#recolor tutorial

1. open the clothing you want to recolor in sims 4 studio (s4s) and find the white swatch.

if there’s no solid swatch at all, skip to the very end of this tutorial where i’ll show you how to fix this! (look for the pink line)

if there are solid swatches but no white swatch, find the lightest color you can. even though there’s a white swatch in my example top, i’ll use a colorful one to show you how to fix it.

[for this tutorial, i’ll be using simiracle’s judd shirt.]

2. click the green “export” button. save it as “white swatch”.

3. open it in photoshop.

optional; if your swatch is already white, skip this step: to get rid of the color, simply decrease the saturation & vibrance all the way down. if it still looks too grey or dark, increase the brightness & contrast. finally, merge your layers. here are my settings and what i ended up with:

4. create a new layer and check “use previous layer to create clipping mask”. color everything in completely with a pure white brush.

5. on the layer tab towards the right side of your screen, change “normal” to “multiply”.

now your texture should look exactly like it did back in step 3! (i promise you didn’t just waste your time lol)

optional: if you have recoloring actions ready, now would be the time to apply them. if not, carry on!

6. right click on your new layer and click “blending options” at the top. here, you can either click “color overlay” or “pattern overlay”.

either way, you’ll want to change the blending mode to “multiply”.

here’s an example of what you can do with color overlay:

and here’s an example of pattern overlay:

but wait! you might be thinking “where do i get cute patterns like that?” and my answer is... everywhere. try searching for things like “seamless patterns”, “tileable patterns”, “fabric swatches”, etc. it’s even easier if they come in a .pat file (here’s a quick guide to using .pat files!)

here are some good patterns or places to find them:

my patterns pinterest board

mothz patterns

free pattern site

deviantart patterns

free .pat files

more .pat files

even more .pat files

yeah... more .pat files

okay, now that you’re all loaded up with patterns, let’s get back to the tutorial!

7. adjust to your liking. i prefer my recolors to be more faded and worn-looking, so i turn down the opacity a bit and i tend to use patterns that already have a vintage look to them. but do whatever you prefer! you can even mix color overlay & pattern overlay together to create an entirely new design.

8. save as a PSD!! trust me, you’ll be really sorry if photoshop crashes and you have to do all of this over again.

9. merge your layers and save as dds.

optional: now i’m going to show you how to add graphics. if you’re not interested in this, skip ahead to the next green line.

1. find your graphic. preferably, it’ll be flat, on a plain colored background, with minimal wrinkles.

2. i like to use the website 6 dollar shirts because they have a nice worn look already!

here’s the image i’ll be using for now:

3. make it transparent. there’s many ways to do this! if your image is really simple, you can outline it with the lasso tool and delete everything outside of it. but my image is a bit more complicated than that, and i don’t have all day... so let’s use the color range tool. (select → color range)

click on the color you’re trying to get rid of (in this case, the light tan color) and crank up the fuzziness to the max. press OK.

now all of your background color should be selected. press ctrl + X to delete it.

4. make it look nicer, depending on the image. if it’s blurry, try sharpening it. if it’s crunchy, try using topaz clean. if there are still some spots of color, use the color range tool again as many times as you want. make it black and white. decrease the brightness & increase the contrast to the max. it all varies, just try new things and see how it looks!

5. when you’re done adjusting, copy your image and paste it onto your shirt. you can do this on a solid color shirt or, if you really want to go crazy (lol), paste it onto a patterned shirt. adjust the opacity settings so it looks like it’s blending into the shirt nicely, not just sitting on top of it.

ta-da! you now have a cheesy graphic tee :-)

BONUS TIP: if your graphic doesn’t look worn, but you want it to, you can use these free overlays to roughen up the design! there’s even a little tutorial on the page.

10. if you haven’t already, add the file you’re recoloring to your sims 4 studio mods folder. here’s what it looks like:

11. reload s4s. under “cas” click “create cas standalone”.

12. sort by custom content, click the first swatch of whatever item you’re recoloring, and click next. name your file.

13. now click the blue “import” button and import your first texture. then click “add swatch” and import again for all your other swatches.

BONUS TIP: for the swatch thumbnails, you can right click one of the empty boxes and it will pull up a dropper tool that you can use to match the color of your cc.

14. save!

you’re done!!

if the item you’re recoloring doesn’t have a solid swatch...

1. find the simplest swatch you can. some swatches won’t work no matter how hard you try, but it’s always worth a shot!

i’ll use the yellow moon-patterned recolor i just made as an example.

2. turn the saturation & vibrance all the way down. increase your brightness & contrast. increase curves (if necessary). here are my settings and what i ended up with:

now comes the tedious part...

3. use the patch tool to remove the pattern, piece by piece.

here’s a demonstration:

here’s my progress so far:

you may notice that the patch tool doesn’t work well on the outer edges of your clothing. for that part, i use the clone tool.

i can’t screenshot this part, but basically all you do is hold alt and select a blank spot directly next to the pattern you’re covering up. then hover over the pattern and click down. make sure you move your cursor in a completely straight line, otherwise the seam will look wiggly.

we’re finally done! here’s what my final image looks like:

now that you have a white swatch, jump back to step 4 to continue the tutorial ♡

What you will need for this tutorial:

- Photoshop (PS) of any kind that is compatible with Nvidia DDS plugin (you can get CS2 for free right here)

- Sims 4 studio - S4S (you need to register to download it)

- A DDS plugin for PS 32 bit (the download is called texture tools)

- WMS recoloring actions by @wildlyminiaturesandwich​​ (we’ll be making our own later, but we use these as our “base”)

- A WMS color palette for S4S made by the lovely @valkryiesims​

- An action that turns the dirty blonde swatch into the white swatch by me

Before starting you should read these posts, since we’ll use the information from those in the tutorial:

- WMS recoloring actions (you should read everything she has to say about her actions)

- @neverloores post about SecondayDisplayIndex - also called SDI

- @verdigrisss post about making an all-in-one recoloring action. (this is a bit complicated so take your time reading it)

If you’ve read and downloaded everything, you’re ready to start the tutorial!

1. Install PS, S4S, the S4S palettes, the actions and the DDS plugin.

The DDS plugin only works with CS2 if you download the 32-bit version, since that’s what CS2 is.

To install the WMS actions in PS go to ‘actions>load actions’ (the little round icon with the triangle in it) and then find the downloaded actions in your download folder. Press okay and the should be loaded in now.

To install the WMS palettes into S4S, go to ‘documents>Sims 4 Studio>palettes’ and copy+paste the downloaded palettes into that folder.

2. Find whatever hair you want to recolor.

To check if that hair has already been recolored check out this spreadsheet by @celebi88. Press ctrl+f to search inside the spreadsheet

Put the hair into the S4S mods folder, which is found in ’document\Sims 4 Studio\mods’

Keep in mind that there are a lot of hairs and recolors out there, so the spreadsheet may be out of date. You can join the WMS recolors discord right here by @namea​ and @celebi88​, and we can help you find a recolor if you’re unsure if the hair has been recolored before!

3. Create your recoloring file in S4S.

Open S4S, type in your username in the down right corner and go to the CAS section and click on ‘Add CAS Part Swatch’. If you don’t do this, the recolors will show up as a standalone file, and will not be a part of the original hair file in game.

Click ‘CAS’ and it will take you to the different meshes EA has created.

To find the hair you want to recolor go to the top right corner and click on the ‘ALL’ button next to ‘Content’ and sort to ‘Custom Content’.

Find the hair you want to recolor and shift+click it, to select all swatches.

A new window will pop up and this is where you save your file. I’ve created a folder for the CC I’ve made (called homemade), and in that I’ve made a folder for my WMS recolors. From there I create a folder for every hair creator, and in every creator folder I put a new folder for every hair I’ve recolored. And lastly in the specific hair recolor folder I make 4 folders, one for each of the palettes and one for pictures. So the path will look something like this: ‘documents\homemade\wms recolors\*creator name*\*hair name*\’. The four folders are then created and named ‘un’ (for unnaturals), ‘na’ (for naturals), ‘ne’ (for neutrals) and pics (for pictures if you want to upload the recolors).

Then create the file after you’ve made your folder, and name it after whatever palettes you’re recoloring in.

4. Get ready to recolor.

Your recoloring file will now open up in S4S, where you can see all the swatches. First we have to access the white swatch to see if it matches the other EA white swatches, or if it is ‘too white’. It should look something like this: (refer to the picture under this section)

If the white swatch looks fine you can go on ahead and export that swatch as a .dds file (important). Remember to rename it to ‘base’ - we’ll use that later on. Also skip the next steps if the swatch looks fine!

If the white swatch doesn’t look perfect, export the ‘dirty blonde’ swatch as a .dds file and rename that to ‘base’.

Open up the ‘dirty blonde’ base in PS and use this action (by me) to make it look like an EA white swatch.

Save the file and close it! (Very important). If not saved and closed before using the actions, the actions will go back to the dirty blonde base, and the EA white wont be used.

If recoloring a childrens or toddlers hair, export the ‘dirty blonde’ swatch and use my action on it!

5. Making all-in-one recoloring actions

Open up your base in photoshop. Make sure it’s called ‘base’ and nothing else. (this goes for every hair base you’re ever going to recolor, it has to be named base)

Create a new folder on your desktop, or somewhere where you’re never going to move it. I called mine ‘currently recoloring’. Inside that folder there should be 3 folders; one for each of the palettes. If you ever move this folder, you’ll have to redo your all-in-one recoloring actions, so make sure you have found a nice place for the folder!

Now it’s time to make the action. Your ‘base’ is open and now you navigate to actions. Start by creating a folder for your new actions called ‘all-in-one wms actions’.

To make the first actions, click ‘create new action’ and name it ‘unnaturals’ (for the unnaturals), ‘naturals’ (for the naturals) and ‘neutrals’ (for the neutrals). Make sure the set is set to ‘all-in-one wms actions’. Press record.

Now it’s time for the tedious task, which is to play all the actions provided by WMS. Go to history and make sure you haven’t done anything to the image. Play the first in action in whatever palette you’re choosing, and press ‘ctrl+shift+s’ to save your file as a new file. Relocate to the folder you made a little while ago on your desktop (or where else you placed it), and go into the folder with the matching palette. Name the first action ‘1′. Once saved it’ll send you back to your base that is recolored. Go to history and press ‘base’ or ‘open’, whatever is the first thing you can press. Now it’s time for the next action in the palette. Do the same but name that file ‘2′. Keep doing this until you’ve gone through all of the actions/colors. There are 35 unnaturals, 20 naturals and 20 neutrals.

Once you’ve run all actions in each palette, click on the small record button under actions, to stop your action. And there you have your all in one actions!

6. Importing recolors into S4S

Open up your folder in which you placed your .package file in (fx. documents\homemade\wms recolors\*creator name*\*hair name*\). There should be a folder for each of the palettes in there (+ one for pictures).

Open up another your folder in which you placed the recolored .dds files (fx. desktop\currently recoloring).

Go to the first color palette named folder (fx. un (for unnaturals)) and cut those files (ctrl+x). Paste those into the other folder (with the .package file) and into the matching palette folder. Do that for all the palettes.

You should now have 3 filled folders with .dds recolors in your ‘homemade’ folder.

Open up your recolor in S4S. There are 18 different hair swatches. Delete swatches until you have only one swatch left.

Go to the warehouse tab in S4S. Here there are two sections, the right and the left section. On the left you should see the same swatch as the one you have in the studio. Go to the right and locate the search bar. In the search bar type ‘sec(ondarydisplayindex) and the SDI (secondarydisplayindex) will pop up. Change whatever number you have there to either ‘195′ (for unnaturals), ‘395′ (for naturals) or ‘595′ (for neutrals. If it’s easier for you to remeber, you can add five to each number so it’ll be 200, 400 and 600.

Now go back into the studio, and press ‘tools’ in the bar at top. Under that press ‘color palette’ and a new window will pop up. Find whatever palette you’re recoloring in and apply the palette to the package. It will then ask you if you’d like to keep the existing swatch, press no.

The palette you’re recoloring in will be imported into your .package file. Now you have to import all the .dds files into each of the swatches. Click import and locate your recolored .dds files (they should be in documents\homemade\wms recolors\*creator name*\*hair name*\*palette name*).

7. Finishing up the packages

Now that all the swatches has been imported, the recolor is almost done. Save your .package file. Repeat section 6 with all three palettes.

Go to the folder where your .package file is located in and rename it so that people can identify it when they download it (if you’re uploading the recolors of course). Mine are normally called ‘-CUBERSIMS- *hair creator* *hair name* recolor WMS *PALETTE* ADDONS. But you can customize any way you’d like!

Now you should have 3 files named after each palette. To merge the packages into one .package file, go back into S4S. Go to the tab bar and click ‘content management’ and then ‘merge packages’.

A new window will pop up. Click add and add/import the 3 recolored files. Click ‘merge’ and save the new .package file with a new name (fx. mine looks like this: -CUBERSIMS- *hair creator* *hair name* recolor WMS ALL ADDONS MERGED)

Now you should have 4 .package files. One for each of the palettes, and one for all the palettes.

Put the merged .package file into you game (where you put cc) and test your recolors!

And that is it! You made a recolor! Good job!

I hope this tutorial could help you guys out there, who wants to either start recoloring, or update their recoloring method.

For starters: I do use Krita for all of my edits including the color swaps! There may be different techniques for different programs, so keep in mind you may have to use a slightly different method for your program!

First you’ll wanna open your sprites! I usually keep both my sprites in their own tabs but it won’t hurt to put the sprites together! I’ll be putting them together for this!

Now for the fun part! The recoloring! I use the color picker to chose the color I need, in this case, Kokichi’s hair color! I’ll do a new layer on top of Nagito’s sprite and rename it to what it’s gonna be so I won’t get confused later!

After that, I’ll apply a mode to the layer (Either color, multiply, soft light, etc, etc,)! For this part, Nagito’s hair is white while Kokichi’s is purply-black, So I’ll use Multiply!After you apply the mode, start coloring! I usually just straight up color it in like a coloring book, but if you know of an easier way then go ahead and try it!

(Let’s pretend that’s all colored in ;0) Now let’s do his eyes! Create a new layer for Nagito and rename it to your liking before making the layer mode Color! Then color pick Kokichi’s eyes for the color and color in Nagito’s eyes!

Hmmm Those are a bit bright compared to Kokichi’s actual eyes! Let’s darken them a bit! Right click on the layer and click “Duplicate” and set the new duplicated layer to the mode soft light! Then turn on Alpha lock (On Krita it is checkered square on the side of the layer), change your color to black, and draw over the eyes again!

Better! I normally do one sprite at a time, but for the sake of this tutorial, let’s move over to Kokichi to talk about other techniques! Whenever you shift focus to another sprite, hide the layers (Usually it’s the little eyeball!) that you used on the first sprite so you can color pick the colors you need!

Uh oh! Problem! We color picked Nagito’s hair color, and tried setting the layer mode to Color, but Kokichi’s hair is just turning black! Multiply doesn’t work either! Soft Light makes his hair lighter, but it’s still purple!There are a couple different ways that we can do this though!1. We can just redraw his hair and color/shade it in without having to use filters.2.We can color in using the Screen layer mode, being careful to avoid the lines in his hair (Screen mode will lighten the lines unlike the other modes, and if using a color close to white, will require the opacity being turned down so you can see the texture underneath).3. We can use a Color layer and a couple Soft Light layers to obtain close to the right shade.What you use here will be completely up to you, and again, you might find a whole nother way that’s easier than any of these! For this in particular I’m gonna go with the option that seems the most annoying! Using multiple color and soft lights! I use this one most of the time! But using the screen option is similar so I will talk about it as well.

The easiest way to do this method is to do your Color layer first, duplicating it, and changing that layer to Soft Light. (Tip! Make your Color layer fully black or white, even if your color picked color is almost white, it’ll look better and be easier to work with if the Color layer is a true black or white!)

Still not bright enough? Keep duplicating the layers until you get what you need! (Tip! You can also dupe your Color layer that’s a true white, make it into Soft Light, and it should make it easier! Just make sure it’s below the layers that are of your color picked color!) Sidenote: if you went with the screen option here, you would’ve needed to put a white Color layer under your Screen layer and then lower the opacity of the Screen layer, but it would’ve turned out to only two layers as opposed to four with this method. Also if you used the screen option, you will need to follow this next step aswell!

Ok! This is close enough! But now my lines are all wonky(Lighter if used Screen)! Well we can fix that!Make sure you’re on your top layer and switch to your erase tool! Make the brush size the size of your lines and erase where the lines are!

All better!

Now Nagito has a bit of brown on the bottom of his hair! How will we do that?Simple! We’ll use the gradient tool! I won’t be able to show you on sprites since I didn’t color that low, but using the tool is super easy I think you’ll be able to get it just with text!First color pick the brown color of Nagito’s hair and make sure you’re on the top layer and that it is alpha locked! Then drag from the bottom of the hair up to a little bit above Kokichi’s eyes with the gradient tool. When you let go of the mouse, a gradient will pop up there! Continue the steps until you get the amount of brown you want!

step 1. download sims 4 studio here. step 2. if you want to recolor cc from somebody, download the cc of course. put the package in the sims 4 studio mods folder. mine was at this pc>documents>sims 4 studio>mods. step 3. open sims 4 studio and fill in your creator name. step 4. click on CAS (yes click the blue thing) and you will see all the sims content you have.

step 5. for recoloring cc you go to content and click custom. the cc you placed in the sims 4 studio mod should be there! click on it and click on next. it’s the same for base game so i’m deciding to recolor this base game swimsuit. if there’s a white swatch click on that. if there’s not we can make a swatch white in photoshop.

step 6. a screen will pop up for giving your package a name. i decide on [myshuuno] BG swimsuit. click on save.

step 7. another screen will pop up. click on diffuse and export the diffuse map. i just named it bg swimsuit *insert color name* and save it as a png. (okay never choose the black swatch that was a mistake)

step 8. open photoshop and open your diffuse map aka your png. step 9. if there’s not a white swatch you can change it in photoshop. like i said open your png. i went with the red swatch since it was easier than black. open the adjustment black and white. since the swatch is red change the reds. i changed it to 95. next open up the adjustment levels. basically what i do is move those little arrows underneath until i’m happy with it. now the swatch is white and you can save it as a png. !if you can always choose the white swatch!

step 10. okay back to easy recoloring. you have your white swatch. make a new layer also known as layer 1. fill layer 1 in with the color you want with the paint bucket. right click layer 1 and create clipping mask. change the layer style from normal to multiply. you can also experiment with the other ones but i see multiply mostly being used. now you save it as a png!

step 11. now you go back to sims 4 studio and import your png. now you can import all your recolors (every swatch is a different color). you can change the swatch thumbnail to the matching color and create a catalog thumbnail (the size is 104x148). if you’re done save it! now you can put your recolor in your mods folder (if you recolor cc you also need the mesh in your mods folder!) and you’re done!