Coloring in Photoshop Tutorial

Intro:
This tutorial is for people who want to know how to color drawings that they scanned. Drawings that were originally on paper.

Things needed:
-Paper
-Pencil
-Window
-Tape
-Pen
-Scanner
-Computer
-Photoshop

NOTE:
This tutorial is based off the settings and button placements of Adobe Photoshop CS2 any other versions may have different names of settings, or placements of buttons.

1) Getting Started:
First you will need to draw a clear picture. And try not to make it messy. You can have it a sketchy picture and not bother to erase ant guidelines or anything. But if your picture is messy and you wanna retrace it, here is how I recommend:
First get your drawing and tape it onto a window (when its daytime, night time wont provide light). Then tape another piece of paper on top of that. Try not to put tape where your gonna make a line. And since its taped on a window its gonna be easy to take off. If anything rips, well your gonna end up cropping it anyway!
Trace the picture with a dark pencil (like B4-B8) and sharp, or a black pen. If you mess up with the pen then you can use whiteout or edit it on Photoshop.

2) Setting up on photoshop:
Now scan your picture and open it up on photoshop. You can crop the image and minimize it, cause usually scanners make the picture extreamly huge. Now you need to change the settings to make it easier to color. So first, go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/contrast. Then change the brightness and contrast to make the picture dark and an easy outline. DONT MAKE IT LOOK PIXELY! Usually I go with Brightness: 20 and Contrast: 45.
Now when you got it looking nice. On the Channels tab (if you dont have it then go to Window > channels) then on the bottom of that tab there should be dotted circle. Click on it and this will select all the white areas. Then press delete.
Now double click the layer and call the layer like, lines or something, just make sure the layer isn't a background. Now the option to 'Lock Transparent Pixels'. So click on that (it should be a square with a checkered gray pattern on the top of the layers tab). Now get the paintbrush tool or Pencil, doesn't matter. And make sure its big, And black. Then color all over the layer. You should have a nice clean outline now.

Coloring:
To color make sure that each color is on a different layer, this will make colors easier to shade (using the lock transparent pixels option). So color all the spots UNDER the lines layer (or whatever you called it). This is easier with a tablet. And shade them using the burn and dodge tool, or dark colors and smudge tool.

Finishing off:
Since im not going to go into detail with coloring the picture, cause its mostly your choice for what you wanna do, ill skip ahead to the end. Now with your picture all colored, you should have like 10 layers

. To make the file size small, your gonna want to merge all the layers, so then you can also save it as a JPEG (or JPG) image. So press CTRL+E or CTRL+SHIFT+E and all the layers should merge.
Now make sure the settings for your picture are: 8 Bit/Channels and RGB color. If they aren't that then go to: Image > Mode and set the settings.

Conclusion:
This tutorial should help you with coloring. If you already didn't know this. You could always trace your pictures with the pencil tool in photoshop, but thats a bit harder and takes too long. So I hope this helps!

© 2007 Cybersief - This tutorial may be used in other sites or printed out and shown to others. Just don't take credit for it. And make sure this copyright line is shown.
Adobe Photoshop is © to Adobe. All names are trademark of photoshop.
[size=6](or whatever, I dunno, I dont own Photoshop or Adobe)[/size]