before you color your slection, or it may "bleed out" into non selected sectione. Also if your usng the fuzzy select wand OR select by color, make sure an DESELECT things not relating to the region you were trying to slect. SOMETIMES IN BOTH CASES THESE ARE INVISIBLE! CUT and PASTE into new the slection before running a tool on it, and see if it has any Stragglers attached, OR is missing pieces, or parts of peices(sometimes portains become partially transparent)..

This method often leaves wash out pixels (ones that got colored twice),pixels that dont fit in any reagion, and are ard to color (usally just a small line around something), and weird pixels the don't color the same as others, and hence stand out. To deal with this use Guassian Blur RLE,strenth between 1 and 5. If you can't STAND the loss of sharpness, then go pixel hunting using the pixel method. Athough I do warn you, you'll spend weeks "Touching up" like that on a complicated piece.

D. Free hand Color by tablet and/or paint tools.

I HGHLY discourage this unless you are VERY comfortable with your talet, and/or panit tools.. if you want to do this, do it in software in color to begin with. The results when coloring are very simlar to (but less exact then) pixeled coloring, and quite frankly are not impressive to the amount of money invested in a tablet, and the amount of work..


Updates pending.