MASSIVE COLORING TUTORIAL.

i’ve been asked countless times on how i color my caps, and the truth is that it is very strange and next to impossible to explain, but i’ll try my best. if you have any questions feel free to spam my ask and i’ll try my best to help!

EDIT: as of late i’ve gotten some questions about this tutorial, please look here to see how psd’s work and what they are for and here for how to drag psd’s onto an image. if you need something else explained send me an ask and i’ll post it here!

step 1) download a whole lot of psd’s, try to get ones that look different. (try recreatemepsd, drunkandcoloring, fuckyeahresources or the psd tag)

step 2) open all your psd’s in photoshop and drag them onto one image (make them all invisible first!), you should end up with a bunch of psd groups that you can adjust as you please. feel free to rename them so you can find different ones easily! now go and save (file -> save as -> make sure the format is .psd)

you can see mine here, i have my base image and then about 30+ psd’s stacked on top of it and i’ve renamed them so i can find ‘em quickly!

step 3) okay, so now you have that all done go find the image you want to color! i’m using a doctor who cap from the eleventh hour. open it in photoshop and resize it so the width is 500p (image -> image size -> width: 500 pixels) i’m also going to smart sharpen it (filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen -> these settings), brilliant! now let’s open up that file with all our psd’s on it and click and drag them all onto our new image (hold down tab to select them all at once). now just start checking off different psd’s and see what looks good, i usually delete the ones that i know i wont be using so there aren’t as many getting in the way. if a psd is too bright try lowering the opacity or mix it with one that will darken it, if the vibrance is too heavy go into the psd and erase the parts that make the image pixley, the more you play around with and get to know your different psd’s you’ll figure out what works good together and how you can change your settings to make your colorings different each time!

so this is what i settled on, the “darker” psd brightened my image just a smidge and brought out the browns while the “supa color” made it vibrant and more orangey.

step 4) so yeah, that’s the gist of it, then go ahead and save your file as .png and you’re good to go! but since this tutorial is supposed to be massive let’s take it an extra couple of steps and i’ll show you things you can do when you hit bumps in the road.

step 5) let’s take a look at this sherlock cap, i did the same steps i did for my other one but see how bits of it are kinda grainy? that’s either becuse it’s a) too bright, or b) too vibrant. but i like my cap the way it is and don’t want to go in and start erasing things or changing them. so let’s flatten my image. now go to filter -> noise -> reduce noise -> and depending on how grainy and how detailed your image is copy something similar to these settings:

now you can see the difference, it’s not much but it changes a lot

step 6) what about this cap? i like the colors but i’m getting some major pixleage and amy’s face is just too yellow!

i could try reducing the noise but it doesn’t do much for me unless i bring down the “preserve details” and then it’s no longer sharp. okay, let’s try opening up the two psd’s we’re working with and see what we can do with the adjustments.

after checking and unchecking some things i figured out the problem, one of the curves was making the image just a tad too bright, and the gradient needed to have it’s opacity reduced so it wasn’t so bright at the top of the image. i also went into the vibrance layer and erased some yellow bits around amy and canton’s face with a light, fluffy brush. much better, i might still want to go and reduce the noise on this but i fixed most of the problems.

step 7) but jaaane, we want to know how you do the colorpoooorn. alright, alright, let’s go find an image that could use some crazy colors!

d’aaw, poor john, bad dreams again? looks like his day could use some brightening up! open up your coloring psd and start checking those things off like crazy until you find something you like.

whoa, okay, that’s pretty amazing. i got lucky and found a psd that both colored and brightened this image which is always what you should be going for! :D some of you might have noticed that it’s a bit grainy, go ahead and reduce the noise and you’re all set!

step 8) jane you cheater you made that look way too easy, and what if my image is bright? what then? fine. fine. let’s go find another one. girl who waited, bright enough for you?

aaaand, let’s add some psd’s to that.

great! except i’m really not fond of how red the corners are getting in that last one. let’s go into our layers again and see if we can fix that…

whoa, ok, cool story bro - as i was looking around for some layers i could hide or erase parts of to get rid of the red i noticed that in one of the psd’s there was a normal layer tucked in there [layer 5!]. usually people use those in psd’s to add color or to lighten parts of the image, turns out, this one had been used to lighten the top right hand corner and made the red go away [when i made this layer invisible, there was a lot more red at the top!]. so, i got out my brush tool and started coloring anywhere i didn’t want the red to be, not bad for a accidental discovery, eh?

alright. so that’s the end of my tutorial, i’m crossing my fingers you learnt a few things and will be able to have fun coloring now! PLEASE message me if you have any questions or want advice and i’ll totally help you out! i love doing this and have a fairly good knowledge on how things work so don’t be scared to give me a shout! remember to have fun and try new things, and don’t get frustrated if things don’t work out ;) [ever wonder why some of my caps are black and white? those are the ones i nearly ended up tossing my computer out the window over]

good luck and happy coloring!

1 year ago · 1828