#colouring guide

For starters, i use VaporSynth (links for installation compiled by @soonhoonsol <hi bestie3 which has a guide ). Photoshop 2021 version for making the gif and colouring it . Install PS from this site. it’s free and cracked ver ;)

STEP 1 : the video for giffing

i don’t need .ts files cause my gifs can be made with normal .mp4 file which i either download from a 4k downloader or screen record on my laptop (windows key + alt + R), which is actually pretty convenient since it allows you to record even 4K resolution videos with perfect quality. the only downside it that, it take a lot more space than a normal downloaded video. but you can always delete the videos after you’re done giffing.

STEP 2: using VS to make & sharpen your gif

(i will be giffing and colouring Dongmyeong from ONEWE since their mv's are very monotonous but not fully black and white. We need to have some colours present in the video/gif so that we have some colours to manipulate in the first place.)

After you decide what part you want to gif, note down the timestamps. After installing and setting up VS, you’ll have a .bat file on which you have to drag your .ts or .mp4 file which will open a timestamp window which looks like this :

And will open a resizing tab in your default search engine after you press enter after entering the timestamp and gif duration. Use settings: qtgmc 60p cause it saves it at a better quality and has 60 frames per second so it’s smoother and small gif size.

Simultaneously, a vapousynth script will open. Remove whatever there is from line #17 to #26. paste what you copied from the resizer on line #17. Enter your sharpening settings on line #24 and your denoise settings on line #22. After entering your numbers, remove the # before cache size command so it doesn’t hang your laptop. Mine does when I don’t do that. Save that setting, file > save script. Then you won’t have to remove it everytime you make a gif. Your final script before encoding should look like this (refer to the script in the 3rd photo of the collage):

after that, follow these steps:

i personally like to use PNG SEQUENCE for my gifs cause one, it’s compatible; two, the quality of the gif turns out good. For me, normal gif output is pretty dithered which i don’t like.

you can close the script after you see green bar in encode window that says '100%. video has finished encoding'

STEP 3: accessing your output png frames / gif

after you close all the vs .html windows, you’ll find your gif/png fames under your VaporSynth folder that you have extracted under VapourSynth64Portable(200722)> gifs>output. i have separate folder where i cut and paste these frames so that they’re easily accessible later.

imp!!!(this may only be my problem): either rename or change the location of the output PNGs before you start with a new one. if not, they will get replaced with the new one since vs automatic name system is 'output00001' for each new batch of encode. Same goes if you decide to encode to gif cause it will be saved as 'output' and be replaced by new one.

after you're done with accessing your output PNGs, close all the windows and repeat the same for a new set of PNGs for another gif.

STEP 4: loading your frames into Photoshop

if you have made an output gif, then you can just open it. File > Open and select all from where you saved it and it’ll load in frames.

after you’ve opened your PS, make sure your Timeline mode is on (window > timeline) then go to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. click Browse and it’ll open your file manager; select where you’ve pasted your output frames. select them all and press enter, let them load and press okay.

After PS is done loading your frames, it’ll look something like this. After that click create frame animation. It’s show only one frame so you have to click this ≡ symbol on the top right of the timeline. Then click Create Frames from layers and it’ll make all frames. Then click ≡ again and click “reverse frames” because ps loads frames in reverse so you have to un-reverse it.

then click bottom left Switch to Video Timeline.

Then select all your layers from the side panel and convert it into a smart object so that you can sharpen it and add other filters.

STEP 5: Colouring. Turning dull/monotone gifs into natural colour (not total b&w gifs)

again, we need to have some colour in the gif that we can manipulate. this tutorial won’t be helpful for b&w gifs.

without colouring you can see some faint reds and blues there.

Here’s the colouring tutorial !

A TIP : If you want to dull out a certain colour, use the opposite colour of it. For example of red you can use green/cyan. For blue you can use orange.

A TIP: If you want to add more colour to the skin, you can use gradient map (taught by @scoupsy <33) esp for pale skin. here is her awesome tutorial !

A TIP: direct output gif from vs will be faster than a png sequence created gif. png sequence loads in 0.02 sec delay between each frame but that you can change by selecting all frames in timeline and right clicking them and change it to “no delay”

idk why there are bigass pixels on the monotonous gifs on mobile, ignore that pls

i read tags on my cc game and saw many of you wondered how i coloured this, so:

adjustments layers used for this:

Brightness / Contrast

Vibrance / Saturation

Colour Balance

Photo Filter (Sepia)

Selective Colour 1 (red, blue, magenta, white, neutrals, blacks)

Selective Colour 2 ( red, yellow, green)

Curves

STEP 1 - preparing your image

if there are any imperfections, now’s the time to get rid of them. use the marquee tool (1) to select the part you want to erase (2), go to edit > content aware fill (3) and let photoshop do it’s thing.

STEP 2 - selecting areas to colour

grab the polygonal lasso tool (1) and create a new layer (2), then zoom in and go to town selecting the area you want to colour (3).

STEP 2.5 - continue to select areas

using the multiple selection tool (1) continue to select more areas to colour with the same shade (2).

STEP 3 - filling in your selection

while making sure you’re on your new layer, go to edit > fill (1), select “colour” using the drop down menu (2), and select your first shade. you’ll want to go darker than the colour you want to end up with (3).

STEP 4 - adjusting the layer 

now we’re going to change the layer blending style to “colour”. This is also a great time to reselect your areas and adjust the fill colour as needed.

STEP 5 - optional step for more colour adjustments

if you can’t get the desired shade with the initial layer you can duplicate it (1), change the blending style to multiply (2), and lower to opacity (3). Once again feel free to reselect your areas and adjust the shade as needed.

STEP 6 - adjustment layers

STEP 0: OPEN YOUR B&W PICTURE IN PHOTOSHOP (file > open) AND YOUR REFERNCE PICTURE

we start of by using a reference photo photo with similar lighting as a reference for the skin tone. This process won't be needing to do contouring cause adjustments in gradient map and blending will ensure highlights and dark tones.

I was too lazy to remove teh allure mark so i just coloured the without watermark photo @iiasha posted. thankyou zero<3

STEP 1: MAKING SKIN TONE PALETTE WITH A REFERENCE PICTURE

Pick colours from different tonal values. I'd suggest one colour of skin from each of the degree of contrast; different levels of brightness from the ref picture.

here's something basic about tonal value.

darkest being called blacks and lightest being called whites.

Go to brush tool and set its size according to you and its hardness to full. Make sure your Sample Size settings are set at 5 by 5 per average and Sample is set at All Layers.

With Brush tool selected, Press ALT and you'll see a colour picker, select a colour ; use that brush to make a swatches on any place on the b&w photo so that its easy to access during gradient map.

Select the marquee tool and select the palette and press CTRL + J / CMND + J. this will create a new layer which you can later delete after you're done using the palette.

STEP2: MAKING GRADIENT MAP WITH THE SKIN TONE PALETTE

go to adjustment layers and select Gradient Map. Make sure your palette layer is above the gradient map layer. If not, the it'll become a part of the gradient map and we don't want that since we will be using it for sampling.

click on the small bottom left square, it will open up a colour picker. Select "whites" from the Reference skin tone palette. Select "blacks" from the ref palette. You don't necessarily have to stick with the palette you created. Sometimes, to may be too extreme because in the end it is from a different photo. To adjust the skin tone, you can play with the tones according to your wish.

Now, the gradient may look pretty dark. Select Gradient Map layer and set its blending as "COLOUR".

To add more colour to the skin, you can adjust saturation of each colour too. Select the small box who's colour you want to change and it will open a colour picker, on the right side you can see Hue, Saturation, etc. You can play with both the Bars

The skin tone still looks very unrealistic. To manage that we will edit the layer style. Now, right click Gradient Map layer and Select Blending Options.

If you try to adjust directly with left & right triangle cursors, it will be too extreme. Photoshop allows us to break each of these cursors into two. Press ALT and click on the Triangle cursor and it will split it into two parts. These settings may defer from picture to picture.

STEP3: PAINTING THE SKIN WITH GRADIENT MAP INVERTED MASK

Select the White part on the gradient map layer and click CTRL + I / CMND + I to turn the mask into an inverted mask. The mask will turn black. It looks like we came back to square one, doesn't it? Don't worry! We just turned on inverted mask for us to colour the skin.

Select your brush tool again and start painting/colouring the skin parts. It's okay if you went out of lines. We can easily correct it by erasing the colour that went out of lines. Smaller the eraser, precise the colouring looks after touching up. i'd suggest Kyle's Eraser- natural edge or Soft brush Eraser.

adjust more of skin tone by using Selective Colour adjustment layer and playing with reds and yellows.

reds: +10, +7, +9, -56 | blacks: 0,0,0, +11 | whites: 0,0, -48, +3 | yellows: -43, -10, +5, +29

To darken the Vest and Hair just increase blacks in the Black Colour in Selective colour.

COLOURING THE LIPS & CLOTHES

LIPS

Select Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and turn on inverted layer mask with ctrl + i / cmnd + i and tick Colourise in properties of the layer so that it's the actual colour and not a colour influenced by the gradient map colours.

Select your lip colour and you can lighten or darken it with Lightness bar and adjust the saturation with Saturation bar.

my settings were: HUE= 0 (red), SATURATION= 70, LIGHTNESS= -27

CLOTHES

with the same process as of colouring the lips, mask the clothes and socks part with Hue/Saturation inverted mask and adjust the colour of the clothes according to your linking by playing with Hue, Saturation and Lightness.

To change overall settings of the picture, use Brightness/Contrast and/or Selective Colour. I added more brightness and increased the contrast a little too.

One upside of this method is that you don’t have to re-mask or re-colour if you want to change colours, you can just play with the Hue and change the colour. So, no double work!

if the Skin tone seems very yellow-ish you can use Red PhotoFilter (50% opacity) and colour on the skin using inverted mask again.

FINAL OUTCOME

if youre done with your whole colouring process and still want to change colour, of example clothes; just play with hue/saturation adjustment layer and blending mode ! Ta-Da you have your new colour.

1. Open your picture in Photoshop

If you’d like to set a certain canvas size, you can do so by going to File > New and keying in the appropriate sizes in the fields. Then, drag in your picture from the folder you saved it on.

Alternatively, you can open your picture first, then crop it (Ctrl / Command + C). To do so, drag your picture directly into Photoshop, or go to File > Open and locate your picture.

Tip: Use the Ruler tool to help align your picture better.

Press Ctrl / Command + R to enable the rulers on your workspace. Go to View > New Guide and set the sizes to your liking. 

2. Removing unwanted blemishes (optional)

If you’d like to do any photo editing (e.g. removing text, adjusting brightness, etc.), now is the time to do it. If not, you can skip this step.

Since this photo has text on it, we’re going to remove it with the Spot Healing Brush (J) tool. Press the letter ‘J’ key on your keyboard to get it, or you can click on the band-aid icon on the sidebar.

If you don’t see the band-aid, don’t worry! It might appear as one of the other icons shown below. Just right click on it and select the Spot Healing Brush tool.

Q: I got a pop-up telling me to rasterize my layer. Is that normal? A: Yes, it is! Rasterizing your layer/picture just means that you’re converting that layer to pixels, which is necessary to use many Photoshop tools.

After selecting the tool, just paint over the area with text. You may have to paint over it a few times to remove it completely.

3. The Colouring Process

Wait, so quickly? Yep. 

Now it’s time to rely on your eyesight, your colour perception and hopefully the 2 to 3 hours you set aside to colour this picture. Perhaps grab a snack and go for a quick toilet break first 😅

I’m kidding! You’re free to take as many breaks as you want, but I’m not kidding about how time consuming this process is.

3a. Setting the Colour Palette

Since it’s a black and white picture, you have free rein on the colours used. It’s completely up to your taste and preferences.

Create a blank layer by clicking on the ‘New Layer’ (+) icon at the bottom right of the Layers tab.

Select a white colour (#ffffff) for the foreground colour and then click on the Paint Bucket tool. Click on the blank layer to “paint” it white. This will help your colour palette stand out more.

Use the Marquee Tool (M) to create little squares on the white layer. Use the Paint Bucket to fill each square with the colours you use throughout the process. Create a text layer (T) and indicate what you used that colour for.

Place all the text layers and colour palette into a group (the folder icon beside the ‘New Layer’ button). Click the eyeball beside it to hide / reveal the group.

Q: Can I skip out on this step? A: You can, but remember that if you are painting and accidentally revert the colours back to default, you will not be able to get back the same colour exactly.

Q: What if I use the eyedropper tool? A: You will pick up shades of grey from the original picture as well. The only way would be to isolate the coloured layer and then use the eyedropper tool, which might be troublesome if you have many layers.

3b. Colouring the Skin

Above the black and white picture, create a new layer. Set the blending mode to ‘Multiply’.

Select a suitable skin tone colour in the colour swatch panel. Then switch to Brush mode (B) and start painting over the exposed skin area(s). Make sure that your brush has a hardness of 80% and over so that the edges won’t look fuzzy.

This part of the process is the one that takes a lot of time, especially if you are a perfectionist. Don’t give up!! You got this! :)

3c. Contouring

This step is optional, but it will give your picture more depth so I highly recommend it!

The method is the same as in 3b, but there are some changes you have to make. Firstly, create two new blank layers and name them ‘shadow’ and ‘highlight’.

On the ‘shadow’ layer, use the colour picker to select a colour LIGHTER than your chosen skin colour. Change the blending mode to ‘Multiply’.

On the ‘highlight’ layer, use the colour picker to select a colour DARKER than your chosen skin colour. Change the blending mode to ‘Soft Light’.

If the shadow and/or highlight is still too harsh, you can select different colours or turn down the layer’s opacity. Alternatively, you can change the brush hardness to ≤ 20% for a softer contour.

Q: Why do we pick a lighter colour for shadows? A: The ‘Multiply’ blending mode lays one colour on top of another, making it darker. Choosing a dark colour for your contours would make the shadows way too dark.

A: Similarly, the ‘Soft Light’ blending mode makes the colour on that layer really bright. If you were to pick a light colour for it, it would overpower the layer underneath it.

3d. Colouring the Rest of the Picture.

Yes, very few steps, but incredibly time consuming.

Now that you know the basics of how to colour grayscale pictures (steps 3b and 3c), you have creative freedom to colour the rest of the picture!

Play around with the colours, shades and opacity levels to achieve the desired outcome. 

Q: What if I have coloured the whole picture but am not satisfied with the colours? Is there a way for me to change the colours without redoing it? A: Yes! Depending on which part of the picture you would like to change, there are different methods.

The picture on the left is just the plain colouring.

The picture in the middle has a Levels adjustment layer added to increase contrast, giving the picture more depth. The adjustment layer was added above ALL the other layers.

The picture on the right has changed the cardigan’s colour from green to purple. To change the hue of a specific layer, click on that layer (in this case, the cardigan layer).

Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (Ctrl/Command + U) and drag the slider until it lands on a colour you like.

4. TL;DR

Key takeaways from this tutorial:

Take note of colours used for specific areas.

Change layer blending mode from ‘Normal’ to ‘Multiply’ before painting over the image.

Brush hardness ≥ 80% (≤ 20% for contours)

Light colours for shadows + ‘Multiply’ blending mode.

Dark colours for highlights + ‘Soft Light’ blending mode.

Adjustment layers will affect everything below it.

Go to Image > Adjustments > … to edit specific layers.

And that’s it! 

You’ve come to the end of this tutorial. I hope this has given you a good idea of how to colour grayscale pictures :)