Color Reference Guide To Recognize & Avoid Whitewashing

Color Reference Guide to Recognize & Avoid Whitewashing

I’ve made a tutorial on how to color adjust to fix washed out colorings, but I noticed people aren’t always sure when their coloring needs fixing in the first place. So I’ve made a bunch of colorings you can use to compare your own to. It’s designed to help avoid whitewashing, but also help avoid over-correction.

If you’re not a content creator, you can also use this guide for reblogging as well. :)

Using the Guide

Each set comes in three: cool, neutral, and warm. If your coloring is bluer/whiter than the cool tone, consider readjusting.

Examples of what might be too pale/bright are beneath each set

There are various categories (daytime, night scenes, etc) for each type of scene you might encounter

Each coloring has a color palette beneath for the highlights, midtones, and shadows of the character’s face. If you’re having trouble eyeballing it, use the eyedropper tool to double check.

NOTES 1) For the sake of simplicity, I’ve used one character per category, but characters of color are not interchangeable. Identify the skin tone for the character you’re coloring and work with that. This is only meant to give a frame of reference for what is and isn’t whitewashing 2) If any of the colorings look different than what they’ve been stated as (i.e. the cool tones look too warm or some look way too dark to be visible) calibrate your monitor. It means your screen color and gamma needs readjustment.

Guide itself is under the read more!

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