How Not To Colorize An Image
Someone flattered me by asking how I did the skintones in my second-place entry in Worth's most recent Pleasantville contest. Rather than do a one-off reply, here's the non-tutorial for all to share.STEP 1: Use the wrong software. I use Corel PhotoPAINT. It's a damned fine program; I won't go into the various reasons why I usually like using it better than Photoshop. But the layer blend modes sometimes act differently from those in Photoshop, meaning that I can't use Cyn's marvelous tutorial effectively. Steveo's tutorial never really clicked for me; the skintones seem to end up unrealistic. I don't know if that's PhotoPAINT's fault or mine; anyway, I had to figure it all out for myself.
In other words, what I tell you here may or may not work in Photoshop. If you're a Photoshop user, where I say "opacity," think "transparency," and reverse the percentages (7% opacity = 93% transparency). But it's the layer blend modes that might hose you. If what I say doesn't work, try a different one.
STEP 2: Walk away from your work -- for a year. I started the "Colonel Hogan" colorization for round 3 of Worth's Intramurals, only to find out we didn't need me to enter that round. Dang. (Don't you wish I had anyway, arsi?) Over a year later I resurrected it for "Pleasantville 13".
STEP 3: Okay, let's get serious. I started with a nice, simple studio portrait -- not a lot of detail to worry about, which let me stress over the skintones without taking much away from anything else. Here's a small version of it. (For reasons I can't recall -- maybe I started out by playing with Steveo's tutorial again -- I edited the image in CMYK mode.)
STEP 4: Initial color. The next thing I did was applied a lens (Corel's equivalent to a Photoshop adjustment layer) set to do color balancing. The color settings were:
- cyan--red set to +70 (scale runs from -100 to 100)
- magenta--green set to -17
- yellow--blue set to -60
STEP 5: Making it real. All well and good -- but the hue is the same everywhere, and nobody's skin is like that. I applied some 'blush' using red on a new layer, with the blend mode set to 'soft light' at 43% opacity. The difference is particularly noticable in the cheeks, ears and lips, but as you can see here (layer over a white bkgd, set to 'normal' layer blend and 100% opacity), it went elsewhere as well. Iris color also went on this layer, for no good reason. Here's the result.
STEP 6: Making it realer. This is subtle, I grant you, but when you're competing at Worth sometimes it's the little things that make the difference. On a new layer, set to 'hard light' and 9% opacity, some blue over the prominent vein in his left hand. (Here's what the layer looks like on its own, again over a white bkgd, set to 'normal' layer blend and 100% opacity.) In the interests of bandwidth I'll link the result rather than show it, but you can also see Hogan's hand in the picture following Step 8.
STEP 7: Eyes aren't white. I next put a dab of red in both corners of each eye, on a layer set at hard light, 14% opacity. Again, to save bandwidth, I won't show it on this page; here's the layer, and here's the result. Or you can just look at the results for Step 8.
STEP 8: Beards aren't pink. On the next layer, set at soft light, 44% opacity, I put some dark gray over his 5:00 shadow and eyebrows. (Same as before: the layer over a white bkgd, set to 'normal' layer blend and 100% opacity.) The result:
STEP 9: Final tweak. After adding color to the rest of the image, I walked away -- not for a year this time, but for a good half hour. When I came back, poor Colonel Hogan looked like he'd gotten himself a tan using QT. In other words, he was way too orange. I applied another color balance lens, using the same mask I used in Step 4, this time shifting the cyan--red slider toward cyan and the yellow--blue slider toward blue. The final result was the silver trophy winner.
Can't end this without throwing a dozen roses to Eury for her marvelous first-place image. :)
posted by MeanMrMustard @ 4:57 PM
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