Tutorial 03: Coloring Black & White Manga

Someone requested a coloring tutorial- and since I haven't written tutorials in a while I figured I'd give this one a go. Here's a fairly simple one we're going to do, using a NANA manga scan:

Base: Final:


Intro: This tutorial was written using Photoshop CS, but it should be easily translated for use in other softwares/versions as well. Also, this is written with the assumption that you have at least some basic knowledge of your software- meaning when I talk about setting a layer to Overlay, I'm going to assume that you know what I mean, etc. And if I mention the lasso tool, I'm going to assume that you at least know which tool I'm referring to. If you do not know the tools I'm talking about, please refer to this basic tutorial over here that I wrote introducing Photoshop tools.

Tutorial #03: Basic Coloring of a Black and White Manga or Image

I'm going to assume you know how to do all the cropping and standard editing to obtain your base so I'm going to skip all that redundant info. This will be the base I'm starting out on:


STEP 01.
We're going to begin with coloring the face, neck, and ears first. To do this, you can use the polygonal lasso tool or the magic wand tool. Usually, I make it so that if the image I'm coloring has a lot of gray shading, I use the lasso tool...but if it has a clean solid color in most areas, then I use the magic wand tool. For my face, I chose the magic wand tool.

• TIP #1: When using the magic wand tool, setting the tolerance level is sometimes key in helping you select the areas you want. I chose around 5-10 for my tolerance level here.

• TIP #2: To easily add on to your selection if you can't get it all in one go, just hold down the shift key as you go. You should see a + sign appear next to your tool- that means it will add on to your selection as you click without needing to start over.

On to the tutorial! ^^ Select the areas you want so you get something like this (I forgot to screencap the image with the ears selected, but you get the idea. ^^;):


STEP 02.
Got it all selected? Now create a new layer on top of your base while your icon is still selected. We're going to add the color on this new layer, because it'll be easier to edit or make changes. Pick a color you want to use for your skin and fill your selection on the new layer. I filled it with #F1E0BD and now I have this:


I thought it was too dark so I lowered the fill opacity of the color to 80%. The color is also a bit muted and the black lines of the drawing is kind of drowned out right? No worries. ^^ Just change the blending options of the colored layer to Multiply so that the black lines will show through sharper. You can try testing out other blending options to see if there's another one you like better too. No graphic illustration here but you get to see the results in the next step! ;p

STEP 03.
Now that we've got the face, neck, and ears colored- we want to change the color of her lips don't we? Otherwise she'd be pale with black lips. ;p So do what you did in Step 01, except you'll be selecting the lips this time. I used the polygonal lasso tool for this task.

With her lips all selected, we will create a new layer on top again so that we can fill that new layer with the color you want for her lips. I chose #993B43. Don't forget to cut out the mouth opening part or she'll have some fat lips indeed. ^^;

• TIP #3: Since her mouth is open and you'll need the opening to be a different color than her lips, I find that it's easier to just trace the outside shape first. Fill it with color and then cut out the opening later on with the lasso tool again. You can then fill that part with another color of your choice.

Though her lips now have color, it looks flat right? Again, we change the blending options...there are several choices you can go with but I eventually chose Hard Light since it gave her lips a nice shine. And then I lowered the fill opacity of her lip color to 87% so that it's not so dark. And I got this:


And we're pretty much done with the main part of the subject for now- the rest is all a breeze. Btw, you can color her eyes using the same selection method if you want. But for now, I'm going to leave it alone first.

STEP 04.
We're going to move on to the icon's background now. For that, I'm going to take the easy way out and use a gradient on a new layer. ^_^ I picked a color I wanted to use- in this case, it's some orange shade I randomly eyedropped:


Play around with the blending options to find the one you like. I eventually settled on Linear Burn. Since I only wanted that coloring on the background area, I used the Eraser and erased away all the areas I didn't want- like her face and body. After that's all done, here's what I got:


At this point, your image should be relatively colored compared to what you started out with. Some may like to stop here, but we'll go on. ^^

STEP 05.
I wanted a bit more depth and texture so I used one of my light textures from my Monochrome Light Textures Set 01:
-- Set to Lighten blending mode

The lights are kind of obstructing her face so I erased away those parts. Then I felt like adding another light texture from the same aforementioned set:
-- Set to Lighten blending mode, 84% Fill Opacity

Note: I had flipped the direction of the texture by going to Edit --> Transform --> Flip Horizontal.

And again, I erased the parts of the light texture that I didn't want- leaving us this result:


STEP 06.
Because I'm weird and felt like crowding my icon even more with a bit of flair, I used a flower brush by my_wonderful:


I used this brush on a new layer, applying it to the bottom left corner and the top right corner with the color #5C1016, set to Hard Light blending mode. I didn't think it was bright enough so I duplicated the layer to give it more color. And now we have this:


At this point, I'm mostly done with the coloring I wanted. The rest of the steps are just extra tips and finishing up touches.

STEP 07.
Now is when I threw in my text and then just for fun, I added a thick black border on the top portion of the icon. Then I created a new layer, added a 1px border and played around with the opacity and erased off areas of the border where I thought it was too prominent.

Are we done? Something missing? I thought so...but it's rather subtle. I realized that I didn't want the lines of the drawing to be so black. To fix this a little, I adjusted the Hue of my original base at the very bottom layer via Images-->Adjustments-->Hue/Saturation. I played around with it a little until I got the shade I wanted. I can't remember the exact specifics...but I know it was dark blue rather than black.

After all this, I still felt it looked a bit off. I wanted the contrast of the drawing to be darker because parts of it still seemed like a pencil drawing...so I adjusted it via Images-->Adjustments-->Brightness/Contrast. I played with the settings- mostly to increase the contrast.

At this point, I wondered if I should color the eyes but then I kind of liked it dark like that with a super slight hint of blue so I left it alone. Here's the final product again:


And so we're done. ^_^ I hope you found this helpful! Here's another icon I made using similar coloring techniques (along with a few others at this icon batch:




Note: This tutorial is not meant to be copied exactly. Use it as reference, use it to learn what you can do- don't use it to just reproduce some exact replica. That's just not cool...and what's the fun in that anyway right? :p