Coloring Line Art
Not only is Phoenix useful in the creation of photorealistic images, but another fun thing that can be done in the program is colorizing line drawings. In this tutorial, I'll show you a simple way to utilize the tools and features in Phoenix, to color a line drawing of his feathered friend, the toucan.
Open in Phoenix
Final Result Preview
The first thing I did was set the line art layer's blend mode to Multiply. What this does is preserves our black outlines, so that when we go on to color on layers below this, the outlines will always remain on top and the white segments will appear invisible. I made sure to add a blank white filled layer underneath the line art layer to hide the default transparency checkered pattern in Phoenix.
Next, we need to understand how to select colors. I selected the Paintbrush Tool. This brings up the tool's options including setting the color. I clicked the upper box on the Color Selection boxes that appear within the Paintbrush Tool's options. This brings up our color selection window.
The easiest way to understand this panel and select the colors you want, is to slide the top slider (H) to select the hue you want, then by fine tuning the exact specifications of the color you desire in the Select Color panel on the left. Once I had the color I want, I pressed Ok to set this color selection as my new foreground color I'll paint with.
To start laying down base coloring for the image, I created a new layer directly below the line art layer. Using the Paintbrush Tool, I simply colored in each of the sections until I had the image base colored.
At this point, you could call the image complete with the base colors down. I like to add a few effects to my line art colorizations to make it more interesting.
First, I want to add a light source to the image, in this case, being the sun. Using the Magic Wand Tool, I selected the sky portion between the trees on my base color layer. With this selection isolated, I created a new layer. With the Gradient Tool selected, I chose a yellow hue for my left color and orange for my right, then dragged the tool on the selection starting with the central point where I want the sun to be.
To add the sun, I created a new layer. And with the Paintbrush Tool set to 0% Hardness and set at 60 pixels for Size, I simply painted in the sun by clicking once in the middle of my previously created gradient.
Next, I added some highlights to the surrounding elements. Again, using the Magic Wand Tool, I selected segments of my image I wanted to edit on the base color layer. I selected the tree from this layer. I created a new layer for the highlights and using the Paintbrush Tool set at 0% Hardness, I selected the yellow color from the sun gradient and painted in highlights around the branches of the trees adjacent to the gradient.
Another way to increase the lighting effect of the sun was by playing with layer blend modes. On a new layer, I selected the Elliptical Shape Tool and drew a circle, holding Shift to draw a constrained proportionate circle. I then applied the Blur Layer Filter to this layer at 50 strength for both the X and Y axes. I selected the Overlay blend mode for this layer and adjusted the Alpha to 70%. This furthered the glow effect over the surrounding elements of the sun.
I wanted to add a gradient effect to the rest of the image as well to make it appear less flat. Again, I would select segments with the Magic Wand Tool from the base layer and apply gradients on a new layer by selecting the color of my base layer for the left color, and choosing a slightly darker version of the same color for the right and dragging the Gradient Tool across the selection to apply the gradient. I continued this process until the rest of elements in the image had a gradient effect, except for the sky in the background.
You could also add gradient effects using layer blend modes. I did this for the sky. I selected the segments which made up the sky in the background from my base color layer.
Then on a new layer I created a white to black gradient from top to bottom with the Gradient Tool. I set this layer's blend mode to Overlay and it gave the background a nice subtle gradient effect.
And to further add in manual shading, I created a new layer and painted in some darker areas with the Paintbrush Tools on the bottom portion of the toucan's body, beak and below its eye.
I applied the Blur Layer Filter to this layer and applied 15 strength to both the X and Y axes. I dropped the Alpha to 20% and this gave me a nice shading effect to add depth to the figure.
Open in Phoenix
Final Result