Tutorial

[chacusha]

to in 5 steps.

Intro:
So! This is my first tutorial, as requested by dottedcherrypie. :D It's pretty representative of my fallback coloring method: Curves + Layer Masks. :P

Tools:
GIMP is recommended for this tutorial. It's a free art program that I love. :) You could also use PSP or PS, but you might need to make some adjustments. Whatever program you use, you'll need to be able to do Curves and Layer Masks.

STEP ONE

to
Duplicate the base. Then go to Curves (Colors -> Curves... or Layer -> Colors -> Curves...).

The base is very dark, so I would like to make it brighter, with a little more contrast too. So I adjust the Values curve like so:


I also tinted the image to be more yellow. This is accomplished by increasing the Red and Green curves while decreasing the Blue curves. I ended up with curves like these:

STEP TWO

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Duplicate the base again and drag it to the top. Then Desaturate it by lightness (Colors -> Desaturate) if you're using GIMP 2.4 or later. Otherwise, just Desaturate it. (Layer -> Colors -> Desaturate).

STEP THREE

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Take the black & white layer and increase the contrast. To do this, I used Curves once again.


Because the layer is black & white, we leave the Red, Green, and Blue channels alone.

STEP FOUR

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Now you should have a layer like this


... on top of a layer like this


Set the Blending Mode of the top layer (the black & white one) to Lighten Only.

STEP FIVE

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Unfortunately, adding the new layer caused Tanana's skin to turn unnaturally pink. In order to counteract this, I created a Layer Mask for the black & white layer. To add a layer mask, either...
(1) Right-click on the layer in the layer panel and select "Add Layer Mask..."
OR
(2) Go to Layer -> Mask -> Add Layer Mask.

Then I applied a radial gradient from solid black to solid white to the layer mask, like so:


This causes part of the layer underneath to show through normally.

FINAL RESULT

OTHER EXAMPLES

Here, the layer mask gradient was applied over the Queen's face to return some of her color.
Here I used a "dark grey to white" gradient on Belle to make her less pale (a black-to-white gradient made her look sickly yellow). The Beast was fine without a layer mask. I also sharpened the image using Filters -> Enhance -> Sharpen... with Sharpness 30.
Here I used a small black-to-white gradient over the top-left part of Esmeralda (mostly her face). I again sharpened the image, this time using Filters -> Enhance -> Unsharp Mask... with Radius 2.0, Amount 0.50, and Threshold 0.