psp coloring tutorial!

I was trying out a little coloring techniques for us poor PSP users! I was inspired by the selective coloring effect, but I'm not sure if I really did it, eh. Since I never used selective coloring and all... Still, I like it, and it's pretty simple. And short!

Let's go from to !

For PSP users (I use PSP8), so no selective coloring! No curves either.

1. So, you start with your base. Crop it, soften/sharpen it until it looks okay. If you want to erase a big mole on the face of your model or a logo at the corner of your picture, now is the time.



What I usually do is sharpen the base a few times, then soften the face. When I'm finished with the softening, I take my sharpen tool and retouch the eyes and mouth a bit. If my base is too dark, I duplicate it and put the second layer on screen. 



That's what mine looks like. Not a big difference, but notice the eyes and lips? you need to make sure your base is really clear if you want your final product to look good.


2. Now add a very light orange layer. Set it to soft light. It will lighten up your image... a lot. I used #F6E6D4, but if your base is lighter than mine, I suggest using a somewhat darker color.



3. Make a new Hue/Saturation layer. It's one of the most important steps, to brighten the picture. We want it to be really bright, so I used Saturation +50, but since your bases/tastes are probably different from mine, you can play with that a bit until you get something that satisfies you. Here's mine:



4. After you're done, create a new Color Balance layer. This is where it'll start to look like the coloring we want.
First, make sure the Preserve lunimance is checked.
Check Tone Balance - Midtones.

I used the color levels -24, 2 and 27, but it will depend on your base.

For the Tone Balance - Shadows, I used -48, 0, 0. For Highlights, I used -7, 0, -21.

PLAY AROUND WITH THOSE NUMBERS. Every different base will need different settings.

Here's what mine looks like:



It's supposed to be more greeninsh, with strong highlights of red and blue.

5. You're almost done! But here's a little tricky step: Merge all your layouts, and duplicate it. Select the duplicate, copy it. Then, undo twice until you get all your separate layers back, and paste the duplicate you copied on top of all your layers. Set that layer Soft Light, around 50%, to clear your picture up a bit.



Wonderful!

Now you can, if you want, play a bit more with it. Add text, brushes, soften or sharpen it again if you feel you need to.


And that's the end of my tutorial~ I hope it was clear enough! If you used it, please tell me how it was! I like doing tutorials, so I might do more in the future! I'm also always interested in seeing your works!