Making Tattoos using Tattooinator!

I got a request to make a tattoo making tutorial (a tat-orial, if you will). So here it is!


Okay, the first step is to open up a new photoshop document. It is really important that you make it 520px by 520 px. That's really the only thing you need to do here.

Next thing you need to do is fill the entire square with black

Then draw your design. The important thing here is that if you want a recolorable tattoo, you have to realize that there are exactly four channels. There are red, blue, green, and alpha channels in sims 3 tattoos. You don't have to use all of them, but I will in this tutorial. Here is my tattoo, red blue and green.

Then you need to make an alpha channel. It does not matter if you are going to use it for coloring or not. You still need it. Go to your "Layers, Channels, Paths" menu and select Channels

Then simply click the add button (shown below)

You will notice that when you have the alpha channel selected that all your work disappears. Do not panic. This is good. Now, if you want to have an alpha channel for coloring, you will draw what you want on the alpha like this:

The only colors on the alpha will be black and white. Now click back on the Layers tab in your "Layers channels paths" toolbox.

Click on one of your layers until you see all of your design (EXCEPT WHAT YOU DREW ON THE ALPHA). Then flatten your document.
Then you need to click "save as..."

Make sure your save as box looks like the above(with your filename, obvs). Then save.
This box (below) will pop up. Make sure it looks like mine.

Then save! You are done with photoshop unless you messed something up which totally happens all the time. No worries if you do!
Open your copy of Tattooinator.Click the select button to find your dds file and load it up.

Then you need to select which channels you want recolorable and pic which you want the presets to be. Of course, you can leave the presets as they are. It's your choice. But if you only used red lines, don't let them recolor the green bits. That's silly. Only check the red checkbox.

I changed the background color so it looks more like my skintone, but you can alter it to get a slightly better idea what it will look like on other skintones. Then hit "Preview tattoo image". It should look like this:

If it does, then, YAY! You did everything right! go you! If it does not, then find out what you did wrong. Once you see your preview, hit "close" on the preview box, name your tattoo and then hit "Create Tattoo Package"! Save it, and you are done! Just move that package into your mods folder and test in game! Let me know if you need help! :)