Adobe Photoshop Simple Colouring Tutorial

In this tutorial I will be showing you how to colour like the picture above in Adobe Photoshop CS. ^v^ It's really not as hard as it looks! Honest! I used Ho-oh for this because it was the only suitable Photoshop file left, unfortunatly it's not brilliant but it will do for the page!

Lets start with the basics.You'll need to know your way around Photoshop a little beforehand (it helps!). Open up a new file by hitting Ctrl+N or clicking File and then New. Screenshot 1.

In newer versions of Photoshop you will get presets for your canvas size but you can specify them yourself too. I usually start with 640x480, enough room to make a decent sized image for something like the Free Pics section. Screenshot 2.

Once you get your sizes, you'll want to stay with the default settings (the background contents should be set to white, if not then you can change it and even choose your own background colour.) When you're ready, click ok. Your canvas should now be open but it only has one layer! (background) We can't be drawing all on one layer ;) so lets create a new one. Screenshot 3.

Now if you are totally new to layers, think of your canvas as an overhead projector (Or just a white peice of paper!) Imagine that each transparent layer is a transparent peice of paper (normally used in overhead projectors >_>;) Put one on top of the white and you will be able to draw without ruining the paper underneath! Put another on top of that and then another and so on, it's pretty simple see? Back to Photoshop, once you create a new layer it will ask you for a name. I call the first one the Sketch layer, since I'll be drawing out my picture roughly.

Screenshot 4.
Now here you can see my sketch and the Sketch layer ontop of the background. Checkboard layers mean they are transparent. My background is currently white to make it easier to see my lines. (Also you may have noticed the sudden change of windows theme.. sorry! Different days, different moods!) After you've completed your sketch, it's time to outline! Remember that your sketch has to be a much lighter colour than the outlines so that you can see what you're doing. If it isn't, you can lower the opacity of the layers in the layers menu. Create another new layer like before and this time call it Linear layer or Outlines or something. This layer MUST go at the top of EVERYTHING! We don't want to cover the outlines with anything at all. This part is much easier to do when you've zoomed in! Choose your outline colour and then its time to customize the brushes to suit your image ^v^

At the top-right of Photoshop, click the Brushes tab. Screenshot 5. Screenshot 6.

If you'd like your lines to be smooth and soft, you just need to uncheck the Texture box. If you'd like a harder line, follow the screenshot or mess around with the depth and scale in the Texture area until the brush suits you! Once you're done, you can start the outline. Tablet users will have no problem here but those of you who are using a mouse might be wondering how to get around wobbling lines. Here's a nice little trick to get you going, click your mouse with the paintbrush tool anywhere on the canvas and then hold down shift. Click again and notice how the brush strokes follow you. If you can make very tiny clicks like this around your sketch, you will end up with a nice outline, it's a bit like dot to dot. Zooming in is definatly a good idea when trying this!!!

After the outlines you should end up with something like the shot above. When you are sure that you're done with the sketch, you can right click that layer and choose "delete". Now you'll just be left with the background layer and the outline. Screenshot 8.
Time to get to the colouring! Again you'll need a new layer and it must go beneath the outlines (but above the background otherwise it would be covered by it!) Call it colour or something of the like, this bit is very straightforward. Just colour in with your paintbrush! When you're done, you should have about half the image complete. Screenshot 9.
Once again, a new layer is required. We're going to put the shading and highlights on this one. Most of the time I use two seperate layers for the shading and the highlights, but I messed up this time.. :(

This is one of the difficult parts of the image. Figuring out where to paint next.. you need to know some basic art stuff here, like where the light is coming from and what parts of the body will have shadows. It's not too important at the beginning but it's always nice to get it right too ^v^ Once again it's quite straight forward, the shading layer MUST be ontop of the colour layer and all you need is to get some different shades of your base colours. (That part isn't too hard at all!) When you're all done with it, the image should have much more depth to it. Screenshot 10.

You probably noticed the change of background colour, I just used the fill tool on it to make the colouring stand out, if it were to be outside the lines I would be able to see that a lot better than if it was white. That's not so important now though because I am about to delete the background layer! As with the sketch layer, just right click and choose delete. Now you should be left with the checkerboard effect...Screenshot 11.
That's good. You can now either save this as a transparent gif file OR you can create a new background like the image at the top of this tutorial. Although I won't be covering the background, a quick little overview of what I did is handy right? Just a blotch or 5 of orange and yellow all smudged into the shape of fire and some wispy lines behind it. That's all!

Ctrl+S to save your work or go to File and then Save as. If you'd like to save it as a transparent gif (like those in the free pics section!) choose a name and select GIF as the file format. Screenshot 12.
If you have made your background to go with it, save as JPG or PNG. Your JPG quality should be as high as possible so that it doesn't look nasty, your PNG option should be set to "normal".

Here are the GIF options. Screenshot 13.
You'll want a white matte if your gif is going somewhere with a light coloured background. You'll want "None" if your gif is going to be on a dark coloured background. Hit ok and then your next option is either Normal or Interlaced. Go with normal and hit ok again. You've now finished your coloured picture!!