Coloring a Black and White Image
Coloring a black and white image isn't nearly as hard as one might expect. I taught myself how to do this and it's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. I've seen different ways to do this on the Internet, and have tried many of them, but I always end up going back to my way. This tutorial was written using Paint Shop Pro 7, but it's entirely possible that it can be done in Photoshop as well. I haven't tried it there, but I do know most of the tools I used are the similar.
We'll use this picture of Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1. It's not a great picture to begin with, so it's a good candidate to grayscale and start over with. You can download this picture to follow along with, or use your own, adjusting your colors and tool sizes accordingly. It's a pretty flexible tut.
1. Copy the image you want to use and paste it as a New Layer. Once it's opened, go down to the Layer Palette and right click on Background and choose the last option: Promote to Raster Layer.
2. When turning an image to Grayscale, it's generally done by going up to Colors/Grayscale. After doing that you'll need to increase the colors again to be able to work with color. So go to Colors/Increase Color Depth/16 million colors. (Sometimes though, you can skip a step by just doing Colors/Colorize and moving both sliders to 0. It turns out nearly the same, however the image does lose some quality.) For this tutorial, we'll be using Grayscale and increasing color depth. (The shorter method is useful if you want to grayscale a single layer, or even a selection.) We now have this:
3. I'm going to make this into an icon, so I'll be cropping the image, but you don't have to, you can keep yours as is. I use the Cropping tool in the Tool Palette, it's the 4th one down from the top. Click on it where you want to start, and then drag the cursor until it's a square. You'll notice a set of numbers on the bottom left hand side of the window. The set you want to watch, is the 3rd from the left, that'll tell you what size your selection is. If you can't get a perfect square, don't worry about it, get as close as possible and then let go. You can move each individual side to make the selection bigger or smaller, or move the entire selection to where you want it. I started from the top left corner and went for the perfect square, a size of 234x234 and then double clicked to apply the cropping. I have this now:
4. I'll resize the layer to an even 200x200 and work on that from now on. Go up to Image, Resize and type 200 for Width and Height for Pixel Size. Smart Size, Resize all layers, and Maintain aspect Ratio should be checked.
Time to color her in. My way may not be the best way, and you may not like doing it this way, but this is the easiest way I've found for coloring an image. Make a new layer and put it on top if it's not already. Make sure it's selected and then click on your Lasso Tool, the yellow rope in the tool palette. In the Tool Options box, choose Freehand and uncheck Antialias, no Feathering. I work on a separate layer for each thing I color in, so one for the hair, another for her eyes and so on, that way I can slide the opacity and change blend modes of each area.
4a. I usually like to start with the hair first. So, zoom in as much as you need to, and make sure your Marquee tool is visible. If it's not, go up to Selections/Hide Marquee Tool and click it, it'll become visible, or you can hold down, Shift, Ctrl, M to make it visible. Now, trace closely around her hair, don't worry about being perfect yet, just get it on there. Once that's done, we need to be a little more precise, so make sure you're zoomed in good. Now, holding down the shift key while dragging the cursor will add to your selection. Using the Ctrl key while dragging it will remove areas of your selection. Cut in close to her hair, selecting all of it as well as possible. Make sure it's all selected and none of her skin is in there, or her clothes or the background, but if it is, that should be taken care of a few steps down the line, so don't worry about getting every single pixel.
Now we need to pick the color. She's a blonde, so we need a nice bright yellow color. Set you Flood Fill tool to a Normal Blend Mode. The Match mde to RGB Value. Tolerance 20, Opacity to 100. I'm using #FFBA01 as my color. Click inside the selection to flood fill it. At this part, I like to hide the Marquee and zoom out so I can see what it'll look like. At the moment, this is what we have:
5. Obviously, that's not going to work, so we go into the Layer Palette and turn the Opacity down to 25 or 35. Try out different Blend Modes to find one you like, and adjust the Opacity accordingly. I chose Overlay set to 35. It looks choppy and not-so-neat, but that's okay, it'll be fixed later. Make your Marquee visible again and select her eyebrows. I chose to do them in a light brown color. The Opacity and Blend Modes are already set on this layer, so we'll just put it on there. Try out your own colors, or use mine: #744330. This is what I now have.
6. Select None, make the marquee visible and add another layer on top. Time for the skin. I've always had a problem with finding a good skin color, so I generally open a color picture of the person and pick up a color from the image. I fiddled around with a few colors before finally settling on #EBB395. Using the Lasso tool again, select her face and neck, every inch of skin, and flood fill it. I set the layer to Color, 50, you find something you like. I may actually adjust this later, once the rest of her is filled in and I see what she looks like. For now, this will do. I now have this.
It's a good idea to carefully erase inside the eyes and the eyebrows as well as the teeth. Set you Eraser to a small size and use settings similar to these:
Size - 4
Shape - Round
Hardness - 25
Opacity - 100
Step - 1
Density - 90
These aren't perfect, just what I happen to be using. I highly recommend zooming in to do this step. Now carefully, on the face layer, erase the eyes, teeth and eyebrows. It won't look great, or spectacular, but if you did it carefully enough, it should be okay. (Once we're done coloring everything in, we'll be doing a Gaussian Blur on each layer which will blend the edges in, so we're allowed a little messiness.)
7. Eyes are usually my next step, but you can do any part you want to. For this tut, I'll be doing the eyes. Make another layer and zoom in. Select the irises, adding and removing as needed with Shift and Ctrl. Once you're done, zoom out again and hide the marquee. (Little tip; to get the image back to its actual size, hit the yellow magnifying glass with a circle around it and a line through it, up on the Standard Toolbar. You'll automatically be at normal viewing size.)
Using #95B6E7, I flood filled each eye and set the Blend Mode to Burn, Opacity stayed at 100. I know it looks kind of icky, but stay with me, it does get better. I now have this:
8. Now we'll do her shirt. Deselect the eyes and zoom in to select her shirt. Create another New Layer above the others, and carefully select her shirt. Try not to get her skin or background in there, then zoom out and hide the marquee tool if you want to. Her shirt is a dull, grayish color in the color photo, however I'm planning on giving it a little more color. Use any color you want to use, or use mine. I chose #448784 and set the Blend Mode to Color, 35% Opacity. I waffled back and forth on this one, as I sometimes do, unable to decided between Color and Burn, but finally decided on Color so as not to make it too dark. Later steps may darken it even more, so I went for the lighter one. And now I have this:
9. Lips are next. Again, deselect and create a new layer. Zoom in and outline her lips, making sure to remember to remove her teeth from the selection by using Ctrl while dragging the Lasso tool. Whereas other layers like the shirt and even the eyes are rather forgiving in later steps with the blurring and mode changes, the lips aren't as nice, so be a little more careful with these. The blurring will take care of a lot of it, but we may also have to erase a bit, just do the best you can. Flood Fill with a color of your choice, I'm using #F90164. I set the Blend Mode to Overlay, 30% Opacity.
10. If you want to, you can do her necklace as well. I did so, using #E2AB18 and set the Opacity to 40%, Soft Light. You don't have to, it most likely won't show up much once we're through. Just remember to create a new layer for it if you do. The background is next. Instead of selecting it this time, I'm just going to use my paint brush. On a New Layer, choose your paint brush and work with a size you're comfortable with. Keep the Hardness down to about 25 and the Opacity all the way up. Density should also be up to around 90 or 95%. Carefully go around her and fill in the background. I used #3E0000 and set teh Blend Mode to Color at 40%. Although, it looks nice set to Difference as well, because the color nearly matches her shirt. Use either, or your own color. It's not an exact science, have fun with this. I now have this:
11. Now we get to see the results of all of our hard work. Making sure you've Deselected, go back to the very first layer above the picture, this should be our hair and eyebrow layer. Click on it to select it and go up to Effects/Blur/Gaussian Blur. If the eye (proof) isn't pressed in already, click on it and move the box off of your picture to see it. We're going to blur the hair and eyebrows to make them blend in. Set it to 2 and check out the difference it makes. It blurs and softens the edges, making them look natural and flawless. If 2 isn't enough for you, or is to much, adjust accordingly. I find that 2 or 1.5 usually works, but it sometimes depends on how messy I got. You could go higher as well, but you risk bleeding some of the color out, so be careful. Check the edges to make sure no gray is showing through. If it is, you're too high and bleeding it out. Click on Okay when you're done.
Select the next layer, your face layer and do the same thing. 2 should work again. Do each successive layer, judging how much you need to blur as you go. I did the following:
Eyes - 2
Shirt - 2
Lips - 1.5
Necklace - 1.5
Background - 1
I now have this:
It looks much better now, doesn't it? The eyebrows, however, didn't get a lot of color, did they? I'm going to create a new layer and select them, then flood fill them with #A77659. I set the Blend Mode to Burn and the Opacity to 40%. I then did a Gaussian Blur of 2. That's better. If you see anything that needs to be fixed, now would be the time to do so. If soemthing is bleeding over, like her lips on her face, giving her a Kool-Aid face, choose the lip layer and carefully erase the bleed. Always make sure you're on the right layer.
12. I'm going to make this into an icon, so now is when I want to Resize it. Just as before, we go up to Image/Resize. Put in 100 for Width and Height, leave the rest as is. It's now time to work some more magic to make the colors darker and richer. Go to the Layer Palette and right click. Merge/Merge Visible. Right click on the layer again and choose Duplicate. You now have two layers of your colored image. Select the top layer and go up to Effects/Blur/Gaussian Blur and set it to 3. Click on Okay and go back to the Layer Palette. Change the Blend Mode of the top, blurred layer to Overlay.
Wow, the difference is striking. This is what we now have:
13. This is a great result of all the hard work we went through to get here. I'm going to go a little further though. Merge those two layers by Merging Visible, then Duplicate it again. Back to Gaussian Blur, this time setting it to 1.8. In the Layer Palette set the Blend Mode to Screen. It's very bright now, so we'll turn the Opacity down to 50 or so. However, if you're going to do more to this image/icon, you could leave it all the way up and add layers between them, using brushes and other effects on the middle layers. That sometimes darkens the Screen layer, so just do what you think looks best to it.
14. I'll going to add some text to it, so I won't be Merging the layers yet. Add a new layer between the two layers and flood fill it with a color you want your text outline to be. I'm using black. Now turn off the Stroke/Foreground color and make the Fill/Bakcground color the color you want your text to be. I'm using the brown we did her eyebrows with. Click on the Text button and then your image to bring up the text dialogue box. I'm using the following settings:
Text - 04b
Size - 6
Kerning - 0
Leading - 0
Floating - checked
Antialias - UNchecked
Click on Okay once you have your text how you want it. I typed in: 'Looking to you to me' in this font. Then I went to Selections/Modify/Expand and set it to 1. Then Edit/Copy/Paste as New Layer. At this point, you'll need to turn off Visibility to the Screened layer to move your text to where you want it. Also turn off the black-filled layer to be able to see the image below. Now, click on your Selections Tool, just above the Lasso Tool, make sure it's set to Rectangle in the tool box, no Feathering, Antialias off. On the Text layer, select all but the last word and then go to Edit/Copy/Cut/Paste as New Layer.
Short cuts for the Copy/Cut/Paste and Deselect are quick and easy once you learn them. Just hold down the Ctrl button and hit c, then x, then L, then d, in that order. Careful with the x though, that cuts out whatever's selected, and you don't always want to do that. This time you do though, so go ahead and use the x.
Move the sentence where you want it--I moved it to the left, just below her chin, and moved the 'me' to the bottom right--and turn the other layers back on. Now, select the black-filled layer again and type in 'Save', (or one word that you want to emphasize in your own sentence). Choose Antialias, and make the size bigger and select a good script font, one that will fit into the space and flow. I used Velvet, size 24. When you're done, hit Okay. Do the same thing as before. Shut off the Screen layer and move the word to a spot that isn't over one of the other words, it needs to pick up all the black around it. Selections/Modify/Expand to 1 again, then do the Copy/Paste as New Layer again and delete the black layer. Move your new word to fit in where you want it, leaving at least one pixel width around the edges for a border. I did mine like this:
15. Turn on visibility to all the layers and delete the black-filled one. Create a new layer on top of all the other layers. This time we're going to do a slightly different kind of border than I usually do. On your new layer, flood fill it the color you want it to be. I'm using the same brown as the text. Now, click on the Eraser tool and go to the Tool Options box for it. Set it like this:
Shape - Square
Size - 96
Hardness 25
Opacity - 100
Step - 1
Density - 85
Now, zoom in once and make sure you have the option for seeing the Brush Outlines checked, (it's in the Tool Options box on the 2nd tab) and place it in the middle of your image. Hold as still as possible and click 5 or 6 times, until the image as visible through the layer, but not completely. Zoom out to be able to see the image and judge how it looks. Now, line the top left corner of the Eraser brush up with the top left corner of your image and click once or twice to fade it a bit. Then do the lower left corner the same way. Do all four corners until you like it. You can fade it less or more, it' sup to you. Just play around with it. You can move it down, under the Screen layer if you want to, and change the Blend Mode, or leave it where it is and change the Blend Mode. Dodge looks cool. I'm leaving mine where it is and changing the Blend Mode to Multiply.
You can also move the text layers up above the Screen layer if you want to, or change the Blend Mode on them. Lower the Opacity, it's completely up to you. Again, just have fun with it.
This is my end result. :)
I generally tend to use brushes and do various different effects on my icons, but that's a different tutorial. You can do the coloring to achieve different effects as well. You can black and white an image and only color the eyes, or lips, shirt, hair, anything. It's pretty cool sometimes. Or, you could use these same steps to enhance an already colored image, which looks amazing. So, go experiment. Enjoy PSP.
I hope this helps someone. I learned how to do this on my own because when I went out looking for tutorials on how to color a black and white image, I didn't find any. I've since found some, but they usually use the Retouch tool set to Color to Target, and the possibilities with that are greatly reduced because you can't do each section on a separate layer, which means no reduction of Opacity or Blend Mode changes.
We'll use this picture of Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1. It's not a great picture to begin with, so it's a good candidate to grayscale and start over with. You can download this picture to follow along with, or use your own, adjusting your colors and tool sizes accordingly. It's a pretty flexible tut.
1. Copy the image you want to use and paste it as a New Layer. Once it's opened, go down to the Layer Palette and right click on Background and choose the last option: Promote to Raster Layer.
2. When turning an image to Grayscale, it's generally done by going up to Colors/Grayscale. After doing that you'll need to increase the colors again to be able to work with color. So go to Colors/Increase Color Depth/16 million colors. (Sometimes though, you can skip a step by just doing Colors/Colorize and moving both sliders to 0. It turns out nearly the same, however the image does lose some quality.) For this tutorial, we'll be using Grayscale and increasing color depth. (The shorter method is useful if you want to grayscale a single layer, or even a selection.) We now have this:
3. I'm going to make this into an icon, so I'll be cropping the image, but you don't have to, you can keep yours as is. I use the Cropping tool in the Tool Palette, it's the 4th one down from the top. Click on it where you want to start, and then drag the cursor until it's a square. You'll notice a set of numbers on the bottom left hand side of the window. The set you want to watch, is the 3rd from the left, that'll tell you what size your selection is. If you can't get a perfect square, don't worry about it, get as close as possible and then let go. You can move each individual side to make the selection bigger or smaller, or move the entire selection to where you want it. I started from the top left corner and went for the perfect square, a size of 234x234 and then double clicked to apply the cropping. I have this now:
4. I'll resize the layer to an even 200x200 and work on that from now on. Go up to Image, Resize and type 200 for Width and Height for Pixel Size. Smart Size, Resize all layers, and Maintain aspect Ratio should be checked.
Time to color her in. My way may not be the best way, and you may not like doing it this way, but this is the easiest way I've found for coloring an image. Make a new layer and put it on top if it's not already. Make sure it's selected and then click on your Lasso Tool, the yellow rope in the tool palette. In the Tool Options box, choose Freehand and uncheck Antialias, no Feathering. I work on a separate layer for each thing I color in, so one for the hair, another for her eyes and so on, that way I can slide the opacity and change blend modes of each area.
4a. I usually like to start with the hair first. So, zoom in as much as you need to, and make sure your Marquee tool is visible. If it's not, go up to Selections/Hide Marquee Tool and click it, it'll become visible, or you can hold down, Shift, Ctrl, M to make it visible. Now, trace closely around her hair, don't worry about being perfect yet, just get it on there. Once that's done, we need to be a little more precise, so make sure you're zoomed in good. Now, holding down the shift key while dragging the cursor will add to your selection. Using the Ctrl key while dragging it will remove areas of your selection. Cut in close to her hair, selecting all of it as well as possible. Make sure it's all selected and none of her skin is in there, or her clothes or the background, but if it is, that should be taken care of a few steps down the line, so don't worry about getting every single pixel.
Now we need to pick the color. She's a blonde, so we need a nice bright yellow color. Set you Flood Fill tool to a Normal Blend Mode. The Match mde to RGB Value. Tolerance 20, Opacity to 100. I'm using #FFBA01 as my color. Click inside the selection to flood fill it. At this part, I like to hide the Marquee and zoom out so I can see what it'll look like. At the moment, this is what we have:
5. Obviously, that's not going to work, so we go into the Layer Palette and turn the Opacity down to 25 or 35. Try out different Blend Modes to find one you like, and adjust the Opacity accordingly. I chose Overlay set to 35. It looks choppy and not-so-neat, but that's okay, it'll be fixed later. Make your Marquee visible again and select her eyebrows. I chose to do them in a light brown color. The Opacity and Blend Modes are already set on this layer, so we'll just put it on there. Try out your own colors, or use mine: #744330. This is what I now have.
6. Select None, make the marquee visible and add another layer on top. Time for the skin. I've always had a problem with finding a good skin color, so I generally open a color picture of the person and pick up a color from the image. I fiddled around with a few colors before finally settling on #EBB395. Using the Lasso tool again, select her face and neck, every inch of skin, and flood fill it. I set the layer to Color, 50, you find something you like. I may actually adjust this later, once the rest of her is filled in and I see what she looks like. For now, this will do. I now have this.
It's a good idea to carefully erase inside the eyes and the eyebrows as well as the teeth. Set you Eraser to a small size and use settings similar to these:
Size - 4
Shape - Round
Hardness - 25
Opacity - 100
Step - 1
Density - 90
These aren't perfect, just what I happen to be using. I highly recommend zooming in to do this step. Now carefully, on the face layer, erase the eyes, teeth and eyebrows. It won't look great, or spectacular, but if you did it carefully enough, it should be okay. (Once we're done coloring everything in, we'll be doing a Gaussian Blur on each layer which will blend the edges in, so we're allowed a little messiness.)
7. Eyes are usually my next step, but you can do any part you want to. For this tut, I'll be doing the eyes. Make another layer and zoom in. Select the irises, adding and removing as needed with Shift and Ctrl. Once you're done, zoom out again and hide the marquee. (Little tip; to get the image back to its actual size, hit the yellow magnifying glass with a circle around it and a line through it, up on the Standard Toolbar. You'll automatically be at normal viewing size.)
Using #95B6E7, I flood filled each eye and set the Blend Mode to Burn, Opacity stayed at 100. I know it looks kind of icky, but stay with me, it does get better. I now have this:
8. Now we'll do her shirt. Deselect the eyes and zoom in to select her shirt. Create another New Layer above the others, and carefully select her shirt. Try not to get her skin or background in there, then zoom out and hide the marquee tool if you want to. Her shirt is a dull, grayish color in the color photo, however I'm planning on giving it a little more color. Use any color you want to use, or use mine. I chose #448784 and set the Blend Mode to Color, 35% Opacity. I waffled back and forth on this one, as I sometimes do, unable to decided between Color and Burn, but finally decided on Color so as not to make it too dark. Later steps may darken it even more, so I went for the lighter one. And now I have this:
9. Lips are next. Again, deselect and create a new layer. Zoom in and outline her lips, making sure to remember to remove her teeth from the selection by using Ctrl while dragging the Lasso tool. Whereas other layers like the shirt and even the eyes are rather forgiving in later steps with the blurring and mode changes, the lips aren't as nice, so be a little more careful with these. The blurring will take care of a lot of it, but we may also have to erase a bit, just do the best you can. Flood Fill with a color of your choice, I'm using #F90164. I set the Blend Mode to Overlay, 30% Opacity.
10. If you want to, you can do her necklace as well. I did so, using #E2AB18 and set the Opacity to 40%, Soft Light. You don't have to, it most likely won't show up much once we're through. Just remember to create a new layer for it if you do. The background is next. Instead of selecting it this time, I'm just going to use my paint brush. On a New Layer, choose your paint brush and work with a size you're comfortable with. Keep the Hardness down to about 25 and the Opacity all the way up. Density should also be up to around 90 or 95%. Carefully go around her and fill in the background. I used #3E0000 and set teh Blend Mode to Color at 40%. Although, it looks nice set to Difference as well, because the color nearly matches her shirt. Use either, or your own color. It's not an exact science, have fun with this. I now have this:
11. Now we get to see the results of all of our hard work. Making sure you've Deselected, go back to the very first layer above the picture, this should be our hair and eyebrow layer. Click on it to select it and go up to Effects/Blur/Gaussian Blur. If the eye (proof) isn't pressed in already, click on it and move the box off of your picture to see it. We're going to blur the hair and eyebrows to make them blend in. Set it to 2 and check out the difference it makes. It blurs and softens the edges, making them look natural and flawless. If 2 isn't enough for you, or is to much, adjust accordingly. I find that 2 or 1.5 usually works, but it sometimes depends on how messy I got. You could go higher as well, but you risk bleeding some of the color out, so be careful. Check the edges to make sure no gray is showing through. If it is, you're too high and bleeding it out. Click on Okay when you're done.
Select the next layer, your face layer and do the same thing. 2 should work again. Do each successive layer, judging how much you need to blur as you go. I did the following:
Eyes - 2
Shirt - 2
Lips - 1.5
Necklace - 1.5
Background - 1
I now have this:
It looks much better now, doesn't it? The eyebrows, however, didn't get a lot of color, did they? I'm going to create a new layer and select them, then flood fill them with #A77659. I set the Blend Mode to Burn and the Opacity to 40%. I then did a Gaussian Blur of 2. That's better. If you see anything that needs to be fixed, now would be the time to do so. If soemthing is bleeding over, like her lips on her face, giving her a Kool-Aid face, choose the lip layer and carefully erase the bleed. Always make sure you're on the right layer.
12. I'm going to make this into an icon, so now is when I want to Resize it. Just as before, we go up to Image/Resize. Put in 100 for Width and Height, leave the rest as is. It's now time to work some more magic to make the colors darker and richer. Go to the Layer Palette and right click. Merge/Merge Visible. Right click on the layer again and choose Duplicate. You now have two layers of your colored image. Select the top layer and go up to Effects/Blur/Gaussian Blur and set it to 3. Click on Okay and go back to the Layer Palette. Change the Blend Mode of the top, blurred layer to Overlay.
Wow, the difference is striking. This is what we now have:
13. This is a great result of all the hard work we went through to get here. I'm going to go a little further though. Merge those two layers by Merging Visible, then Duplicate it again. Back to Gaussian Blur, this time setting it to 1.8. In the Layer Palette set the Blend Mode to Screen. It's very bright now, so we'll turn the Opacity down to 50 or so. However, if you're going to do more to this image/icon, you could leave it all the way up and add layers between them, using brushes and other effects on the middle layers. That sometimes darkens the Screen layer, so just do what you think looks best to it.
14. I'll going to add some text to it, so I won't be Merging the layers yet. Add a new layer between the two layers and flood fill it with a color you want your text outline to be. I'm using black. Now turn off the Stroke/Foreground color and make the Fill/Bakcground color the color you want your text to be. I'm using the brown we did her eyebrows with. Click on the Text button and then your image to bring up the text dialogue box. I'm using the following settings:
Text - 04b
Size - 6
Kerning - 0
Leading - 0
Floating - checked
Antialias - UNchecked
Click on Okay once you have your text how you want it. I typed in: 'Looking to you to me' in this font. Then I went to Selections/Modify/Expand and set it to 1. Then Edit/Copy/Paste as New Layer. At this point, you'll need to turn off Visibility to the Screened layer to move your text to where you want it. Also turn off the black-filled layer to be able to see the image below. Now, click on your Selections Tool, just above the Lasso Tool, make sure it's set to Rectangle in the tool box, no Feathering, Antialias off. On the Text layer, select all but the last word and then go to Edit/Copy/Cut/Paste as New Layer.
Short cuts for the Copy/Cut/Paste and Deselect are quick and easy once you learn them. Just hold down the Ctrl button and hit c, then x, then L, then d, in that order. Careful with the x though, that cuts out whatever's selected, and you don't always want to do that. This time you do though, so go ahead and use the x.
Move the sentence where you want it--I moved it to the left, just below her chin, and moved the 'me' to the bottom right--and turn the other layers back on. Now, select the black-filled layer again and type in 'Save', (or one word that you want to emphasize in your own sentence). Choose Antialias, and make the size bigger and select a good script font, one that will fit into the space and flow. I used Velvet, size 24. When you're done, hit Okay. Do the same thing as before. Shut off the Screen layer and move the word to a spot that isn't over one of the other words, it needs to pick up all the black around it. Selections/Modify/Expand to 1 again, then do the Copy/Paste as New Layer again and delete the black layer. Move your new word to fit in where you want it, leaving at least one pixel width around the edges for a border. I did mine like this:
15. Turn on visibility to all the layers and delete the black-filled one. Create a new layer on top of all the other layers. This time we're going to do a slightly different kind of border than I usually do. On your new layer, flood fill it the color you want it to be. I'm using the same brown as the text. Now, click on the Eraser tool and go to the Tool Options box for it. Set it like this:
Shape - Square
Size - 96
Hardness 25
Opacity - 100
Step - 1
Density - 85
Now, zoom in once and make sure you have the option for seeing the Brush Outlines checked, (it's in the Tool Options box on the 2nd tab) and place it in the middle of your image. Hold as still as possible and click 5 or 6 times, until the image as visible through the layer, but not completely. Zoom out to be able to see the image and judge how it looks. Now, line the top left corner of the Eraser brush up with the top left corner of your image and click once or twice to fade it a bit. Then do the lower left corner the same way. Do all four corners until you like it. You can fade it less or more, it' sup to you. Just play around with it. You can move it down, under the Screen layer if you want to, and change the Blend Mode, or leave it where it is and change the Blend Mode. Dodge looks cool. I'm leaving mine where it is and changing the Blend Mode to Multiply.
You can also move the text layers up above the Screen layer if you want to, or change the Blend Mode on them. Lower the Opacity, it's completely up to you. Again, just have fun with it.
This is my end result. :)
I generally tend to use brushes and do various different effects on my icons, but that's a different tutorial. You can do the coloring to achieve different effects as well. You can black and white an image and only color the eyes, or lips, shirt, hair, anything. It's pretty cool sometimes. Or, you could use these same steps to enhance an already colored image, which looks amazing. So, go experiment. Enjoy PSP.
I hope this helps someone. I learned how to do this on my own because when I went out looking for tutorials on how to color a black and white image, I didn't find any. I've since found some, but they usually use the Retouch tool set to Color to Target, and the possibilities with that are greatly reduced because you can't do each section on a separate layer, which means no reduction of Opacity or Blend Mode changes.