New Doors
Most garage doors installed today are metal roll up doors. You will still run into a flip up (tilt up) door, but they are becoming rarer and rarer. Steel doors almost always come pre-finished with a low sheen baked-on finish which accepts paint pretty well. Manufacturers often put an embossed wood grain on these metal doors which adds to surface uniformity when painted.
With a roll up metal door, you will paint just the exterior face of the door for cosmetic purposes. The back of and unseen areas a new door do not need to be painted if factory finished.
Surface Preparation
Clean
You must clean the door prior to painting. A cleaner like Krud Kutter or any general purpose detergent (Simple Green) and water rinse will be fine. Do a good job with the cleaning, a bonding primer won’t stick well if the surface has waxy, greasy dirt on it. Don’t sand the door, you will easily sand through most doors exposing the galvanized metal underneath.
Prime
Many of the metal garage doors will accept a latex paint without priming, but some will not. Therefore I recommend priming with a latex bonding primer like 123 bulleye or Xim UMA primer.
Sticking Paint
You want to avoid painting your garage door shut., and causing sticking problems that will plaque you in the future.
Latex paints are prone to sticking. In order to avoid a stuck shut garage door, you will need to avoid painting the part of the door that goes behind the weather stripping. Paint up to the weather stripping on the sides and top, but don’t paint in behind the weather stripping.
Don’t paint the weather stripping itself. Even if the color isn’t a match to the door paint (which it won’t be). It is best to have a “neutral” color (gray, black or white) weather strip and leave it unpainted.
The other thing to avoid is painting the inside edges of the door between the roll down sections. These edges can make contact with each other when the door is closed, and contacting latex paint together in the hot sun will cause them to stick together.
Providing the door is pre-finished, these areas don’t need to be painted for protection from the elements (they already are painted - from the factory, so avoid them. Paint only the face of the door that can be seen and don’t paint behind the weather stripping and you should not have any sticking problems.
When the paint is dry, run a painter’s 5 - 1 tool carefully down behind the weather stripping to break any seal that may have occurred from not doing a good job of avoiding the rubber seal before opening the door for the first time after painting.
Painting
Use a flat or low sheen latex paint. You can roll it on with a roller and brush only where you need to “cut in”. I use a mini roller and work straight from a one gallon bucket with a roller grid in the bucket.
You will need to put a drop cloth or two down on the driveway at the bottom of the door, and tape off the door handle and weather stripping on the bottom to avoid spattering them with paint.
Wood graining
You can always wood grain a metal garage door in much the same way that a steel entry door is grained. See staining a fiberglass door and wood graining. 
Repainting an older door
Water blast (post 1978 doors only) you may shoot some water through the sections into the garage if you are too close, if that is a problem (consider what is inside the garage - will it get wet and can it get wet without damage) back away. You may also clean the door with a hose and detergent in much the same way that you would wash your car. Once cleaned, you can degloss a previous latex paint with Gloss Off, by simply wiping down the door. Oil base paints will need to be primed with an oil based primer (Zinsser Coverstain) prior to painting with latex paint.
Please read lead paint warning if your house was built before 1978
Painting a Metal Garage Door
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