Photoshop still confuses me, but hey, i did my best.

[Lenalee Nilla]

So this is my oldest male betta, C2. I went and draw him by hand with pencil, then went pith pen on top, erased the pencil, scanned it, opened up PS, fiddled around with it till i got what i wanted figured out (more or less), and got this! I think it looks better than C2 himself, but then again, i couldnt get the little black pigments on this, nor could i get the scale lines. The eyes were the hardest part, ive never been good with eyes.

It really does look better than C2 himself, being that i couldnt meld multiple colors together, or make layers, or mask anything. I pretty much did it all with the paint brush, pencil, and smudge tools. But thats what C2 looks like in general, just not as brightly colored.

[Adastra]

Good for your first try! You can do a lot with the blur and the smudge tool as far as color blending. It takes a little more mouse-work, but you can get some good results. For drawing and coloring, I prefer to use Easy Paint Tool Sai, though. Adobe programs are so bulky--and it's really catering a lot of that to photomanipulation tools.

[Lenalee Nilla]

Well originally i was just trying to manually color it, then i remembered tutorials on youtube about how to vectorize a picture and then make it look fantastic with layers, but it was so beyond my understanding that i closed it before my brain fried itself. Ive never heard of sai, but before PS i used paint, which i used to be a master with. One time i manually recolored a friend picture pixel by pixel. Looked great. Then i stopped photo editing an dlost my touch ;_;

[Adastra]

You should try out SAI, great vectoring tools and some cool brushes. It's a lot smaller than PS because it doesn't have a lot of the fancy filters/effects crap people use for photomanipulation. The tool bars and menus are also a lot less convoluted. The main site has a 30-day version if you want to try it out. You can always buy a registration later or *ahem* bootleg a copy. u_u

[Lenalee Nilla]

Thats the thing, i dont knwo how to make vectors ._.

[Adastra]

Oh it is suuuuper easy in SAI. ;3 You just create a vector layer and then either use the vector pen to make lines or the vector curve tool to click around the outline of whatever you're vectoring and line segments will fill in perfectly between the points. It's super easy to adjust pen pressure, move the points/lines any way you want, delete a specific line, etc.

Photoshop doesn't have very comprehensive vectoring tools--but then again, they do have another program devoted completely to vectoring, Adobe Illustrator. I still prefer SAI though.

[Lenalee Nilla]

Just WHAT are you implying mister >w>

[dramaqueen]

I think it looks great!!

[Lenalee Nilla]

Thanks ^_^

[zelilaa]

i think hes implying that you should download a trial of SAI! ;D