From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Using Fill Layers to create a hand-painted look - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial

Using Fill Layers to create a hand-painted look

“

- [Instructor] Color and gradient fill layers are an excellent way to create a hand-colored look in an image. And while we could use the colorized neural filter, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to automate the colorization process, we can use selections and fill layers to select areas and then fill them with the exact colors that we want to have more control over the results. I'm going to use the Object Selection tool in order to select the walnuts at the bottom left. I'll choose the Rectangle mode, and then click and drag over the walnuts to select them. Then I'll choose the Layer menu, New Fill Layer, and Solid Color. I'm going to call this walnuts and set the blend mode to color so that we can still see the luminosity values in the photograph below the color fill layer. Then I'll select a color. Here, I'll choose an orange-ish red, desaturate it, and then apply it. Here we can see that Photoshop has automatically converted the selection into a mask. And next to it we have our color fill icon. If we ever wanted to change the color, we just need to double click on that. That'll bring back up the color picker. But if we were trying to emulate the older, traditional way of hand coloring images, the selection or the painting wouldn't be quite as tight around the object. So with the mask targeted, I'm going to add a feather of about 10 pixels to just make it appear as if the paint goes a little bit further outside of the walnuts. In fact, 10 might be enough. Let's go ahead, increase that to about 30. It just really depends on the look and feel that you're after. So another way that we could hand color an area would be to tap the b key, that would select the brush tool. I have it set to 100% opacity. I'll get a little bit larger of a brush. And then with the mask targeted, I'll just want to make sure that I'm painting with white. And wherever I paint in the image, we're going to get the same color as the other walnuts since it's on the same color fill layer. Excellent. We can also add a color fill layer using the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers panel. But if you do this, you'll want to be sure to hold down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows before you click the adjustment layer icon. Then we can select it. And that would bring up the new layer dialogue so we could change the blend mode before we select the color. All right, I'll cancel for now because I want to add a gradient fill layer. I'll choose Layer, and then New Fill Layer, and select Gradient. I'll move this out of the way. Again, setting the mode to color, click OK. And that'll bring up the gradient fill. Now mine is filled from white to transparent. But I'm going to use the preset dropdown to select the blues. And then I just want this Blue_31. Now, if you're not viewing these by a list, you can use the gear icon and change from the thumbnail so that you can see the name if you want to apply the same color. Then I'm going to click inside of the gradient in order to modify it. And I want this to go from the dark blue to a warmer color. So I'll double click on the color stop. That's going to bring up the color picker. And I'll select an orange color. I'll desaturate the color. And then I'm going to desaturate the blue as well. Then we can apply that gradient. And I want to make sure that the gradient fill doesn't cover up the brown of the walnuts. So I'll change the stacking order in the Layers panel. Then if I think that the color up top is a little bit too close to the walnuts, we can double click on that, click in the gradient, double click on the color stop, and let's move that just a little bit more towards red. I also think it's a little bit too saturated overall. So I'm going to decrease the opacity of the layer. And I don't want the gradient fill to show up in the bowl. So I'm going to return to the object selection tool, enable object finder, and then click on the bowl. Then making sure that I have the mask targeted, I can choose the Edit menu, and then Fill, and I'll want to fill this with black. All right, let's deselect that and tap the v key to select the Move tool. I want to add an edge around this image. And I'm going to do that using the Shape tools. Now, we haven't talked about the Shape tools yet, but I'm going to select the Rectangle tool. Then I'll right click in the Option bar to reset the tool. I'll click the Fill Swatch, and I'll select white either from the recently used colors, or you can click on this icon here. That will bring up the color picker where you can choose white. I don't want to stroke. So I'll click the no stroke icon. And then I'll drag out the edge that I want. But this is going to create a filled rectangle on the inside. So I'll return to the Options bar, and then choose Subtract Front Shape. I'll click and drag on the little dot icon right there. That's going to enable me to round the corners. And then to soften them, I'm going to increase the feather amount. I'll position it at the top of the layer stack, and then select the background layer to hide the live shape properties. Excellent. As you can see, it's easy to create non-destructive and re-editable, hand-coloring effects in Photoshop using the color and gradient fill layers.

Contents