I decided to make a recolor tutorial since lots of members are complaining that it's so hard to make a recolor. But actually, it's one of the easiest things if you don't have to change any textures. Here I'll show you how to recolor a papercraft within a few minutes, without messing up the textures.

Clicking on an image will enlarge it. Note that I use the Mac version, so lay-out of the program might look slighly different. The actions still are all the same. This will also work in Photoshop, but the buttons will be positioned elsewhere.

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First, you'll need the free program "Gimp" which can be downloaded here for free.
Install the program, and fire it up! You will have 3 windows. One with tools, one where you can drag files to (when using the newest Gimp) and one layer-window.

Step 1
Open the papercraft you would like to recolor. In this tutorial, I'll be using ddi7i4d's Kirby. I only want to recolor his body though, and not his feet.

Click on the Lasso Tool (see picture) and roughly select the part you want to edit.
Well, that was easy, right? You should see walking ants now. That whole area will be selected. Now Gimp will only perform actions within that selection.

Step 2
Now go to the Layer window, and click on the "new layer" icon (shown in picture). If you can't find the layer window, click on 'dialog' at the top and then click 'layers" (or press ctrl+l) Press Ok when a dialog pops up. (you want it to be transparant)

Click on the color-square to change the color you are going to paint with. After you found the desired color, click on the Paintbucket (shift+b) and fill in the selected area. Note that you have to paint on the new "empty" layer.

Step 3
Set that layer to "Hue". This will make the papercraft the desired color. I will call this the "hue layer" from now on. However, it still looks a bit dull. We will fix that later.


Step 4
Now, because we just roughly selected our kirby, the mouth and eyes are yellow now too! Select the eraser tool, choose a fuzzy brush from the brush pallet and then start erasing the stuff you want to have the old color on the Hue layer. If you accidently erased too much, just hit "ctrl+z" or paint over the layer with the paintbrush tool with the same color as you used before.
If you are familiar with Gimp/Photoshop and it's functions, I suggest using a layer mask tinstead of actually erasing it.

Step 5
Remember I said the color still looks a bit dull? Well, We'll be fixing that now. copy the Hue layer and set it to "burn". You might want to change the opacity of that layer a bit. I used 50 opacity for the kirby, but adjust it however you like it best.


Step 6
The most important part:

When saving, just type .png after the filename, and it will automatically save as png. when you don't give any extensions, it will save as .xcf, which is only readable by Gimp. This format will save all layers, so it might come in handy if you want to recolor the same papercraft again. However, this tutorial makes recoloring so easy that you don't really need it with this particular job.

Got stuck? tell me here, I'll try to answer your question. Gimp is a pretty complicated program after all, and I'll understand if you get lost in all those tools or show off your recolors here!

Let me know what you think

realy nice can we have the kirby recolor ...

I didn't even save it XD

You can make one yourself now within 2 minutes

Or, you could just use the "colorize" function, if the recolor is simple enough.

I'm always having a hard time to find the right colors with colorize
. You'd have to select the parts that you want to recolor anyway, So it's really whatever you prefer ^^

I'm assuming teh answer to this question is no, but is tehre anyway to recolor in MS Paint?

wOOt so who you find it a papercraft?

Well, it can be done, but it will take much longer, and will be a lot lower quality.

when i set mode to hue, it did not work for me. do you know what could be wrong?

Did you have 2 layers, one being the normal papercraft, and one being the layer you put the color on?

Then set the layer that is colored to hue?

I think the colored layer has to be on top, too, doesn't it?

wait. it works fine with normal colors but not with black and white.

If you want to make it black or white, You may have to use the mode "color" or just desaturate it and throw down the lightness/contrast.

oh ok. thanks!

Can someone post a guide for GIMP on how to recolor for Windows????

and also can someone post how to do it for black and white things?

edit:

Can somone also tell me how to get the layer bar back because mine disappeared.

Please don't double post, you didn't even wait 1 minute.

It's really about the same in Windows, only the interface looks slightly different.

About how to get your layer dialogue back, that was actually part of the guide...



To make it black, I think you have to set the layer to "color" instead of "hue" and then it should work.

I actually answered this ONE post above you... You could try to read the topic for a bit before asking questions you know...

I'll go with some Photoshop help on Windows, for those that prefer that.
I won't go too deep so you might need to know the basic tools beforehand.

1- Drummy's way.
The first pic is almost what Drummy explained above. You open the texture file, then in the Layers frame, Create a new layer (the Yellow Square on the pic) and convert it to Hue (the lil bar above the layers). You can then color the layer, erase parts, play with the opacity or go crazy and add 8 more layers and change Hue for Multiply! Keep in mind that the layers on top of others have effect on them but the layers below don't have any effect on the layers above it.


2- Color Range!
Most of you probably use the Marquee, the Magic Wand or the Lasso to select parts in the picture, but you gotta try Color Range. Color Range select everything in the picture (or a portion if you use any of the above tools) that is of a distinct color. So if you choose Blue, it will select everything that is blue, but you can choose the "Fuzziness", also called Tolerance, which let you choose the range of shade of colors to select (all blue or only pale cyan blue).


3- Color Adjustments.
Here's some tools to change the colors. Levels is the master in color adjustment since you can change everything you want with just that tool, but you need to know what you're doing tho. Color balance is a little easier since it take the contrast/saturation out of it. Now, the most useful in Recolor is probably Hue/Saturation; Hue let you change the colors as if you were moving thru a rainbow and Saturation is the degree between grey and full color. BUT, it's not my favorite...


4- Replace Color!
Take the "place" out and you get "ReColor"! This tool mix both the selective side of Color Range and mix it with Hue/Saturation. So you both select only a part of the picture that you wanna recolor and you change the color of that part. isn't it beautiful! You can also select the exact color that you want too so no need to guess.

i'm having some trouble with downloading GIMP. could you help?

We certainly can, if you'll say what you need help with. We need specifics

OK, if you can't find a download, then here's what you do:

Step 1: Downloading

Go to http://www.gimp.org/
Click Downloads.
Click the link near the top of the page.
Run the installer after download.

Direct link: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-w ... -setup.exe

Step 2: Using the Program

Open GIMP
Follow the steps detailed in Drummy's post.
Tada! One recolor, now complete!