Part 4 – Coloring
Tutorial Index:
- Part 1: Creating Outline
- Part 2: Coloring the Skin
- Part 3: Applying Some Shading
- Part 4: Coloring ⇐ you are here
This is the last part of tutorial on turning photograph into cartoon-style picture. (If you haven’t done so, please read the first part, second part, and the third part of the tutorial).
On the third part of the tutorial, we have applied some shading to the cartoon photo. Here’s what we got so far:
By the end of part 4 of the tutorial, we will have something like this as the final result of our cartooning work:
Now begin..
Step 6: Coloring
Our next step is coloring.
For our Rihanna picture, we need to colorize her shirt (tank top?), lips, teeth, eyes, and hair.
Let’s begin.
1. On the Tools Palette, choose ‘Paint Bucket Tool’ 
(or press ‘G’).
2. Press ‘d’ to set the foreground color to black and background color to white.
3. On the Layers Palette, select the ‘skin’ layer.
4. Click the ‘Create new fill or adjustment layer’ 
at the bottom of Layers Palette.
On the popup menu, choose ‘Solid Color…’. A ‘Color Picker’ dialog box will be displayed.
5. On the ‘Color Picker’ dialog box, pick a dark red color. This color will be used for the shirt. (I picked #B24747 for the shirt. You don’t need to be too picky here. We can change the color easily later whenever we want to).
Click OK
6. Now we have something like this.
7. Click on the canvas to fill our shirt’s layer mask with black color.
8. Rename our new layer to ‘shirt’.
And now we have something like this.
9. Create a clipping mask between ‘shirt’ layer and ‘skin’ layer. Press Ctrl + G while the ‘shirt’ layer is still selected.
10. Repeat step 4 through step 9 to make layers for the color of lips, eyes, iris, and hair.
By the end of this step, our layers will be like this:
11. Now that we’ve done preparing the layer for each color , we can start coloring each part of the picture.
Let’s start with the hair.
From the ‘Tools Palette’, pick ‘Pencil Tool’ 
(or press ‘B’).
12. On the ‘Layers Palette’, select the ‘hair’ layer.
13. Make sure the foreground color is pure white. (Press ‘X’ if you have to switch foreground and background colors).
14. Start painting the hair. Use a hard brush with the opacity set to 100%. Make sure that you zoom in when coloring, so that it is nice and tidy. (The clipping mask help us a lot here. It won’t let the color run out of border)
15. Now let’s move on with the next layer, the ‘iris’. On the ‘Layers Palette’, select the ‘iris’ layer. Repeat steps 13 through 14 to paint the iris.
Here’s what we got:
16. The eyes (the white part of the eyes) and teeth (for they have the same color, which is white)…
17. The lips…
18. shirt…
And anytime you feel the need to change a color of any layer, just double click the layer (not the layer mask!) and choose a new color on the Color Picker. Very easy.
That’s all!
We’re done cartooning the photograph.
And here’s our cute cartoon photo of Rihanna:
Tutorial Index:
- Part 1: Creating Outline
- Part 2: Coloring the Skin
- Part 3: Applying Some Shading
- Part 4: Coloring ⇐ you are here
47 Comments
Johnny
Oct 2020 at 9:59 pmThis was real easy and helpful!
Thanks guys, i appreciate
Johnny
Oct 2020 at 9:57 pmThis was real easy and helpful!
Thanks guys
Emmanuel
Jul 2020 at 9:05 pmPlease after the number six (6) in the last the number seven (7) in the last tutorial when you said click on the canvas to fill our shirt layers I don’t understand
cartoonized.net
Aug 2020 at 9:38 amJust click on the canvas.
Pbedbest
Jun 2018 at 1:46 amGood job
sunday samuel
May 2018 at 3:45 amthat’s a good work, i hope to do one too
deus julius
Dec 2017 at 7:13 pmHey guys can i get a video clip of the above tutorial?
Charles Eyanronaldo
Nov 2017 at 7:22 pmCan I also get a good result by creating a path with the pen tool and filling the area with paint bucket tool?
cartoonized.net
Dec 2017 at 8:29 amYes, you can do it that way.
Noxy
Nov 2017 at 12:33 amits cool but it needs time and patience
Chifine Godwin
Sep 2017 at 7:56 amI’ve always wondered how people get very realistic cartoons with photoshop. Didn’t know it was this easy. Thanks for this tutorial, you really took your time to do this and I just learned how to cartoon with it. Great work here. Thank you 🙋
Agape
Aug 2017 at 6:37 amKudos!! Haven’t try it but it was the way I use to do it and I gain another new thing here
KEEP IT UP.
Gracey
Aug 2016 at 6:06 amDon’t really understand the ctrl G after creating the clipping mask. Kindly explain more.
cartoonized.net
Aug 2016 at 11:55 amSorry.
The “ctrl-G” was meant as the shortcut to make a clipping mask (at least, that’s the shortcut in Photoshop CS).
If you already created the clipping mask, no need to “ctrl-G”. 🙂
MICHAEL PETER
Aug 2016 at 10:05 pmthanks helped so much GOD bless you
Balogun Ismail
Aug 2016 at 9:29 amthanks… really grateful… my design was great… got it all at once
DjTunes
Jun 2016 at 11:08 amAm through with all the tactics so how do i combine all the experiments to get my cartoon pix becuase is not showing yet
senior .j.
Jun 2016 at 12:09 ampls how can i get the pdf file of this tutoria?
And can it also work on photoshop cs6?
samfredis
May 2016 at 10:59 pm#Olaniyi, on that of tiny necklace, create new layer or create a new fill adjustment if u wanna change ur necklace colour at any time, then you have to zoom the picture and use pencil tools to draw around the necklace until you point to where you start, hold your Ctrl key + enter this will create a quick selection, now use white brush to paint over it….if the necklace design is too tidy, you can copy the necklace and paste and add a little effect.
on that of wristwatch, it is somehow hard me to paint because of the seconds line, I do mine in a copy and paste way.
above all, let admin come and highlight everything
olaniyi
May 2016 at 9:23 pmanother problem I’m facing is that I can’t paint over eye lens/glass I.e photos with eye shade, which I have seen some people do, with the photos been share here
cartoonized.net
May 2016 at 9:31 pmCreate the eyeglasses layer just like other ‘coloring’ layers.
Put this layer above the eyes and iris layer.
Decrease the opacity of the layer to 40% or lower. That will do the trick.
olaniyi
May 2016 at 9:37 pmThanks it help, another problem am facing is painting of tiny necklace and some wears with designers such as tiny text, small logos etc…whenever I’m painting over this, it is not so realistic to see and read.
also, painting of wristwatch… when checking the homepage of this site, scroll down and see a photographs with wristwatch, pls how did they paint this to be realistic.
samfredis
May 2016 at 3:12 ampick your eraser from the tools preset and erase unwanted part and make sure the outline is selected
cartoonized.net
May 2016 at 5:27 amI assume this is a respond for Young’s question. Thanks, Sam.
Yes we can also use the erase tool to clean the unwanted part. Since the blending mode of the outline layer is multiply we won’t see the ‘holes’ made by the eraser tool on the outline layer.
young
May 2016 at 2:58 amI have dots in my cartoon photo. how do remove it to have a smoother cartoon photo?
cartoonized.net
May 2016 at 5:19 amUse pencil tool with white as foreground color to ‘erase’ those black dots from outline layer.
Zoom-in if necessary while erasing the unwanted black dots.
olatunde
May 2016 at 11:14 pmafter turning the outline of the photocopy into solid black lines using the threshold, will I still turn the outline of this poster edge into solid lines? also what is the blending mode of poster edges and should it be under the previous outline I.e that of photocopy
cartoonized.net
May 2016 at 5:12 amYes, you have to ‘threshold’ the poster edge result.
So in essence you have two outline layers here. The first outline layer is created using the photocopy filter. The second outline layer is created using poster edge filter.
Both outline layers have ‘multiply’ blending mode.
You can put the poster-edge-outline layer on top or below the photocopy-outline layer. It won’t make any difference because the blending mode of both layers are multiply.
Don’t forget to erase all, except the hair, from the poster-edge-outline layer, and then merge those two layers.
olaniyi
May 2016 at 2:13 amplease, what’s the settings for poster edge in getting realistic hair?
cartoonized.net
May 2016 at 6:50 amYou can try this settings as a starting point:
– edge thickness: 2
– edge intensity: 2
– posterization: 6
and then don’t forget to turn the outline into solid black lines using threshold.
samfredis
Apr 2016 at 7:38 amanother main things is realistic cloth painting…anytime I clear outline in some cloth part, it is no more realistic again
cartoonized.net
Apr 2016 at 12:04 pmStill unrealistic after you put tint and shading to the cloths?
samfredis
Apr 2016 at 2:27 pmit is realistic but all the logo or text drawn on the shirt will not visible again when I eraze the outline from the part of the cloth
samfredis
Apr 2016 at 7:29 ammy cartoon is not so shine as I wish…any help
young
Apr 2016 at 1:26 pmok thanks. ain’t gonna give up till i get a better result. thanks so much. might ask some more questions if i get any problems later
young
Apr 2016 at 6:30 amgreat, it worked well for me, but I didnt really get the hair painting to look so real. how do you do it?
cartoonized.net
Apr 2016 at 9:05 amUse the ‘poster edge’ filter instead of ‘photocopy’ filter.
Basically here’s how you’d do that:
1. create the outline layer just like the one mentioned in this tutorial (using photocopy filter).
2. create another outline layer. this one using poster edge filter.
3. erase all, except the hair, from the second outline.
4. merge those two outline layers
young
Apr 2016 at 1:03 amthanks. you are great. but Im now having problems colouring the skin. Anytime I try to ‘create new filter or adjustment layer’. it creates the layer, then I fill with black colour, add clipping mask but when I add white colour, nothing happens. I noticed that it creates something different from whats in your screenshot after i ‘create new filter or adjustment layer’. what can i do to rectify that?
cartoonized.net
Apr 2016 at 3:07 pmAfter adding clipping mask and prior to adding white color, have you told the ants to march around rihanna? (please see step 12: On the ‘Layers Palette’, click on the ‘outline’ layer while holding (pressing) the Ctrl button. This will tell the ants to march around Rihanna. Oops, I mean, this will put a selection mark around Rihanna.)
Did you see the selection mark around Rihanna on your work?
If you didn’t see it, then that’s the culprit. 🙂
On that step 12, click on the layer thumbnail, not on the layer text (the name of the layer).
sam fred
Apr 2016 at 11:49 pmlet have a digital painting tutorial on whatsapp group with 08165969969 check my latest gfx here http://www.facebook.com/samfredix
Damilare
Feb 2016 at 11:50 pmpls can you help me with mine?? cos I’m not getting a good result… pls
cartoonized.net
Mar 2016 at 8:43 amJust don’t give up. Practice makes perfect 🙂
raheem
Feb 2016 at 5:14 pmIf I follow your steps I don’t get the actual results as yours and by the which Photoshop version are you using.
mine is Photoshop cs 4.
please help me do it!
thanks! thank!!
raheem
Feb 2016 at 5:13 pmIf I follow your steps I don’t get the actual results as yours and by the which Photoshop version are you using.
mine is Photoshop cs 4.
please help me do it!
thanks!
cartoonized.net
Feb 2016 at 4:40 pmWe used Adobe Photoshop CS for this tutorial.
Okisz
Feb 2016 at 9:53 pmWow!!!, Great Work, Av make mine nd was really MUAH!!!!!
Osinlami Bidemi
Dec 2015 at 11:11 pmYou have a great job here, WELDONE.