To start off, you need to have your PSD file that has your line work in it opened in Photoshop. You also need your Layers box open. If your Layers box is not open, you can open it by going to Window>Layers. For the moment, the only layers are the Lines and Background layers so we're going to have to add a few more.

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In the Layers window, click the "New Layer" button (as shown in the example below). A new layer will appear above the selected layer. We're probably going to need a total of three new layers for this piece, so click the button three times.

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Now, since the lines are going to be what overlay all of the coloring, we want to move this layer to the top of the stack. Click and drag the Lines layer to the very top of the stack like so.

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All of these new layers could use some names. These are going to be color layers. Double-click on the name of each listed in the Layers box to rename them to Color 1, Color 2, and Color 3.

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The document is now set up and ready to go! Time to add some color!

Choose the Magic Wand tool from the Tools window and pick a place that you want to fill with your first color. I usually start with the main body/fur color. Make sure you are on the Lines layer. Click inside the area you want to select and watch how it selects everything inside the lines like magic!

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If it selects more than you wanted, that means you have a gap in the lines somewhere. You'll have to zoom in and fix the gap using the paintbrush tool.

Now, this selection should be a little tiny bit wider so it overlaps the edges of the lines a bit. Go to Select>Modify>Expand. Enter a value of 1 or 2 depending on the size of your image. If they don't overlap enough or go outside the lines you can undo and try it again with a different value. Usually one or two work fine but if it's a really large, high-res image you may need to pick a higher number.

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Now go down to your first color layer, Color 1. Choose a color you want this selection to be filled with. Go to Edit>Fill. Use the default fill options.

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You will now see that the selection has been filled with this color.

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Go through the rest of your image and select areas of the same color to fill.

The idea behind using multiple color layers is that you will be able to shade in and adjust color very easily, without bleeding into other areas.

You can organize your color fills however you like. I prefer to keep single objects, planes, or parts on the same layer (such as all of this dog's base fur color). You can have multiple areas of color on a single layer, but try to avoid having any touching areas on the same layer (I could have the eyebrows and the tongue colors on the same layer, but not the tongue and the base fur color). I know all of this seems a bit confusing right now. Just hang in there, it will hopefully make more sense as we go along.

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Now I'm moving on to the Color 2 layer. I decided to fill in the tongue, eyebrows, inner ears, eye whites, and bottom of the nose on this layer. Notice how none of these areas are touching.

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I repeated this process for each selection, organizing them into different layers (in this case, all I had left was the top of the nose and the irises on layer 3), until I had all the basic colors blocked in. Don't worry about details like lighter markings or other things with soft edges. We'll add those in a little while. Right now we just want to get all of the solid colors that are contained by lines blocked in.

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For those of you who were a bit confused by the layer organization trick, I will now try to explain it more clearly. I've taken some screen shots to show you how I've organized the colors in this image. Color 1 contains only the main fur color for the body and face. Notice how it is all one single color.

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Color two contains the bottom of the nose, the whites of the eyes, the eyebrows, and the tongue. Notice how none of the different colors are in areas that are touching each other? This will make your life much easier when you move on to shade this thing or add markings and other adjustments.

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Color 3 contains the the irises of the eye and the top of the nose. Once again, notice that no two different color areas are touching each other

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Here's one more diagram to help illustrate how this works. This color chart should help illustrate the organization method a bit more clearly. You can easily see here how none of the separate areas of color that are on the same layer are touching each other

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Now, hopefully that makes more sense (if you're really still confused, just try your best or jump ahead to the Painter tutorial and you'll see why we did this).

Unfortunately, the Magic Wand tool isn't quite as magical as I'd like. You will soon see why.

Look over your image and pick a color that is radically different from anything you have in it. My image is made up of a lot of desaturated earthy colors, so I chose a bright vibrant red.

If you've got one of those images that seems to have every single color imaginable, just choose something that there's not very much of. As a general rule, for desaturated natural colors like this image, red works great. For bright warm colors, choose a bright cool color or a grey. For bright cool colors, choose a bright warm color or a brown. I don't recommend using white or black. White is too familiar so you'll end up missing things. Black...well...you won't be able to see your lines anymore.

Once you've picked your color, fill in the Background layer with it.

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And now suddenly all the problems with the quick color fills are very very apparent. There are areas that didn't get filled in, there are areas that overfilled and went outside the lines. Something must be done!

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This part is a bit tedious but I'm afraid I've yet to find any faster way to do it. Go to your Color 1 layer. Pick a color on that layer to start working with. Using the Paint Brush tool, carefully fill in all of those gaps. Continue doing this for each color on each layer until they're all filled in. You need to be very careful that you're working on the right layer. It's very easy to make a mistake and start filling in gaps with a color that's on a completely different layer than the one you're on. You may want to click the little eyes in the Layers window to turn off the layers you're not working with so you don't get confused. But don't leave them off. It's a good idea to keep turning them on now and then to make sure everything looks right.

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Now it's time to fix the overflow and any mistakes you may have made when filling in those little gaps. Get out the Eraser tool and do the same thing you did with the paint brush, except...the opposite. Erase any color overflows. Once again, watch those layers! Although it's actually easier to tell if you're working on the wrong one with this part because you'll suddenly notice the color you want to go away is staying while another color you wanted to keep is being erased.

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Keep in mind, while painting on layers underneath other layers, you don't have to be too careful about staying in the lines. For example, when touching up the fur layer, it doesn't matter if I paint into the eye since the eye layer is above the fur.

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That probably took forever, and I apologize. That's probably my least-favorite part of doing digital art. But now you have a nice clean image, so isn't that nice?

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That bright red is starting to make my eyes melt. It needs to go away. I selected a nice violet-teal gradient color for the background and filled it in on the Background layer.

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This is currently a very boring dog. He needs some markings! You can apply the following steps to adding extra colors in any portion of your image.

I'll start by adding some lighter markings on his throat and chest. These will go on the Color 1 layer since they're a part of the color area on that layer. First, lock the transparency of that layer by clicking the Lock Transparency button. You'll notice a little padlock image will appear next to the layer name.

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This means nothing you do to this layer will affect any of the transparency. You can scribble "outside the lines" all you like and color will still only go into the already-colored portion of the layer.

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Using the paintbrush tool, I've painted in some nice light markings for this dog on Color 1. You'll notice I was careless about not painting on the chin/muzzle. This is simply because I plan on painting over that whole area with another color in a moment.

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Go through your various layers, adding whatever additional colors/markings you feel are necessary. I added some more markings and pupils in the eyes.

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You have the option of stopping here, but I usually like to make fur markings a bit softer and more blended-in. If you have some areas you'd like to do this too, simply zoom in and use the Blur tool to soften the edges.

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You can also pull out or push in certain areas (to create fur-like effects) using the Smudge tool. Some of the tools in PS are in the same place. To get the Smudge tool, click and hold the box that has the Blur tool in it. You'll be able to select it from there.

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Now all of your flat colors are totally blocked in.

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It's time to get to painting in shadows and highlights! Save the image one more time (still as a PSD) and move on to the next tutorial to learn about preparing shading layers in Photoshop and how to use Painter.

You can go back to the tutorials menu or go straight to the next step.