creating layers from a photoshop painting

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
December 22, 2016
2 replies
753 views

Hi, I am seeking advice on how to create layers after you have completed a digital painting using cs6. The painting is complete. Now I am using the quick select tool to select the various features of the painting and the right clicking the mouse and then selecting "copy via layer". After the layer is created, I then click on the title of the layer in the layers working area and rename it to the feature so I can better manage the file. I plan to use these layers so I can make touch ups without affecting the surrounding area and to copy these features as a mask to add features in this scene or in other scenes I am creating. I will then make composites of features to make alternating scenes. Can you please advise if I am using an appropriate method to create layers after the painting is done for the things I want to do with the painting in the future? Thanks

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Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Hi Maureen. We would almost certainly be able to give you better advice after seeing what the artwork looked like. Would be happy to paste a screen shot here? It's super easy — copy to clipboard, and paste directly to this thread with Ctrl v (Cmd v). Out of interest, did you use layers when making the artwork?

I used a bit over 100 layers for this portrait, and I'd be very upset indeed if the master document were to become flattened. But if I had to reconstruct it, I'd start selecting by colour, and not with the Colour Range tool, but with Image > Calculations. Using the Red channel 'with' the Red channel, and setting the mode to Overlay (the default is Multiply) I get a very clean alpha channel. Fine tuning with Levels, and with the paint brush set to Overlay, would finish it off nicely.

You also have the option of using Luminosity masks using something Tony Kuyper, or free Interactive Luminosity masks from the Adobe Add-ons page This would give you control over how much and where. But, like I said, showwing us the art work would lead to the best answers.

maureenr8613513Author

Participating Frequently

Thank-you Chris for your reply. I would love to post the artwork but I cannot post until the artist has finished her work. The artist is producing the paintings for a final studio project for a fine arts degree. Her studio work up until now has been predominantly in acrylic and oil but she is using photoshop to create 10 paintings for a storybook illustration. She is starting to break things down into layers on her subsequent scenes but she painted the first scene as one complete painting. I am just working with a back-up copy to see if we can recreate the component parts of the painting - tree trunks, canopy, hedges, face, eyes, etc - into layers so she can potentially use parts of her first painting in other scenes or be able to touch up sections of her first painting without bleeding into other parts of the painting. At this stage I do not know if that is even possible. However once she has the portion of the painting created as a layer she will have no problem repainting where necessary. Hopefully she will not lose any depth if she can go over the section with her painting swatches. She is painting the scenes in the same way as she would create an oil painting - mixing and applying colours in varying degrees of lightness and darkness to give depth and dimension of the composition over a grid. What she ultimately needs to have are the component parts - a tree trunk or a cat - so she can copy them into other scenes. It took days to create the primary tree in scene one so it would be create to use that tree in another composition. Other than losing some depth, do you foresee any issues with the creation of layers using the selection and copy via layer method for the creation of layers? If I were to copy the component parts as smart objects would that be a better way to import/copy them into other scenes without losing quality? Thank-you again for your help.

jane-e

Community Expert

You cannot paint onto Smart Objects directly; you would have to go inside them. Use them for filters if you have any.

Is the plan, then, to bring in a copy of what she did in acrylics and oils on a background layer and then paint on top of it? Or will she use Photoshop from start to finish?

Derek Cross

Community Expert

If you want to make an duplicate layer of the image or a part of it that has been selected, you can use the key board short cut, ctrl/cmd + J.

maureenr8613513Author

Participating Frequently

Thank-you very much for the suggested short ct. Very helpfull!

Derek Cross

Community Expert

I suggest you suggest to the artist that s/he makes regular incremental back ups so that s/he has copies in case of issues such as file corruption and so s/he is able to return to an earlier version of the work, if necessary.

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