*Please note that I am working with Paint Shop Pro 7 here*

Say you have this really beautiful picture you just finished, and you'd like to color it and put it on the world wide web. But getting your picture onto your computer, let alone coloring it can be tricky, and your picture may turn out all wrong unless you know what your doing. So lets get started.

First things first, the picture itself. Unless you have a great scanner that picks up detail beautifully, you should darken your picture by going over the lines several times, because light lines are usually not picked up too well by scanners. One thing to try is to copy your picture and see how well the copy came out, and thus you should be able to see how well your picture will scan. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to simply take a good ball-point pen and trace over all of the lines with it, as the picture will definately show up well by doing so.
The second step really varies based on the type of scanner you have and the settings you have set, so you simply just scan the picture and put it into PSP.

Next, copy and past your picture so that you have two windows with your picture in it. Save one and close it out. This is just in case something occurs like a power surge or the computer is accidently shut down, your picture has been saved.

Now it's clean up time. If you did your picture on lined paper, try to erase the lines that are in the picture by selecting the color of the lines and using the Color Replacer tool to erase the lines. Be careful though, and make sure that you replace only the lines, as that same color may appear in your drawing, so it's best just to carefully do each line instead of the general quick clean. Now, look around for any bloches or dots that aren't part of your picture. These are usually just light smears or things in the paper that you usually don't notice, so simply, and carefully, erase them.

Now all you should see is your lovely picture. Now if when you scanned your picture, you inked it/went over the lines with a pen, you can skip this part. For those of you who didn't, read on. The first thing you do is to color the lines to whatever color you want them to be select the lines via the Freehand (the lasso tool) or the Magic Wand to select the lines, then pick the color you want and either use the Air Brush or the Paint Brush to do a general darken, or pick out the colors and use the Color Replacer to change the colors, which generally does look better.

After all of the lines are darkened, it's time to color! For wide open space, simply use the Magic Wand to select those areas and use either the Flood Fill for a quick fix, or the Air Brush or the Paint Brush for more precise coloring. For smaller areas, it's best to use the Magic Wand with Freehand to make sure that you are coloring the area the you want.

Also, if you want certain effects, then search around in the this tutorial forums, or the forum in general, as there are many different effects that can be applied to pictures.

Take some time, make your picture really shine. When your done with it and are content with the finished product, then there's actually one more thing to do, sign it. Use the text tool, or whatever you like really, to put your name on your picture if you haven't done so already. Even though there are people out there who will be able to steal your picture and take out the signature, in general, putting your name on it is a basic good idea. Sadly, there is no tried and true way to prevent your art from being stolen. The best thing would be to copyright it, thus making it a true crime, but there's no way to truely preven theft.

Lastly, it's time to show your lovely piece of artwork. Save it as a gif or a jpg, though gif maybe better as it saves the quality better, but it's up to you. If you don't have your own site, then look around for places that allow you to upload images like Photobucket. There are also places like devianART and Elfwood which, after registering, allow you to display many pictures and allow others to comment on them, and thus improve your art skills.

I hope this is helpful and useful! Have a nice day! :)