MS Paint recoloring

[Rayonius]

This is a guide to recoloring sprites with MS Paint.

   First, open the sprite, and zoom in to get a better look with the Magnifier 

   I suggest 8x for a small sprite such as this, although i used 6x to conserve size

             

   Now give yourself a bit of room on the side by resizing the canvas.

             

   select the Pick Color tool 

   Begin choosing colors,

             
   
   and creating a palette with the Brush tool 

             

   continue in this manner until you complete the palette.

   I usually group the colors together in rows (or in this case, columns) based on where they are used. (hair, clothes, etc.)

             

   Now, it is time to create the new colors.

   Pick one of the parts of the sprite to recolor. I'll do the hair first.

Notice the three colors that make up the hair. Dark brown, tan, and cream.
When you are recoloring, you should make colors that are similar in luminosity to the originals.

   Double click one of the colors at the bottom of the screen

   (Something useless, like grey or red)

             

   A window will come up that looks like this.

             


   Click "Define Custom Colors >>", and the window extends to look like this.

             

   First, pick a dark colored base to match your palette. (I'm gonna go with blue)
   Click "Add to Custom Colors".

             

   Now, increase the luminosity with the slider on the right to get a slightly brighter color, and click "Add to Custom Colors" again

             

   Do the same thing, this time creating a nearly white shade. Now you should end up with something like this.

             

   Select one of the three, hit "OK", and switch back to the Brush tool 

   now paint the color onto the canvas so you can use it a bit later.

             

   double click one of the colors at the bottom again

             

   select one of the other two custom colors, repeat, and finish creating the new palette.

             

   now, FINALLY, you can begin recoloring. Select the Pick Color tool 

   Left click the color you want to erase (brown), and Right click the color you want to replace it with (dark blue)

             

   Select the Eraser / Color Eraser tool 

   Now, Right click and drag the eraser across the hair, and be amazed as the brown disappears and blue is left behind.

             

   Next do the same for the tan and light blue, followed by cream and nearly white blue.

Be careful, some sprites use the same color for multiple areas. Celes, for example, has the same
cream color from her hair in her eyes and clothes.

             

   Now you have all the tools necessary to recolor any sprite, without the aid of
   photoshop or any of those other overrated utilities!

             

   let me know if you have any comments or suggestions, please, and i hope this will be helpful for someone.

[Ben]

nice
very decisive and easy to understand

[HobomasterXXX]

Everytime a recolor request is made, is shall link this.

[Red Fox]

Yeah, great tut. Good work.

[chronoman]

Nice tut but I have to say problems with recolors are much easier when people just use Character Maker 1999 to redo the colors. It is a much faster process and less hassle. But I guess doing it in paint can give you more satifaction plus you don't have to worry like you said about editing several different parts at the same time kinda a drawback to the method I use.

[Bluhman]

IDraw is similar I think; if you have an image that already has only 256 colors, then you can go directly into IDraw and modify the palette colors.

Dammit, but a google search reveals no sign of the program I know. Must've gone out of distribution or something. V V

[A Forgotten Legend]

I usually just use copy and paste to recolor.  Its quicker.  You right-click eyedropper on a color on the image, cut the image, use the fill toll and change the images color to the new color you want, paste, and paste it so the right clicked color is transparent.  Eh, Its pretty easy. =P

[Dragonium]

IDraw is similar I think; if you have an image that already has only 256 colors, then you can go directly into IDraw and modify the palette colors.

Dammit, but a google search reveals no sign of the program I know. Must've gone out of distribution or something. V V

I know iDraw. I used to have it, but it wasn't compatible with Vista so I had to remove it. Damn we need to find it and host it on the site or something.

[Felix-0]

Nice,simple,easy to understand tutorials nice job


whats Idraw?

[Bluhman]

This is!

I'll post instructions on how to use it in a bit.

[Felix-0]

Holy S*** Thats awesome...down pixelation at its best

[Dragonium]

Can we maybe get it hosted somewhere on the site, or at least put a copy in the CR somewhere? It's a pretty useful and versatile tool for spriting, so it might be appropriate.

CR could maybe use a Utilities section. We have Charas.EX, why not iDraw?

[Hirochi-Zangus]

This is very helpful, and I did not know that! You saved me hours of work that would have been like 10 minutes...