How to do 'color porn'
Since my first tutorial went down quite well, I thought I would teach you how to color a screencap. I wanted to show people since coloring tutorials a pretty poor at times. Note that this also works on gifs
Okay so the first thing to do is to find a Screencap. I will be using this (x) screencap of the godswood. I recommend that if you are starting out with coloring you also use this cap because it is great for practice. (I will provide the rest of the pictures used in this picspam as they are great for practice)
Next open up your screencap...
Next go to curves, It will be in the adjustments section, usually under color swatches. If not go to window>adjustments
Here is the curves icon
Click on curves and you will see a graph with a diagonal line on it, click anywhere on this line and it will give you a point on the line you can drag anywhere on the graph. You should never drastically increase the line unless it is needed. For people new to this you will find clicking 'auto' will automatically lighten your cap (I personally don't use the auto function but it is a useful starting point). Play around with the line until you have lightened your cap. My line looked like this...
and my cap looked like this
Now we move on to brightness and contrast, (this is the order I do things in, they may not necessarily be correct, but they work). This is the icon for brightness and contrast
I'm guessing you already know what brightness does. We won't use contrast in this tutorial but play around with it if you want. This is how my brightness settings looked...
and this is how the cap looked...
It is very important you lighten the cap without making the colors look washed out.
Next is my favorite bit...selective color. Here is its icon
Selective color is awesome because It allows you to adjust particular colors without changing the hue of the picture. Notice this tutorial is for color porn, which simply means to enhance the colors in the cap. Here are the list of colors you can select
I have never fully understood how to get a certain color. It's all about playing around with the sliders until you get the desired effect. Here were my settings.
And here was my cap...
Finally we use Vibrance. Here is its icon
Vibrance, makes all the colors, well...vibrant. Play around with the slider until the colors are bright and lively. You can use saturation, but sometimes it can be a bit to much in my opinion. If you are going to saturate your cap, go for a nice low number like 2-10. Here were my settings...
and here is what my cap looked like...
And you are done. Feel free to experiment with the other editing features, these are just the basics of coloring. Remember to file>save for web, and save at 500px width in Jpeg format.
Here are some other caps to practise on...
(x) (x) (x) (x)
It also works on gifs, to do this, make sure the coloring is over every layer of your gif, otherwise it will not work.
I hoped this tutorial helped