Tutorial 4: Coloring 101
This Tutorial Assume that: You know how to create a gif but nothing more
Level: Beginner
Special Request? Send me a bunny
After I got an ask about coloring tip, I decided to do a tutorial on the 101 must know knowledge of coloring. We will go deeper in other tutorial but here are things a beginner should learn to play with:
In red are the filters you will want to look and play with in order to have basic coloring effect on your gifs. For my part curves and levels are used rarely and i will cover the when and why in another tutorial.
1- Brightness
Always start with the lightning of your gif, as you can see, it impact the color already. If you do the brightness at the end, some of the color set up you have played with my look awful due to the change of light!
2- Exposure
If brightness play with the light found in your gif, exposure will put light all over. It can be a deadly combo but, when done nicely, you can end up with a clearer picture.. sadly there is no magic wand trick to know what looks good, its a lot of playing with the contrast and light.
3- Vibrance
Now, this is where you will enhance the color and put them from being normal to BAM IN YOUR FACE. Let’s take the tree on the left side, if you look the two gifs before, the green looks nice yet a bit faded. With vibrance, it looks greener and lusher. Same for the water.
But be warned, sometime vibrance will show a tint into the picture that you didn’t notice, per example the skin can look more yellow or red, there will be one random blue spot on a surface where there was none before.... but this is where number four happen
4- Selective color
Selective color makes wonder when you want to tone down a color or enhance it. That is where you can correct some unwanted color vibrance makes pop. Playing with the neutrals and whites are always a good beginner choice and, the better you become, the more you can go select a specific color. Let say for this one, I wanted my green to contrast well with blue. So I went in neutral and made sure that the blues were boosted up, removed the yellow tint it created and then went to the panel green where I played with it until I like the color of my tree
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If you play with those four filters, you will become more comfortable with it and will become better at coloring. Make sure to keep an eye to not oversaturate and create a pixelated effect but this, sadly, is only with practice that you discover how.
If you have any more question or comment, dont hesitate to send me an ask!














