Color Shifts

This tutorial will cover how to do subtle color shifts. This is useful for adding some more thoughtful color selections without ruining all the shading work you put in beforehand.

After you have finished shading the object you would like to shade, create a new layer above any colors you would like to be effected.

When creating the new layer, make sure that you set the mode to "hue". This means that this layer will only effect the hue (color) of anything underneath it!

Next select the area that you would like to be changed. I used the magic wand tool to select the wings. You can also use the lasso tool as well. Magic wand worked well for me because I had the flat green color of the wings on a seperate layer from the shading, so all it took was one click to select everything. If all your shadows and color are on the same layer, then you'll probably need to ue the lasso tool and draw around the area you want by hand. Selected areas will have a black and white moving edge around them.

Now choose a large, soft airbrush. This is important, because you want the color shift to be subtle. If you choose a paintbrush or a hard edged airbrush, the color shift will be extremely harsh.

Now run the airbrush along any area where you want the color change. Your shading and chroma brightness (how strong/gray the color is) will remain!. How cool is that? Repeat the process for any other areas where you would like a hue shift (you can put all the hue shifts on the same layer)