improved gimp manga coloring tut

hey guys. updated manga coloring tut for gimp starts now. ive had a few people ask of late so here ya go.

ok. in leau of recent events (T_T) we will be coloring kakashi today <3 were starting with this:


STEP 1: CLEANING -> this makes or breaks the image. see those gross little fuzzies around the edges of the black? yeah. we dont want those. so what you do is open up two new layers over your background and set them bouth to overlay. the one on the bottom will always be white and the one on top will always be black. ok the image im using is pretty clean already and i only needed one of each. but to clean really gross manga like this youll have to use more than one.


STEP 2: FLATTEN YOUR IMAGE-> do it. go to image>flatten image


STEP 3: GET RID OF THE WHITE-> do it. go to colors>color to alpha. in photoshop, click the channels tab on your layers. they all should be highlighted. at the bottom theres a circle made of dots. click it then hit delete. OMG ALL THE WHITE IS GONE :0!


STEP 4: LOCK THE TRANSPARENCY-> its right on your layers box. this is true for ps as well. click it, now you can color on your lines without having to worry about filling in the transparency! rad huh?


STEP 5: BACKGROUND AND LAYER NAMES-> make a new fill layer and put it beneath your lines. it can be whatever color you want, i chose white. double click the name and rename it "background". do the same for your lines layer. i choose the name "lines". creative. note that you dont HAVE to do this. it just keeps you organized.


STEP 6: SKIN-> make a new layer and name it skin. color in where the skin is. this is on the bottem of the color layers so other crap is going over it so its ok to be messy. just dont get any on the background.


STEP 7: OTHER LAYERS-> repeat previous step. but you know, dont go over the skin or the background. other than that be as messy as you want. heres another screenshot.


STEP 8: COLORING LINES-> remember how i demonstrated to you in step 4 the magics of locking transparency? yes. choose your colors and go for it. you can stop here, flatten your image and get this:

but if youre feeling saucy, you can continue <3


STEP 9: SHADING NON-LINES-> ok. were gonna start with skin. first hide all your layers but "skin" and "lines" duplicate skin. lock the transparency. take a big brush and go over it with white. set it to multiply. make 4 or 5 copies of this white transparency locked layer for later. take the big fuzzy brush and make its size 100, as big as it can get (do not do this in PS, just make it about half the size of your fist) and shade where it looks best. mess with the opacity. now do it a few more times on the blank ones that you made copies of. you may not need all 5 or you may need more. i added some pink to his cheeks btw. do the same for each non-line layer aaand im not really sure why i took this screenshot...


STEP 10: SHADING LINES-> its pretty much the same thing. hide all your other layers, duplicate the line layer, make sure you have it on transparency lock, and go over it with a big white brush (note i made a black bg layer so you could see it better). set it to multiply, make a few copies of it and do the same thing as step 9. shade shade shade
flatten it and you should get something like this:


then you can go into ps and mess with the colors and make some banners or something :3 whateves.



EDIT: lol i forgot to shade the headband thing oops

i hope this helped some people. comment if it helps or if you have any questions. it makes me feel like spending 4 hours on the computer doing nothing productive was worth it

if you use any of my graphics credit me.

oh ps you should totally watch us