Paved With Stars || Why So Serious?

Welcome Hello and welcome to Paved With Stars, the site dedicated to all my digital graphics and resources. Feel free to look around and enjoy your visit!

Info Opened: May 14th, 2007
Owner: Johnny's Fan
Host: Erica
Layout: ver. 5 featuring The Joker; made by me
Credit: HeathLedger.com, 1001 Fonts, and Feel Resources
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Colourizing An Image

This tutorial is here to help you make a colourization. If you have never made one before I will explain as best I can. A colourization is basically an image you colour in yourself. It can be a black and white image or you can find an image in colour, grey scale it in your programme, so it's ready for you to use. The idea is to try and make the colourization as realistic as possible, so having the original colour photo is ideal (or a similar photo to compare shades etc). Depending on the image and how intricate it is, it can take anything up to 2 days or sometimes 2 hours.

Step One

When you have the picture you would like to colourize open it up in PSP. I am using this image. Ideally if you have the same picture in colour or a similar picture, then you'll need that as well. It really helps to have a colour picture for referance. For this I am going to use two images (you can use as many as you think will help). This for the hair shades and this for the skin, eyes and lips. Open up your colour pictures as well. You are now ready to begin.

Step Two

Click on your grey scale image and go layers -> duplicate. Your screen should now look like this.

Step Three

Now decide which part of the image you are going to colour. I am going to start with the hair. Now take your dropper tool and click on the hair on the colour photo that you are using to match the hair shade. The colour you have selected will appear under styles on the right hand side. Now select the retouch tool. Bring up the options box by pressing "O" and then click the middle of the buttons in the top left of the box retouch options. On the drop down box click colour to target. That is the setting you will always need for colourizing. The colour you previously selected will now be used. Keep the opacity set at 100% for now.

Step Four

The next stage is to really try your luck with the shades. You need to experiment and see what looks right and what doesn't. Keep clicking on the colour image with the dropper tool and using the retouch, and keep trying out different colours. If you don't like the colour then simply use the erase tool. Don't worry if any of the hair colour goes into other areas, as we'll sort that out later.

Step Five

Here is what the colourization looks like with the colour - #A05925. Eeep! Too orange! Don't worry we'll be adding another colour. And here it is with another colour added - #461A1B. Hmm...tooo..brown...we'll try again. This now with - #4D2116 added. That’s better! A much richer reddish brown. So when you are happy with the hair colour..

Step Six

This is the clever part. Duplicate you current layer by going layers -> duplicate. So now you have two copies of your coloured layer. Now for this duplicate go effects -> blur -> gaussian blur with the radius set at 5.00. Click Ok. Now go layers -> properties and set the blend mode to soft and then Ok. Your image should now look like this. As you can see the whole image now “glows” and the hair colour looks much better. You can now delete this layer! It was just to see what the image would look with a glow. If you are not happy with how it looks, then try overlay or screen instead of soft and if you are still not happy keep pressing CTRL+Z to undo all you have done, and then re-colour the hair. Repeat this process until you are happy. Note: I usually use gaussian blur as it just makes the whole image shine and the colours look much better. You don’t need to use it if you don’t wish. Sometimes the overlapping colours (for example hair colour on skin) can actually match a skin colour perfectly when you use gaussian blur. However this time the red is too much so you will need....

Step Seven

This image. The one you originally coloured. Now you need to erase all the hair colour that is on other areas (this is why we duplicated the original image). It is much easier to erase the colour than to painstakingly colour the hair, avoiding all other areas. You may need to lower the eraser opacity for doing the hair at the top of the head. And you should have something like this. It looks pretty weird at the moment but it will all come together soon. When you are happy with the erasing and you have made sure you haven’t missed anything go layers -> merge -> merge all.

Step Eight

Next you will need to colour the face. For this you will follow Steps Three, Four and Five and again duplicate the image and experiment with the shades using the second colour image to get the skin shades. Don’t forget to try out the gaussian blur to make sure the colours look right. Here is what it should look like after you have added colours #CCB2A3, #D6C3B2 and #DECBC5 and erased all the colour off other areas (keep the lips the same colour as the skin). Then when you are happy go layers -> merge -> merge all.

Step Nine

You're almost there! Now all you have to do is again duplicate the image and add colour to the clothing, eyes, lips and cheeks. Using colour #C78989 add a little bit of rouge to the cheeks. Add #294EB9 to the eyes at 40% opacity and then add #294EB9 for the lips. Colour the blouse in #314D31. Your colourization should look like this. Now go layers -> merge -> merge all and then layers -> duplicate.

Step Ten

And for the final time we are going to add gaussian blur. Effects -> blur -> gaussian blur and then layers -> properties and then change the blend mode to soft. And now layers -> merge -> merge all.

And that’s it! You should not have something that looks like this. It may look a bit complicated but it's not too hard once you get used to going through the process. The more you try the better you will get and in time you'll learn what works best and what doesn't.