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Simple Recolors using photoshop - Printable Version

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Simple Recolors using photoshop - Alpha-Mad - 12-06-2008

Introduction:
For the longest time, I couldn't recolor sprites and felt like I had to just deal with it or request a recolor from someone who could. I found a simple and effective way to recolor tilesets, sprites, or anything else you might want. This may be really obvious and not-helpful tutorial, but I hope it will help some of you.

Getting Started:
You will need to open your sprite in photoshop. After that, you need to analyze what parts you want to recolor. In this example, I will use our favorite hero, Aluxes and I will recolor his orange hair. Some things to remember:
-For this method, you will be using the select>color range tool, so you need to make sure the area you're recoloring does not use colors in other areas! (I will explain how to get around this in later steps)
-Make sure you look at the pictures and set all photoshop settings equal or very close to how I have them set.
-You need to establish the color in which you want to change it to. I prefer to use color pallettes. The best place to find them is this website:
http://www.colormagix.org/
Go to color library and there is a ton of pallettes to choose from. You could also use other sprites and pull the colors off of that.
-Open up the pallette you wish to use in photoshop and have it ready to use

Let's Start:
Now that you have that all set up, you can start the recolor proccess. The first step is selecting a color range on my sprite. To do this, go to the select tab on the top of the screen and click on color range:
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With that pressed, make sure your settings are correctly set. I like to have my fuzziness set to 0 because most pixel art has colors very independent of each other so you can get away with this setting:
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Now, with your tool, select the first part of the hair to recolor. I almost always go from light to dark colors, so click on the area of Aluxes's hair that is the lightest. Once this is selected, click ok so that the color range window dissapears and your area is selected:
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Now, go over to your toolbar and select the eyedropper tool. With this selected, go to your color pallette and select the lightest color on it:
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Good! Now, we have the color on Aluxes selected and the color we want to switch it with ready to go. Click on the top of your sprite (so that it's over top of the pallette in your photoshop window) and make sure the area is still selected. Now go to the edit tab on the top of the screen and select fill:
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Make sure you have foreground color selected:
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Click ok and bam! That area is recolored!:
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Repeat this step, moving from lightest to darkest until the rest of the hair is recolored:
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There you are! Emo Aluxes!

Commonly Asked Questions:

What if the area I want to recolor is the same as another area in which I don't want to recolor?

This is a common problem with this method and it has a somewhat easy solution. The way I solve this is first, duplicate the entire sprite so that you have 2 layers of the same picture:
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On the top layer, take your eraser tool and just simply erase all the areas that you don't want to recolor. So, I want to recolor this sprites hair so I'm going to erase everything BUT the hair on my top layer (leaving the top layer only the hair). This doesn't have to be perfectly done, just attempt to erase all the colors that match the hair (in this case, the cape):
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See how it's not very neatly done? Don't worry, it won't make a difference. Now, do the recolor on the top layer and the top layer alone. Now, make sure both layers are visible:
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What if the area I want to recolor has more colors than is available in a color pallette?

This one involves a little creativity on your part. Basically, you have to create more colors than is available. First, you have to decide if you want to make it lighter or darker than your pallette, since you're going to need to make more colors:
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With this screen open (click on the colors on the left) change your color either darker or lighter. I suggest moving vertically and NEVER horizontally, as this will change the basic color you attempting to edit. You need to eyeball it. This may take a few attempts to get right.

That's all folks! I hope some people found this helpful. I use this method because I don't want to have to edit pixel by pixel an entire sprite sheet that has 16 individual sprites on it. This won't work all the time and you may need to tweek this method little bit to make if fit each scenario. Enjoy!

Simple Recolors using photoshop - jubhub731 - 12-07-2009

I like it but the fact is that photoshop costs money alot of it . But ill make a turtorial on how to do it on paint.net

Simple Recolors using photoshop - Alpha-Mad - 12-07-2009

Cool. Look forward to seeing it. (most people who use RM use PS though)

Simple Recolors using photoshop - jubhub731 - 12-07-2009

that may be the case but me personally don't have the money to buy PS

Simple Recolors using photoshop - sakhawat21 - 06-03-2010

Cool. I have photoshop and that worked.

Simple Recolors using photoshop - Shiroiyuki - 06-03-2010

jubhub731 Wrote:I like it but the fact is that photoshop costs money alot of it . But ill make a turtorial on how to do it on paint.net

Doesn't Adobe offer a free trial version or something? I thought they did....

Maybe it was Flash Confused...hmm...

Simple Recolors using photoshop - jubhub731 - 06-03-2010

Yeah they do give a free trail but i dont like to break the law and hack or use a illegal version of programs :S

Simple Recolors using photoshop - Shiroiyuki - 06-04-2010

You could always try GIMP then. I hear it works basically like Photoshop...except free. Completely free. And legal!

Simple Recolors using photoshop - yamina-chan - 06-04-2010

Gimp is great =D
If Shiroiyuki didn't sugesst it, I would have done so. And when you're just thinking of recoloring something, it's more then enough.