Coloring an Image

Sometimes I can't really feel like I'm personalizing an image too much unless I give it a specific color scheme, something uniquely my own or a scheme to suit a feel I'm going for. Many artists feel this way, so coloration is really popular, especially with those trying to put together a collage.

It's actually really easy to do. Let's do something with this picture of Chii...

1. The first thing you want to do is desaturate the image. Go to image -> adjustments -> desaturate. This turns your image black and white and makes it a lot easier to add color to.

2. Next, I do what I call a "soft glow". Duplicate your image twice (go to layer -> duplicate layer) and make sure you have two copies of the image down in your layers menu (lower right hand corner). This gets rid of the image's original texture and adds a really nice glow effect to the image.

3. Next, I added color to the image. You want to make a new layer (layer -> new -> layer and click "ok") and airbrush on your color. I chose a pinkish color. Here's what it looked like with the color sprayed on...

4. After that I ran a gaussian blur (filters -> blur -> gaussian blur) so it didn't just look like a bunch of blots. When coloring a desaturated image this way, it's always good to run a really heavy blur. I ran mine somewhere around 40 pixels. Once you click "gaussian blur" it will show you the menu to select the heaviness of your blur.

5. Then, down on the layers menu (lower right hand corner again) I made sure the layer with the color was selected and I went right above to the pull-down menu (it should say "normal" on it), clicked it, and selected "overlay". "Soft Light" also looks pretty but it's less clear.

There you go!!

You can also adjust the opacity (how heavy the color is) by going to the "opacity" control in the layers menu (make sure you have the right layer selected or you'll be making another part of your image more invisible!).