Colouring Tutorial (Edit)

Using: Paint Shop Pro

Translatable: Yes

Difficulty: Must be Easy because I can do it :D

PSD: sure

I posted this before but it was deleted because it didn’t follow the rules of the community. I am sorry to the mods for not correcting this earlier. As you can see it is now a full on tutorial and not just like a recipe.

First crop your image to the size you want, 100x100 for icons of course. I am using the awesome Blair Waldorf for this tutorial.


Go to Adjust>Brightness and Contrast> Brightness/Contrast (or shift B (not sure if that is the same for Photoshop)) and set the Brightness to 18 and the Contrast to 25. As you can see the image is much brighter and clearer which I think looks much better, plus it will make the end product brighter and clearer.

Create a fill layer of #FFFF80 and set it to Screen at 46%. To do this (there is probably an easier way but I have no idea how to do it(if you do know please tell me)) create a new image and instead of the background being transparent, unclick the box and see how it now gives you the option to have the background as a single colour, click on the colour and a colour wheel will pop up. At the bottom there should be a box that has HTML next to it. Type in #FFFF80 and a yellow colour should appear. Then click OK so you get a completely new image that is just the colour. Once you have selected the image go to the layers section and where it says Background click and drag on to the image you are working on. You picture should have changed to a solid yellow colour. Change this by setting it to screen and changing the opacity to 46%. It should look like this:

Create a fill layer of #FF83C9 and set it to Screen at 38%. Now we are going to do the same thing as before except the colour will be #FF83C9 and the opacity will be 38%. With most of my tutorials I use fill layers using shades of the primary colours; yellow, red, blue.  It is just what I use if I want the picture to have natural tones.

Create a fill layer of #83C0FF and set it to Multiply at 64%. Same thing as before except the colour is #83C0FF and we are setting it to Multiply instead of screen. Plus the opacity is 64%.

Now duplicate the base and set it to Colour Legacy. This step makes all the fill colours go into your original base, which makes it more natural looking I think. To Duplicate any layer right click on the layer and click duplicate. Make sure the duplicated base is now at the top for it to actually have any effect.

Create a fill layer of #0E0B53 and set it to Exclusion at 52%. I did this step because it is quite popular with icons lately. Plus the end result would come out too pink.

Now finally duplicate your base and set it to Hard Light. This step brings all the colour enhancements together to create the final image. I used Hard Light because since the opacity of my fill layers were quite strong; Soft Light wouldn’t be able to overpower the fill layers. But Hard Light came out quite successful. Remember that all pictures are different so alter the opacities of some of the layers to achieve the best results.


There done :D Hope I explained it properly and I didn’t ramble too much. By the way if you want the recipe version of this tutorial and/or the PSD it is all here.

Other Examples: