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An effect similar to "Define as Brush" without any actual brush-making.


mimetalk

Member
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I know that title doesn't really make much sense, but what I want to do is very specific and I can't imagine that there isn't a way to do it.

I illustrate using ink, sometimes pencil, and when I bring those lines into Photoshop I often recolor them. So far I've only needed to recolor smaller things. The wand tool does not do a nice job of making white transparent for my purposes, and so I've gotten into the habit of defining my images as a brush so that they become nice and transparent and easy to recolor. The grays are transparent, and this is what I want.

I want my whites to be gone, grays to be transparent, the blacks to be rich dark and opaque.

I would continue on defining things as brushes to get this done, only now there are a few bigger projects I need to use this technique on that exceed the pixel limit for brush sizes. Everything online about coloring lines uses some form of the magic wand tool, which is not what I want, because I want the grays to be transparent.

Does anyone know how I can reproduce the "define as brush" effects without actually defining an image as a brush? It seems like if it can be done with the "define as brush" then it should be reproducible with some other settings.
 

Twelvebitstyle

Well-Known Member
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Could you please post an example of an illustration you have colored so we can see the effect you are going for?
 

iDad

Guru
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create what ever it is, without a background in place, set the levels (tranparency) of colors where you want them then just save them as .PNG's
 

mimetalk

Member
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I draw the image using actual ink, so there is no creating a layer on a transparent background. By coloring the lines I mean literally coloring the lines, not coloring them in.

corner.png
This is my image, with the levels adjusted to my preferred settings and all that jazz. Usually, I would define this image as a brush. It makes the white transparent and the gray feathering of the ink partially transparent, and then I lock the transparent pixels and go about my coloring.

corener2.png

I understand I could recolor the original image that's on a white background using the hue and saturation tool and five hours of resetting and deselecting, but then by setting it to multiply coloring the image would be a pain. I could use the selection tool and simply delete all the white, but hard as they try their "anti-alias" setting will never work smoothly enough for a medium that bleeds, and so when I color I get very hard edges.

I just want to be able to get rid of the white, and set the grays to transparent. The lighter the gray, the more transparent it is, exactly how it works with the define brush tool. If there's really no way to do that without erasing and selecting for hours by hand, I'll just have to say I gave it my all, but the simple fixes I can think of all don't work. I'm so frustrated when I feel like something that should be doable just isn't.
 

mimetalk

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The beginning image is not a solid black, and yes it is filled in. I uploaded the wrong version of that lines. All my titles on my computer are similar. Just assume that that top image is solid black. You'll still get the point just fine.
 

dv8_fx

Retired Administrator
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Kinda slow on the uptake right now... lol... so dunno if this is what you need.

Convert your image to Grayscale.... adjust the brightness, levels to get the purest white and darkest blacks.

In the channels pallete, CTRL+click Gray Channel. This will select all the shades of white in the image. Inverse the selection.

Create new layer. Fill selection black.

You have your image, without the white background pixels. Blacks are black, grays in all shades.

Hope this is what you're going for.
 

mimetalk

Member
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That is exactly what I want. THANK YOU. I had never heard of the gray channel. All of the tutorials I found before this told me to to use pretty much all of them and ultimately didn't give me what I want. Simple fix. This is what I was hoping it was. It was me just being a tad too stupid to figure it out myself. Thank you.
 

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