A while ago, someone had a question about coloring a black and white image, so I decided to write a tutorial. It's my first, so if I forget something, please tell me so I can fix it.
Go from
to 
1. Fix up your base, sharpen, adjust the contrast, etc. I'm gonna assume you all already know how to do that. You should have something like this
2. Add a new layer and fill it with black.
3. Colorize the black layer (on GIMP it's Layer-Colors-Colorize). Change it to a brown-ish skin color (my setting were Hue=29, Saturation=35, and lightness=40). Set the colorized layer to hard light. I ended up with this
4. Now delete everything on the colorized layer except for the skin. I got this
5. Now duplicate the brown layer several times and fiddle with the layers. What looks good here depends on the image you're using. I ended up with four layers set to hard light, soft light, soft light, and burn.
6. Now create another black layer and colorize it to a hair color. Set that layer to hard light. Delete everything but the hair.
7. Do the same thing you did with the skin--play around with layer modes until you get something that looks good. I ended up having two layers, one set to color, the other to burn.
You can use the same technique on just about everything--clothes, jewelry, etc. It also works well to fix the colors of a screencap that was low quality or had strange lighting. My original base was in color, but the skin was very yellow because of lighting, so I desaturated it.
I hope someone can use this. I'd love to see any icons you guys might make using this tutorial.
I use GIMP, but I'm assuming it can be translated
Go from
to 1. Fix up your base, sharpen, adjust the contrast, etc. I'm gonna assume you all already know how to do that. You should have something like this
2. Add a new layer and fill it with black.
3. Colorize the black layer (on GIMP it's Layer-Colors-Colorize). Change it to a brown-ish skin color (my setting were Hue=29, Saturation=35, and lightness=40). Set the colorized layer to hard light. I ended up with this
4. Now delete everything on the colorized layer except for the skin. I got this
5. Now duplicate the brown layer several times and fiddle with the layers. What looks good here depends on the image you're using. I ended up with four layers set to hard light, soft light, soft light, and burn.
6. Now create another black layer and colorize it to a hair color. Set that layer to hard light. Delete everything but the hair.
7. Do the same thing you did with the skin--play around with layer modes until you get something that looks good. I ended up having two layers, one set to color, the other to burn.
You can use the same technique on just about everything--clothes, jewelry, etc. It also works well to fix the colors of a screencap that was low quality or had strange lighting. My original base was in color, but the skin was very yellow because of lighting, so I desaturated it.
I hope someone can use this. I'd love to see any icons you guys might make using this tutorial.
I use GIMP, but I'm assuming it can be translated