karly's colouring tutorial

Note: This tutorial is done (and I believe only possible) in Adobe Photoshop.

Get your base.

Make a new layer and fill it with a light blue. I used #8ECADA.

Set this layer to soft light. It will look like this:

Ugly, I know. We've going to brighten up the colours. To do that, go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation... and set it to a number you find appropriate. In this case we want it to look a bit overdone. I typically do between 50-60. This one is set to 55. You will get something along these lines:

Now, we're going to use selective colour. The idea here is to get rid of the gross yellows and make Emma look a bit more pink. I am not going to get into a description of selective colour, so go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Colour... and copy in these settings. Keep in mind that you will have to mess around to make it look good for your picture.

Reds

Cyan: -65
Magenta: 0
Yellow: +16
Black: +4

Yellows

Cyan: -70
Magenta: +20
Yellow: -33
Black: +15

Neutrals

Cyan: -17
Magenta: +20
Yellow: +2
Black: -9

It's kind of dull and a bit too pink, so add a colour balance layer. To do this go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Colour Balance. Under 'tone balance' at the bottom make sure 'midtones' is selected. Fill in the three boxes with +36, +15 and -19. Then at the bottom select 'shadows' and set the levels to -30, +20 and +17.

Finally for a little more depth we're going to add another selective colour layer. You already know how to do that.

Reds

Cyan: -57
Magenta: +31
Yellow: +29
Black: 0