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Participating Frequently
March 18, 2025
Question

Help needed please! New to illustration on Photoshop

  • March 18, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1097 views

Hi all,

 

I have a texture/outline that I want to use over the top of a drawing. It's a chameleon, and I want to add the scale details.

 

I have drawn out the texture in pastel and scanned it in. I need to take the texture's background away and also be able to change the colour of the texture, but I am getting stuck with masks/etc. I've got it to the stage where I have the texture as a black outline, but when I put it over the chameleon drawing I can't change the colour of it. Can anyone help?

 

Thank you

2 replies

Participating Frequently
March 18, 2025

So for further info I followed a tutorial where the steps were as follows:

 

Opened the scan of my drawing in photoshop

set it to greyscale (image-mode)

increased contrast in (image -adjustments- levels)

go to Channels press control and select box (image goes wavy, only black is selected?)

go back to layers and duplicate our layer

add a mask to the new layer

press ctrl + i on mask layer to invert

go to first box in new layer and paint it black, then click control + backspace (now both boxes in new layer are black)

right click back on the second box (mask layer?) and select Apply layer Mask - now both boxes merge into one. 

 

that is the stage I am at - she then says to colour this is very simple:

 

she copies the part of the texture she wants over into a new file (i'm using default photoshop size)

then she locks the layer

then she clicks on the 'background colour' square on the left side (the bottom square behind the top one), selects a colour and presses 'ctrl + delete' and it changes the design/texture to the colour she has chosen

 

This does not happen for me. Nothing happens when I press 'ctrl + backspace' and I cant seem to change the colour of my drawing/texture?

 

 

 

Ged_Traynor
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 19, 2025

@TrishNolan can you upload the actual scanned image

Participating Frequently
March 19, 2025
Just the scan or the scan open in photoshop?

Sent from Outlook for iOS<>
Ged_Traynor
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 18, 2025

@TrishNolan can you post a screenshot of the Photoshop interface with all the pertinent panels opened

Participating Frequently
March 18, 2025

Thanks I will do, can't do it until I'm back at home this evening - thanks for responding