I’ve seen a lot of really cool recolored FR items floating around, so I thought I’d pass along this trick since I think a lot of people use hue/saturation sliders to achieve this and there’s a better and less frustrating way!
This is also how I recolor painted adoptables and even sometimes my normal art. I often render my art straight to greyscale, then use selectively-applied gradient maps to color. You can also use a low opacity gradient map (maybe set to soft light or color mode) over a piece of artwork to unify the colors gently or help suggest lighting! Since discovering gradient maps I’ve used them in nearly every piece of digital art I’ve made in some way or another. They can even be used to fine-tune brightness and contrast!
DISCLAIMERS: This tutorial only applies to Photoshop–specifically CS5, although the steps should be similar to any other recent PS release. I have no idea if this is possible in other editing programs, sorry! T_T Also it’s possible someone’s already made this tutorial and if so, mea culpa, I couldn’t find it T_T I hope this is new information for some people, at least.
First, you need to create a new adjustment layer. This is better than just making a gradient map for the image (which is also an option) because you can selectively apply it. Here’s where you find the option.
A note: this works better on high-contrast items. You might want to bump the contrast of the item icon before working, but if you don’t mind fiddling a lot you don’t have to. Really dark items may need to be lightened some, and really light items may need to be darkened. The item I chose is a nice middle ground with good strong values throughout, so I didn’t do any prep work.
Make sure this box is checked if you’re working on multiple icons or if you have a white background. I check it anyway, just to be safe.
It applies your last used gradient, so you’ll probably get something bizarre like this. No worries! Find your adjustment box (same one you use for hue/saturation adjustment layers). It might be docked with another menu (like your brushes, as mine is), and you might need to turn it on this way. Then click on the gradient bar to pull up this:
Get acquainted with this dialog box, you will come to love it.
Basically, the far left dropper-box indicates what color the gradient map is making out of black. The far right indicates what color the gradient map is making out of white. Everything in between is all your shades of grey (or non-grey, since the item is in color), applied on an even scale.
It’s important to note that the scale goes from *black to white*, not from darkest to lightest in your image. It also applies to the *ENTIRE* image including any adjustment layers already applied! If you apply a really pale gradient map to an image and then layer another over it, you’ll need to push everything over to the right hand side of the scale, etc. This makes more sense the more you work with maps.
And here’s an example of how it looks in use! Because there’s no pure white here, the very furthest right hand color isn’t showing up in the image. But you can fix it!
You can move all your sliders! You can also move the dots between shades to adjust and fine-tune. Click anywhere on the scale to add more sliders. You can double click a slider or click the color box below in the Stops dialog to change it.
NOTE: Unfortunately because Adobe hates its users you can’t use an eyedropper in this dialog. If you want an exact color you need to write down the hex or RGB value. :(
This is largely an intuitive process: some understanding of color theory helps (highest saturation in the middle/top values; hue shifting, etc.;) and fiddling around will help the most! Some really cool iridescent effects can be achieved with judicious use of dramatic midtone hue shifting. As a general tip for FR items, you probably want the darkest shade to be pretty close to black, especially for the background, if you care about preserving the border/etc. If you don’t, go nuts.
But we don’t want to apply the whole image, that’s boring. Click directly on the layer mask in the layer dialog and use black to color out the background. If you have more than one element (petals, leaves, background, or whatever), you will need to do this for each element. If you only have two (item and background), you can apply color to the background this way:
Make your gradient map for the BG, and then Ctrl+click ON THE MASK ITSELF and drag it to the BG map layer. PS will prompt you to replace. Click yes, then use ctrl+I (or the menu) to invert that layer. Instant BG mask!
You can also see that it’s possible to create cool ombre effects and have total control over them by applying gradients to your masks, or even paint on stripes/whatever! You can also try changing the blend mode of your gradient maps for other cool effects (especially useful for “glazing” greyscale artwork).
Also, once you’ve set your masks up once, you can just adjust the gradients again. Although you should probably set them up more carefully than my messy ones I used in the examples below, lol.
AND THAT IS ALL! If you have questions please feel free to reblog with them or send me asks, I use gradient maps daily and am happy to help!
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