PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL

Alright kiddies! It's time for Auntie Rachel to teach you all about her most favoritest 
graphic program in the entire world.. PHOTOSHOP!

Most of the tips Auntie Rachel will give you here will apply to Photoshop v.4 and up... 
Sorry, but Auntie Rachel's never used Photoshop 1, 2, or 3...

First of all, these are some things you should know about Auntie Rachel's Photoshop 
technique: Currently, she's using Photoshop v.5.5, with a whole bunch of plug-ins and the 
like. BUT, also, she has a lot of weird palettes open. The palettes she uses the most are 
the Navigator Pallete, the Info Palette, the Options Palette, the Color Palette, the 
Swatches Palette, the Layers Palette, the Brushes Palette, the Channels Palette, and the 
History Palette. (Note to Photoshop v.4- users: The History option is only available to 
Photoshop v.5 for now =P) If you don't have these open, then go to the View menu, and make 
sure that all these are being shown. Otherwise you might get a little confused on some of 
the steps..

--How to color an Inked Drawing
--How to color a Sketch



--HOW TO COLOR AN INKED DRAWING--

1. Alright, first of all, make sure that you have a scanner. =P Yes, I know that sounds 
silly, but unless you've got some real mouse skillz (or a pen tablet like good ol' Biff 
here), then you'll need to scan a picture you've already drawn. Check and see if your 
scanner has an option called 'Line Art', like mine does. Actually, your scanner might call 
it something different.. but just make sure its an option that takes only the BLACK AREAS 
of a picture, no grey values. If you don't have an option like that, don't freak out--it 
just means you'll need to really clean up your picture later. So, go into Photoshop, click 
File, and Import, and TWAIN_32, or TWAIN, or whatever it calls your scanner. Then.. well, 
scan your picture, silly. Scan it on Line Art (or Black and White), at 300 DPI.

2. Okay, so you've got your scanned picture in Photoshop now! But we've gotta clean it up. 
=P No artist's inking skills are perfect (especially mine!). So, grab your eraser tool, 
give it a big ol' brush, and zoom out of your picture to 25%. Erase all the dots or 
mistakes you can see from here. Then, zoom in to 50%, get a smaller brush, and erase even 
more of the mistakes. When you get in to 100%, start fixing booboos in the lines--like, 
overlapping ends, broken lines, things like that.

3. All finished? Alright! If you originally scanned your picture as Line Art, then odds 
are your picture right now is in Bitmap mode. To find out, go to Image, then Mode. If 
there's a checkmark by "Bitmap", then you need to change it to Grayscale. Now that it's in 
Grayscale, go to your Channels palette. Select the channel called "black", and then click 
on the button that looks like a dotted circle, the 'Load channel as a selection' button. 
This will select everything in the picture that isn't black, and sometimes some lighter 
gray areas, if you have any. Go to the Select menu, and click on Inverse. Now all your 
black areas are selected, which is what you want. Copy this (Edit/Copy, or ctrl+c), and 
then go to the Edit menu. Select "Paste Into..". This pastes ONLY the black areas you 
selected into the picture as a brand new layer--and it even comes with one of those handy 
layer masks, too! Delete the original background layer (you may need to double-click it 
and rename it Layer 0), and resize your picture to 50%. Save it at this point in .psd 
format.

4. Okay, so your outline is in its own little layer now! This is very helpful, believe me. 
It means that you can color in layers below it, and not worry about going over the lines. 
(Rachel likes layers, a whole bunch.)  Speaking of coloring, you can do that now! Make a 
new layer, rename it something like 'Hair', and move it below the outline layer. Take your 
paint tool with a hard-edged brush, select a color from the Swatches Palette or the Color 
Palette, and start filling in the color, like a coloring book. What I like to do is make a
new layer for every color or subject--a layer for hair, skin, clothes, metal, etc.--so 
that I don't end up messing up one color while trying to fill in another. Plus, it helps 
for when we do the toning next. }=) Rachel's favorite step.

5. Alright, so you've got all the basic colors filled in for your picture! Now, go to one 
of your colored layers, and select the Color Dodge tool. (It may be the Color Burn or 
Sponge tool at the time, though.. just click and hold on the icon, and select the Color 
Dodge tool from the little popup menu). Color Dodge and Color Burn are Rachel's two 
favorite tools. Why? Because they take care of all the shading and highlighting for you. 
Color Dodge automatically takes the color your using it on, and makes it a lighter, 
brighter color. Color Burn makes the color darker. (The Sponge tool makes things more or 
less saturated, or colorful. =P I don't really use it that much) Depending on what you're 
toning, you may want to mess with the exposure of the tools you're using. To do that, 
double-click on the tool icon to open the Options palette, and change the percent in the 
Exposure box. (You Photoshop v.4 users still have that nice little slide bar, though =P I 
miss that slide bar). The more exposure you have, the stronger the tool will work. 
Generally speaking, I use dodge at 50% and burn at 25% on hair, dodge at 15% and burn at 
20% on skin, and from there on in I just experiment to see what looks best.

6. Well... you've just colored and toned your whole picture. Now it's time to go back to 
your outline layer, and take a look at that thing called a Layer Mask attached to it. A 
layer mask is like erasing the layer, except its not permanent. Painting black in a layer 
mask will 'hide' whatever is behind the black. Painting white in a mask will show what was 
hidden before. It's a little confusing to explain, but hopefully this next step will 
illustrate it better. What we're going to do now is color the outline of the picture. This 
isn't something you -have- to do, but if you can pull it off right, it makes the picture 
look very nice! Let's start with the outline around the hair first.. take your Eyedropper 
tool and take a sample of what you think is the darkest color value in all of the hair 
color. Then, go to your color palette, and make your current color ten points less on the 
Brightness slider, and five points more on the Saturation slider. (If your color palette 
doesn't have sliders with H S and B next to them, then you need to change it.. click on 
the arrow below the X on the Color palette, and select the option "HSB Sliders".. there, 
now this should make more sense.) Take your new slightly darker color, select the outline 
layer (but be sure not to select the -mask-), and paint on the hair outline. Because you 
have a layer mask over your outline, even though your paintbrush is bigger than the area 
you're painting, it will only show through the parts that the layer mask doesn't cover. 
Pretty nifty, huh? Go through and color your outline like this, selecting a new color for 
every new thing you're outlining.. and..

7. ..You're almost done! ^^; Well, you could be done right now if you wanted. But you may 
want to put a background into this nice new picture you've created. If that's the case, 
then go to your Layers palette, and click on the eyeball next to the outline layer. This 
will make the outline layer invisible. Click on one of the visible layers, the go to the 
layer menu, and say "Merge visible". Make the outline layer visible again.. you now have 
only two layers, your outline layer, and your color layer. This is important for in case 
you need to fix a few color mistakes you made. Go ahead and make a new layer, put it 
behind the other two, and make a background. (In my case, I just used another picture I'd 
found on the internet). Now that you've got something new behind your color, you might 
notice a few color spots use missed, or that you actually went outside the lines a few 
times. That's okay.. easily fixed! Go to your colored layer, and use the Smudge tool to 
smudge over the holes, and use the Eraser to erase the color you accidentally put outside 
the lines. Now that everything looks good.. select the outline layer, and press ctrl+e.. 
this will merge the outline layer into the layer below, which had better still be your 
color layer. (If it isn't, just undo and fix things up before merging again). Now would be 
a really good time to make a shadow, if you want. Select the layer that has your picture 
in it, and go to the Layer menu. Select "Duplicate layer". Now you've got a new layer 
called "Layer copy" or something to that effect. Go to the Image menu, then the Adjust 
menu, and the Hue and Saturation. Crank the Brightness and Saturation sliders allll the 
way to the left. This will make your duplicate layer completely black. Go to Filter, Blur, 
and Gaussian Blur. Make a blur of about 2.5. This, naturally, blurs the black layer. Go 
back to the Layer palette, and move the copy layer below the original one. Mess around 
with the layer opacity, and set it somewhere around 40%, or whatever you think would look 
best. Then, take the black arrow tool, (that's the mover tool), and move the shadow around 
somewhere, so you can see it.

8. Oh my! After all this time.. your picture is FINISHED! Wai! *gives you a nacho hat* Go 
to Layer, and select Flatten Image. Go ahead and save it now, 'cause you're DONE baby, 
yeah! You survived Auntie Rachel's Photoshop tips for coloring an inked image!!


--COLORING A SKETCH--

1. Alright, so you're too lazy to ink in a drawing. That's understandable. It's easy to 
color just a simple sketch in Photoshop, too. First of all, scan your drawing as a gray 
picture, at 300 dpi. Go into Photoshop and clean it up now. The safest way to do this 
would be to create a new layer, and paint over areas in white, instead of erasing. When 
you're done, you can just flatten the image again.

2. Otay, so the sketch's all scanned and cleaned up. Now, make a new layer. Make sure it's 
still on top of the sketch. Go to the layer palette, and look at the menu that right now 
says 'Normal' on it. This is the Blend Mode menu. Click on it, and change 'Normal' to 
'Multiply'. The different modes do different things to the layers. Multiply will let any 
black from the layers below to show through onto the layer you're using now. Which means 
that no matter what, your black and gray sketch lines will always show though the colors 
on your color layer. Nifty, huh?

3. Go ahead and start coloring! You can make seperate layers for every color if you want, 
although you gotta make sure that they're all in Multiply mode. It also looks best if you 
use the paint tool or the airbrush tool, with a soft brush.

4. After the coloring.. *evil grin* it's TONING TIME! Grab the Color Dodge tool. (It may 
be the Color Burn or Sponge tool at the time, though.. just click and hold on the icon, 
and select the Color Dodge tool from the little popup menu). Color Dodge and Color Burn 
are Rachel's two favorite tools. Why? Because they take care of all the shading and 
highlighting for you. Color Dodge automatically takes the color your using it on, and 
makes it a lighter, brighter color. Color Burn makes the color darker. (The Sponge tool 
makes things more or less saturated, or colorful. =P I don't really use it that much) 
Depending on what you're toning, you may want to mess with the exposure of the tools 
you're using. To do that, double-click on the tool icon to open the Options palette, and 
change the percent in the Exposure box. (You Photoshop v.4 users still have that nice 
little slide bar, though =P I miss that slide bar). The more exposure you have, the 
stronger the tool will work. Generally speaking, I use dodge at 50% and burn at 25% on 
hair, dodge at 15% and burn at 20% on skin, and from there on in I just experiment to see 
what looks best.

5. Well.. that's basically about it! If you want, you can color the outline, by putting a 
new layer between the outline and the colored layers, and turn it into Screen mode. Screen 
mode always lets white show through, no matter what. Kinda the opposite of Multiply. 
Because of this, any color you put on the Screened layer will only show up on the 
black/grey values on the layers below it. That is also quite nifty. After you do that.. 
just flatten the image and save!! A lot easier than coloring an inked picture, huh? 
Although you can do less with a sketch than you can with an inked outline.. just food for 
thought there.


If you have ANY questions about how to do a certain thing in Photoshop, please don't 
hesitate to e-mail me! Rachel is here to help! ^_^