So, you liked my art so much that you went and downloaded Photoshop just so you can color like I do? Well, it's not as easy as it looks (as you might have learned). I suggest that you first go through the tutorial to get comfortable with some of the features we'll be using in this tutorial. For the sake of avoiding confusion, I've made certain words and phrases colored so that you will know they are important tips and will probably screw up your picture if you don't read closely.

There are instructional videos for this tutorial now available. All files are archived in .rar format, so you will need to download winrar to open them. The files themselves are in .avi format and encoded with divx. The videos should help to further illustrate how to color in photoshop, but know it still only contains everything this tutorial already has.

TUTORIALS RECOMMENDED BEFORE STARTING

Learning the Photoshop Workspace
How to Get Clearer Line Art

First, open up your picture. The picture to the right was drawn as an example so you can follow along with this tutorial.

The picture was originally drawn in pencil, inked, scanned, and converted into vertex art.

I recommend either leveling your pencil or ink artwork, or converting it to vertex art before starting as I have. If you are unfamiliar with this, please read the How to Get Clearer Line Art before beginning this tutorial.

On the lower right side of your screen, you will see a window that looks like the image to the right. Yours may have additional Pannel Tabs, like Paths, Actions, or Tool Presets. We will not be using them for this tutorial, so I've undocked them.

First, select the LAYERS tab of this windows. If it's not visible, you may get to it by going to WINDOWS - LAYERS.

You can see the only layer you currently have is called the Background layer, and it contains your drawing. Click the button on the bottom of this window twice to create two new empty layers. To help with things later, you should rename your layers. Double Click on the layer's name (it should be either Layer 1 or Layer 2) and you will see that you can now edit the name. If you prefer, you can right-click on the selected layer to bring up the "Layer Properties" window as well. Rename the top layer something like "Pencil Drawing" or "Ink" and the second layer "Color Layer", or whatever color you plan to put onto that layer.

After this is done, you will need to get your drawing on a layer by itself so that you can't paint over the lines. It's already on the background, but it's surrounded by white as well. Photoshop allows you to have the pencil lines on a layer by itself with a transparent background, so that if you wanted to, you could affect only the lines and nothing else.

To do this, you'll need to click the tab that says CHANNELS. If it isn't there, you can access it by going to WINDOWS - CHANNELS.

On the CHANNELS tab you should have four channels (RBG, Red, Green, and Blue) visible. Click on the BLUE channel and drag it to the button. This makes a new channel called Blue copy. This channel should look exactly like your original picture. Now, click on the Blue copy channel and press Ctrl + I to invert the channel, which makes the lines white and the background black. Or, if you want to know how to access the invert command from the menu, it's IMAGE - ADJUSTMENTS - INVERT.

Many people have gotten confused at this part of the tutorial, thinking that Layers and Channels are the same thing. Please understand that they are not. You CANNOT color in the Channels, they are meant for selecting parts of your image, or masking parts of them so they cannot be affected by other tools like the brush or the paint bucket. If you do not switch back to the LAYERS tab, you will ruin your image.

Now, you should be on the LAYERS tab. The first thing you need to do is select the layer with your drawing on it. I named mine "Ink". Your picture should be selected (you'll notice the "marching ants" dotted-line selection all over your image). Now look over to the left side of your screen at the long vertical toolbar. You will need to select the Paintbucket Tool. If you can"t seem to find it, press "G", and it will select it for you. Now, set your color to Black by using the Color Picker. It is also on the toolbar at the bottom-left side of your screen. Make sure that you have the "Ink" layer still selected, and then click anywhere on the image. The lines of your drawing may appear to get thicker. Don"t worry about it for now. However, on the tiny thumbnail of your "Ink" layer, you may notice that the lines have appeared. You now need to DESELECT the image by pressing Ctrl + D or by going to SELECT - DESELECT.

Select the layer named "Background" and then go to EDIT - FILL and select WHITE for the color as shown in the image to the right. This will fill the entire Background layer with white.

Now you'll notice that the Background layer that once contained your drawing is white, but your drawing is still showing up in your window. This is because of the Channels step we did earlier. You now have just the lines on a layer by itself and the white "canvas" background by itself.

Look at the image to the right. Layers work sort of like clear plastic sheets of paper. Imagine having 4 of these laying on top of each other. The top one would have your drawing on it, the middle will have just paint (color), and the background will be whatever you decide to choose later on. This is useful so that you can work on one layer and not disturb the others, or have things overlap eachother.

To get a better idea of what I mean, you can use a nifty feature that temporarily hides a layer. Next to each of your layers, you"ll notice a small eye symbol. If you click on the background layer's eye symbol, you'll see the eye dissappear, and all the white parts of your image will be replaced by checkered squares. These squares will always represent any area of your image that is transparent.

If you bothered to hide the layers to check the transparency, make sure to unhide them now by clicking the empty squares where the eyes used to be.
Now you'll need to pick a color scheme for your image. You can choose preset colors from the SWATCHES panel or you can click the COLOR PICKER and choose the colors you want as you go along. Make sure the layer you're going to be coloring on is highlighted, pick your colors, and start coloring!

There are two methods I usually use to get the base colors of an image done. If you are trying to color a pencil drawing, your only real option, unless your lines are really dark, is to use the paintbrush tool and do it all by hand. This is time consuming and isn't very accurate. I usually use a brush with the hardness set to 100%. Using a softer "airbrush" type of brush will result in "overspray", which you'll have to erase later on.

However, your picture may come out like the one to the right. What happens is that the paint doesn"t meet evenly with the black lines and it leaves a white border where the color is. This can be fixed easily, provided that all of your lines are enclosed and there are no gaps in the lines of your picture.

In this new window, you'll get the option to put an amount. Usually 1 or 2 pixels will get the job done. This command will then expand the selection area by the amount you entered. This is good because it will expand right into your line art, allowing the paint to go beneath it, thus hiding the white border as shown above.

Also, you must remember that to select the areas you want to fill, you must be on thelayer you wish to paint on, and not your "Ink" layer. After selecting the areas, you MUST switch back to the layer with your coloring on it and THEN use the Paintbucket tool. If you use it on the "Ink" layer, it will ruin your ink lines.

After filling in the color, you may want to make a new layer for each new color you are going to put onto your image. This helps so that you can later edit only that layer if it requires a touchup.

When all of your colors are put down, you may want to lock the layer transparency for each of them by first selecting the layer, and then pressing the checkered button next to the word "Lock:" as shown in the picture. You"ll notice a white padlock icon appear to the right of the layer name as shown in the picture. This indicates that whatever did not have color on it will now be locked, and cannot be colored on. This handy feature keeps you from coloring "outside of the lines" and will save you tons of headache later.