Anime colouring tutorial

[aeriiths.livejournal.com]

We are going to be going from this: To this: In my tutorial for colouring anime style caps.

Program: Photoshop CS5
Difficulty: Intermediate


STEP 01

Before I do anything else I prepare my base. I usually go through the same steps as I do with my other icons.

Duplicate the base and make it a screen layer with 62% opacity. On this icon having it at full power was too bright.

Duplicate the base layer again and set it to soft light. To soften things up, go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur... and set the radius to about 4.0. We want the extra colour and contrast this layer gives but don't want it quite so sharp.

After that make a black/white gradient. I had the white heading towards the top left corner while the black was at the bottom right. Set this layer to soft light 50%.

The final part of the base preparation is adding a colour fill layer in f599b6. Set this layer to soft light at 37% opacity.

Once you're done, you should have something that looks like this:


STEP 02

Next make a Colour Balance adjustment layer and input these values:

Midtones
+17
+5
-9
Shadows
+15
-5
+22
Highlights
+2
-2
-3

Once that's done you should have something like this:


STEP 03

Now make a Curves adjustment layer and input these values:

(O=63, I=71)
(O=71, I=76)

Once you've done that, your icon should look a bit lighter, like this:


STEP 04

Now make a Levels adjustment layer and use these numbers: 19, 0.96, 250
Leave the Output Levels alone and you'll have something like this:


STEP 05

Next up is a Vibrance layer to help the colours, especially the reds of the icon, pop a little bit more. Set Vibrance to +32 and Saturation to +5. We're almost there, so it will look like this:


STEP 06

And now for the last of the adjustment layers, Photo Filter. Pick the Cooling Filter (80) and set the Density to 10%.

You'll have this, but we're not quite done yet!


STEP 07

Duplicate the gradient that was used earlier and bring it to the top. Keep it as a soft light layer, but lower the opacity to 30%.



STEP 08

Press ctrl+alt+shift+e to duplicate and collect everything into a new layer. Next go to Filters>Other>High Pass... and set it to 0.5. Now you set this layer to soft light to make the icon sharper.



STEP 09

Make a new layer and set the opacity to 40%. Next take a large, fuzzy brush at about 50px and set the colour to eaeaeb. Paint some dots onto your icon to add some extra light to the icon, and... you're done!