[Help] Photoshop Elements 6 Pixel Art Coloring??

[Queen Aradia]

Hello, I'm Not for sure if I am asking for help in the right subforum or not. If I am however in the wrong subforum please do inform me nicely about it, and I will simply close down this thread and move it to the correct subforum or I will ask a mod to move my topic to the correct subforum. There is no need to be rude about it ok..

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I would like to ask for Help on how to color pixel art work in Photoshop elements 6. I have looked all over DA, and the internet, and well when you keep coming up with Normal Photoshop drawings it gets rather annoying to keep looking page after page, hoping that one of them might simply have what you are looking for. Now I'm not completely 'stupid' (I use this term lightly) with photoshop. I know a little, Like were things are located and how to use it to do animations, but when it comes to coloring I have no clue. I know some people use the 'multiply' and 'overlay' which I have toyed around with and seem to be getting no where with it at all.

So I have a fully shaded piece of pixel art, that is in a gray scale, and is in a .png file formate. However I want to move from using MS Paint over to fully using photoshop elements. Like I have this thing, If you have the program might as well as use it, or you shouldn't of paid for it. Well I paid 200 bucks for mine and its about time I learn how to use the darn thing proper when it comes to coloring pixel art.

So if you have a 'Good' (and I mean good) Photoshop Elements Tutorial that shows me how to color Pixel Art work, please post it for me.

If you would like to teach me how to do it, that would be even better. But I would like to warn you, I'm a very slow learner and it will take a lot of time, because if I get stuck I tend to want to run away from it, then go back to it later, or I get pissed off.

Another thing I am having trouble with, while I was trying to teach myself. When I would have the gray scaled art work has my base layer, and would make a new layer for it to be the color layer, when I would go to set the color layer to 'overlay' the color would be really light, and would not come out the color I wanted it to be, shading included.
Almost the same thing would happen when I would set the color layer to 'multiply' the color would be a lot darker then what I wanted it to be.
Also to make it a little more clearer, even the shading parts of the art work would not be the color I wanted it to be. So my base color was always different then what I wanted.
I don't see what I am doing wrong here either, maybe that could be the reason on why I'm not getting it right. But I have no clue.

[Jayin]

Have you checked YouTube for that? There are many kinds of tutorials on all the adobe programs. Video tutorials are better since you can follow a long.

[Queen Aradia]

Actually I never thought of youtube. I'll give it a try and see what I can find, hopefully I will be able to fine something on there. Thank you for the help.

Edit:: However for what I am looking for, it seems that youtube did not have it. Unless I am typing in the search thing wrong, maybe simplifying it would work out better. I will play around with this more to see if I can find something.

[Zhevra]

Oh, it's very easy. You just switch from the Brush setting to the Pencil setting and do it exactly the same way you work in MS Paint.

[Love in a Thunderstorm]

I don't care, I'm still free...

The overlay dropdown is sectioned like this:

-Makes things darker:
Darken, multiply (which explains why your stuff comes out dark), Linear Burn, Darken Color
- Makes things lighter:
Lighten, screen, color dodge, linear dodge, lighten color
-Weird but useful thingies:
Overlay, soft light, hard light, vivid light, linear light, pin light, hard mix
- Inverted-like:
Difference, exclusion
- Makes things colors:
Hue, Saturation, Color, Luminosity

Unfortunately, there's no pretty and nice way to turn a grayscale piece into a color piece without simply going over it with the color you want with the pencil tool. Otherwise your colors will come out muddy and not nice and bright. You can kind of fix that by just going through ALL of those things in that dropdown menu (for instance, yellow on top of gray will look green if you use Color, but more like actual yellow if using Screen)

The best way to make them look nice is to just trace over them, using the pencil tool, with the color you want them to be. I know it's a lot of work, especially for pixel art (I'm a pixel artist myself), but in the long run it will look a lot better. I hardly ever make grayscale bases anymore because it never ends up looking good using an effect from the overlay drop down.

You can't take the sky from me...

[Queen Aradia]

So Thunderstorm, What you are saying here 'there's no pretty and nice way to turn a grayscale piece into a color piece without simply going over it with the color you want with the pencil tool' is I need to make a new layer for each area and set it to overlay? Or how should I got about it, besides trying to make things darker on my own and have photoshop do it for me, but have it look good?

[Love in a Thunderstorm]

I don't care, I'm still free...

No no no. Don't use overlay or any of those. It will make your image look muddy.

What I'm saying is to literally go over EACH PIXEL with a NEW solid color.

Here. I'll try to explain it with a cupcake:



The first cupcake is in black and white.

The second cupcake is colored using only three solid colors, and then setting it to color or overlay.

The third cupcake is colored by choosing each individual shade, and penciling them in manually. There are four different colors in the cake, six in the frosting, and five in the cup.



See? Individual colors. No whole filled in shape or anything.

You can't take the sky from me...

[Queen Aradia]

Let me better explain, I would like to Know how I get photoshop to do all the highligting, and the shading, and the in between, with me just having to pick out one color, if I want it to be one solid color, and have it show all the shading and highlighting.. if this helps any

[Love in a Thunderstorm]

Queen Aradia

Let me better explain, I would like to Know how I get photoshop to do all the highligting, and the shading, and the in between, with me just having to pick out one color, if I want it to be one solid color, and have it show all the shading and highlighting.. if this helps any

I don't care, I'm still free...

And I'm saying that's exactly what you don't want to do. It will make your colors look ugly.

If you want to take shortcuts and make mediocre work, then go for it. Just use color or overlay or multiply.

You can't take the sky from me...

[Queen Aradia]

Ok so then there really is no difference between MS Paint, and Photoshop in the case of pixel art.. Or I'm just not getting it.. With MS Paint, I choose my palette. The main color to its highlights to its lowlights, to its shading. So I still have to do that in photoshop... so why even have the program if you have to do the same thing.. and I see what you mean on the mediocre work. I don't want that. and I don't want shortcuts, I just though photoshop was this all out program that if you set the settings right, it does it for you and makes everything pretty.. at least thats what it seems when other people talk about it..

[Queen Aradia]

Anywho I think I annoyed you Thunderstorm, so I would like to thank you on letting me know, and I will try to figure it out. But yea I think you meant, is I have to do the same thing in photoshop that I do in ms paint, which is ok. to be truthful... I kinda got used to it that way. So I will continue to do it that way.. Thank you once more.