[ How to color Anime/cell-style in Adobe Photoshop 7 ]

Tutorial done by Animetor Lily

1) Now let's move on to coloring her hair~ ^___^  I know some people have trouble coloring hair, but don't worry, we'll do it step by step...

2) Okie! Now for the Highlights in Lina's hair. >w< Make a new layer ABOVE the Hair layer. Let's call it 'Highlight'. We don't wanna mess up our nicely shaded hair by accident~ ^__-

3) We're gonna use the Lasso tool (not the Polygonal one). If you can't see it, click and hold onto the Lasso icon for 3 seconds and you'll see a set of extra tools appear. Set the feather to 1px. Next draw some spikey shapes on the Highlight layer, following the flow of her hair. Then fill it with white, like so:

Yesss~~ *grin* Almost done~ Do the same to the lower half of the hair. Don't worry if it looks weird or how it overlaps her headband now, we'll fix it later.

  >> There we go! =D

4) Some of the highlights don't look quite right. We're gonna use another tool to fix it, the Smudge Tool. The Smudge tool works like finger painting. It's like you're painting with your finger (duh, that's why the icon shape is like that =P )

Using the Smudge Tool at size 10, strength 23%, go over the sharp points of the spiky shapes to make them look sharper and more detailed. The trick is to make small, short moves, done quickly. Combine with the usage of the Eraser tool to erase any errors. You can now erase the areas that are overlapping other colors.Below is a sample of what you should get:

5) Remeber to SAVE YOUR FILE~ OwO;  Always, always remember to hit CTRL+S throughout all your CG steps~~ I may forget to remind you.. ^^;; Well anyways, CONGRATULATIONS, you're done coloring the character!! >w< We'll add a background in the next step....

On to Step 06 ==>>