Inspiring

Question

Limited Color Pallet

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 21, 2019
7 replies
6847 views

Hi All

This is a follow-up post to my research in the scripting forum.

I'd like to try emulating traditional painting with Photoshop. Imagine you are Bob Ross.

You have 16 tubes of paint - white, black, and 14 colors of your choice. I want to limit the color choices to only these 16 colors.

So, I will create 16 different swatches. And then choose only the colors from the swatches, *not* from the color wheel or color panel.

The problem is, when you use the mixer tool or smudge tool in your painting, then it adds in these millions of colors in between your pixels when mixing or smudging.

I am trying to limit the color to *only* those 16 color swatches - so when you use the mixer or smudge tools, it will look very blocky in between transitions - but for now, this is what I am trying to achieve.

I know that Indexed mode can do this, but then you are unable to use the mixer brush, or add more layers, etc. Indexed mode is very limited.

So I am trying to find a way in RGB mode to limit the pallet to 16 colors only. We can use a "posterize" adjustment layer ontop of the painting layer and then select a value of 16, but for some reason this does not limit the entire painting to just 16 colors. it indeed makes the transitions when mixing or smudging look very blocky, but the colors are not limited to just 16.

Does anyone know of a way to limit the image to just 16 colors in RGB mode, while maintaining all functionality within photoshop (add layers, mixer brush, everything else that PS has to offer, because Index mode removes all this functionality)

Thanks!!

This topic has been closed for replies.

rayek.elfin

Legend

So... are you looking to emulate something like these in Photoshop?

G

gangeekAuthor

Inspiring

Greets, rayek.elfin!

These examples are nice, but you can see the digital blending going on in the pillow on the 2nd image. There is no grain, or texture to the painting. The last one indeed looks like a photo with filters. And the top one is nice, but again we can see the very sharp details in his crest and the sharp edges along his silhouette. But those are indeed fantastic - I think the first one is the most convincing but the details are too small/too sharp, giving away its digital look - the edges on the hat and shoulders/crest are very sharp, but look at the feather - THAT looks quite natural, because the edges are not sharp - if the rest of the edges in the painting were rendered like the feather then it would look more natural. And if a larger, granier brush was used for the highlights on his crest it would go a long way into making it look like real paints. I think tiny details that are sharp and precise are also a giveaway - like the highlights in his crest - its an indication that the image was zoomed in very close to paint in those details

I was thinking something more along the lines of these:

b3e634f7c0d89ba4c007ed19a4d6824b

Screenshot - a7d15a044f8d6c76f09a615c0f23fe84 - Gyazo

Screenshot - 8c6c91844cb29cedf004ac1ce56e3371 - Gyazo

Notice that in the color transitions in these are grainy and don't have a 'mixed' or 'smudged' appearance to them. The color pallets look to be very limited and if you convert these to 256 Index Mode, they will probably not change at all. I enjoy the grainy color transitions, as if the colors have been blended with a dry brush. By the way, these are traditional paintings not digital. They look rough and less polished - which is how a painting done in acrylics will look. A digital painting can look too sharp, clean and too smooth, with too many colors (millions).

I apologize but I canny seem to figure out how to embed these pictures here - do you know how I can show the pictures here instead of their links?

jane-e

Community Expert

gangeek wrote
These examples are nice, but you can see the digital blending going on in the pillow on the 2nd image.

Is this the one you see the digital blending on? I’m not sure where the other two hang, but I’ve seen this one at least a hundred times.

Here is the link to the National Art Gallery Page to Young Girl Reading by Jean Honoré Fragonard: Art Object Page

rayek.elfin

Legend

How To Emulate Oil Painting With Your Computer | Muddy Colors

joanH

Inspiring

Thank you for this contribution. It answers so many questions for painterly artists. Nice!

I have painted many portraits using digital resources and once printed on canvas, the result is even better than using the old style paint and brushes. A limited pallet a great artist does not make. When I could not afford more than four tubes of paint, I had to mix. Now, the colors are endless. Enjoy! Best regards, JH

G

gangeekAuthor

Inspiring

Yes, thanks to all for contributing to this. I apologize, but this is a difficult scenario to explain for me. I will try a different approach:

Imagine your swatches panel has 32 colors. Pretend they are aligned in a color-wheel or color-cube format like in this picture:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/5QyHy.png

Click on one of them, and it becomes your foreground color. Now go into your image, and do a little painting. Next, let's say you want to darken your current color a little bit. So you go back into the swatches panel to select a shade darker than your current color - but the problem is, the last swatch you selected is not highlighted, so you cannot quickly select the new, darker swatch because you don't know which swatch you are currently using. If you selected a blue color the first time, how can you come back in the panel and select a darker blue if you don't know which one is currently selected as your foreground color?

What I am hoping to do is when using the eyedropper tool in your painting to select a new color, that it will somehow indicate in the swatches panel which color you have clicked on in your image. So for example, if you painted a red barn in your painting, you might want to find exactly which red swatch you used to paint the barn. It would be nice that when you use the eyedropper on the red barn, then that exact red swatch in the swatches panel becomes highlighted - this way you know *exacly* which red swatch it is, and then you can easily select a darker shade of red in the panel because since the swatch is now highlighted, you have a reference point to select your new color/shade.

Which brings me to the point - if I use the mixer brush or smudge tools for example, then we are introducing millions of new colors into the painting, which would make this request impossible. The swatches panel would also need to have millions of swatches in it in order to highlight the eyedropped color in the painting.

So If the image is limited to just 32 colors, then eyedropping on any color could highlight that color in the swatches panel. I am using the limited color pallet idea as if we were using tubes of paint, like traditional painting - 32 swatches would be like having 32 tubes of paint - I am forced to use just those 32 colors and nothing in between - I will pick colors from the swatches panel, and never from the color wheel - this assures me that I am trying to emulate a traditional method of painting

I hope this makes sense and I thank anyone who has read this far. Basically, I am trying to find a way to use the eyedropper tool on the painting, and then have that eyedropped color become highlighted in the swatches panel. And the only way I can see this happening is to work with a limited amount of swatches.

Would this make sense?

G

gangeekAuthor

Inspiring

thanks everyone. I want to start with just 16 colors and learn how to do it. Then from there I would jump up to higher amounts like 64, 256, etc. I figure that a lower amount of colors might lead to a more traditional appearance. Millions of colors, especially when smudged or blurred or applied with a digital airbrush can look, well, "digital". I would really like to produce a painting that when looked at, the viewer will genuinely question whether it has been done on a computer or with real paints. A limited color pallet is where I would like to start

jane-e

Community Expert

gangeek wrote
I would really like to produce a painting that when looked at, the viewer will genuinely question whether it has been done on a computer or with real paints.

Hi,

If that is your goal, then that’s another reason to pay close attention to the advice posted here, especially from . If what you want to try fails, then come back and re-read his advice in this thread.

Jane

G

gangeekAuthor

Inspiring

but jane-e, how do i do so with just 24 instead of 16?

jane-e

Community Expert

gangeek wrote
Does anyone know of a way to limit the image to just 16 colors

Hi

If you created 16 spot color channels, you could limit yourself to 16 colors. But Bob Ross mixed those colors, and I would go with Dave’s answer. I can’t think of a reason to actually do this!

~ Jane

davescm

Community Expert

Hi

Your request seems confused. You say you want to use the mixer brush but do not want to have it produce mixed colours.

You compare to Bob Ross who used oils on a palette. He did use a limited range of paint colours but then blended and mixed the colours both on the palette and on the canvas to give an infinite range.

When painting, I tend to have two documents open. The painting itself and a second which contains circles of colour applied with a brush on an empty layer above a 50% grey background. That document is my palette.

I use a combination of plain brush and mixer brush on the main canvas, loading from that palette document.

If you genuinely only want limited colours then use posterize or index colour but forget the mixer brush.

Dave

Michael Bullo

Community Expert

I wanted to clarify what is happening with the Posterize adjustment layer in case it helps. The number you set within Posterize is setting the number of tones for each channel. For example, setting a value of 2 gives 2 tones per RGB channel which allows for a total of 8 colours (including black and white).

RGB values…

0,0,0 (Black)

255,0,0 (Red)

0,255,0 (Green)

0,0,255 (Blue)

255,255,0 (Yellow)

255,0,255 (Pink)

0,255,255 (Cyan)

255,255,255 (White)

G

gangeekAuthor

Inspiring

Ah yes, DeluxePaint!!! My childhood. I had many Amiga computers, including the 500 and 1200, and had several versions of DeluxePaint. Thanks for bringing back these beautiful memories. Sometimes I think back to those teenage years with a tear or two

The Dan Fessler blog looks completely amazing --- but oh so complicated! It seems to do exactly what I'm aiming for, but I will have to study that entire blog to understand how to do it, unless you might have a quicker way to get it going?

rayek.elfin

Legend

If you miss DeluxePaint, this might yield some nostalgic feelings:

https://thecompany.pl/game/Deluxe+Paint+5.2

It's a package executable of an Amiga emulator with Deluxe Paint 5.2 auto-running - download, double-click, and relive those Amiga memories :-)

It's still a damn good pixel art editor!

rayek.elfin

Legend

No, not directly possible as far as I know.

If you are interested in a more indexed painting look, check out this technique:

Dan Fessler | Blog

I've used this to great effect for limited palette looks. Works quite well, and you can use pretty much all tools in Photoshop RGB mode, and still get a controlled limited old-fashioned retro look.

Alternatively, if you need an indexed image mode with layers: several pixel art applications exist which accommodate this. The best one (in my opinion) is Pro Motion NG, which also has the option to set up artificial limitations for colours channels and even pixel sizes (for example a 2-1 pixel size like the old Amstrad and C64 machines). It's the spiritual successor to Deluxe Paint (Amiga times!).

But mixing and smudging is extremely limited in low colour indexed modes. I would check out Dan Fessler's "Index Painting" technique first. It's pretty neat.

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