Painter 11 Creativity: Digital Artists Handbook

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Painter X Creativity , please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Nov 15, Larry rated it it was amazing Shelves: Great tips on using Corel Painter in conjunction with Photoshop. John rated it really liked it Jan 22, Ramiro rated it liked it Dec 07, Jonathan Hudson rated it it was amazing Jul 20, Rachel rated it really liked it Oct 05, Jason rated it did not like it Jul 31, Sarah McConnell rated it really liked it Jul 20, Debbie Payne rated it liked it Jan 02, C Solis rated it liked it Oct 09, Johnny Sutherland rated it it was amazing Aug 20, Lori marked it as to-read Apr 06, Will cropping or adding canvas give a better composition?

Refine Your Composition It may be that your original source photograph does not need any compositional modification. This was the case in Waterfall. Other times you may find that cropping into the image, or adding extra canvas, can increase the dramatic effect of the composition. Experiment and see what looks best to you. You always have the option of cropping your painting once it is complete. I personally prefer to crop before I begin painting, since the way I paint takes into account where the edges are and how the composition intersects with those edges. In Painter, drag the Crop tool in your image and then click inside the crop area to make the crop.

You can use the Divine Proportion overlay for additional assistance Figures 4. This automatically makes your crop a new image. In Painter, choose your canvas extension color in the Colors palette, choose Canvas 4 Set Paper Color, then choose Canvas 4 Canvas Size, type in the number of pixels you wish added in any direction and click OK.

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I wanted to use her expression from a second photo in place of the original expression in my source image. I could have done this in either Photoshop or Painter. I chose to use Painter. I feathered and copied a freehand selection Figure 4. Anything pasted into an image in Painter is automatically pasted in as a layer that appears in the Layers palette. I used the Layer Adjuster tool to move the layer over the area I wished to replace in the image Figure 4.

Any discussion of resolution must start with understanding file size. Pixels are the basic building blocks of a digital image. Each pixel defines the color specification such as hue, saturation and value within a 99 Figure 4. The pixel file size is usually measured in units of megapixels. This unit of size is most commonly used in connection with digital camera specifications.

These units of size is most commonly used when storing and transferring image data. These two dimensions can be specified either in pixels only, or in a combination of physical length, such as inches, combined with the pixel resolution which defines the number of pixels in each unit of physical length, such as pixels per inch PPI. These units of width and height in pixels and in physical length and pixel resolution are the units that are of most relevance and concern to us as digital artists. This will then determine what file dimensions to start with. If you are not sure what final dimensions you want, I suggest aiming at something at least roughly 16 inches by 24 inches.

Most of my work ends up being printed between 30 inches by 40 inches up to approximately 40 inches by 60 inches. Since my Epson printer accepts 44 inches wide canvas rolls and I like to allow at least 3 inches or so of extra canvas around my final image for stretching, I generally keep within a width of 38 inches. My choice of dimensions, besides utilizing my in-house printing technology to the maximum dimensions it can offer me, is also a scale at which I find my paintings work well.

To begin with, set your end goal in physical dimensions inches without changing the total number of pixels. This ensures you initially do not alter the total number of pixels in the image. The Resolution pixels per inch will change to keep the total number of pixels constant. In the Image Size dialog window you can now see at the top the number of pixels width by height and below, the current physical dimensions and pixel resolution.

This gives you all the information you need to make your next choice: If you do not have Photoshop the equivalent operation in Painter is: Unfortunately the Painter Resize dialog window, unlike the Photoshop Image Size dialog window, does not show you the pixel width and height and physical dimensions width and height at the same time. To Resize or Not Resize When you resize or resample an image, you are changing the total number of pixels in the image. Early in the painting process I like to be able to paint large, loose, fast responding brush strokes and therefore I do not want my file size to be too big.

Also, if your file is too small and you later resize to a much larger size you may see softening and degradation of image quality. In general I like to have at least pixels along the shortest side of the image width or height but no more than about pixels along the longest side, depending on the power and speed of the computer and the physical size of the final artwork I wish to print. Please note that there can always be exceptions, depending on the final effect you want. Generally I do not reduce the number of pixels I already have from my camera, but will sometimes increase the number.

Over the years I have made prints from digital files with a wide variety of pixel resolutions, ranging from as low as 72 PPI for a large 8 feet by 10 feet Vutek banner print which was designed to be viewed from a distance up to PPI. Whilst more pixel resolution will generally result in a more detailed print, there is a lot of leeway with digital paintings. As a general guide I suggest aiming at about — PPI at final size. As you can see in the Waterfall example here Figure 4.

To change the pixel resolution while keeping the physical dimensions you have set constant, in the Photoshop Image Size window check Resample Image Figure 4.

Painter X Creativity: Digital Artist's handbook

You would need to adjust the width and height units to inches and then you can adjust dimensions or pixel resolution independently. I kept the overall size relatively low since I was working on this image on my MacBook Pro whilst traveling. The image was not cropped and kept the aspect ratio 4: Sometimes my target dimensions are determined by wishing to utilize a standard frame size, or to fit an existing frame I already have. It is not unusual for the dimensions of paintings to be the result of materials that artists happened to have on hand.

French painter Edouard Vuillard frequently painted on used cardboard, taken from the bottoms of boxes used by his mother to pack the dresses which she made and sold. Fellow French artists Pierre Bonnard and Toulouse Lautrec also painted on recycled cardboard supports from shirt boxes, and these supports determined the physical dimensions of many of their paintings. Typically most digital cameras provide a digital image with an aspect ratio of 4: In this case I was aiming to use a standard 30 inches by 40 inches frame.

In the case of Generations, I wanted to fit a 30 inches by 40 inches frame 4. Whatever you end up with once you have made your initial decisions regarding size and pixel resolution, choose Save As and save your file with the next sequential version number followed by a note that summarizes the width, height and resolution, for instance: If you ever resize the image again later in the process, I recommend again labeling the new size and resolution in the file name. This Equalize command in Painter is a wonderful tool 4 5 6 7 8 and I recommend you try it out during your painting process from time to time.

You may be surprised at the positive difference it can make. If the Underpainting palette is not already visible choose Window 4 Underpainting. See the effect in your image. The goal is to warm the image up and boost the color saturation. If you like the effect choose Apply in the Underpainting palette. It can be useful in suppressing grain in a photo. It may take some time for the effect to be applied—it is a memory intensive effect.

The benefit of applying Smart Blur is that it can avoid you accidentally having photo grain showing through in a painting. On the other hand it reduces the precision of the source information you have to work from and degrades your source image. Additionally, photo grain can sometimes be a good texture to keep and take advantage of. At this stage, having completed the preparation of your source image for painting, you are ready to begin the painting process.

For the whole of this chapter you will be working exclusively in the world of Corel Painter. The brushwork I refer to in the title of this chapter is digital brushwork. There is still some preparation to do connected with the workflow within Painter. My intention here is to provide you with a flexible and effective structure from which you can improvise and diverge. There are many choices along the way, and I endeavor to point some of them out as we go along.

The guidelines and steps I share are not intended to be rigid rules, but simply ideas for you to play with. I encourage you to always experiment and take risks. Two Themes There are two overall themes to this chapter: General to Detail Start general with big, bold, rough brushwork and then work towards selective detail using smaller, more precise, brushwork. Viva Variety Generate variations of your image and continually vary the hue, saturation, value, size, thickness, direction, structure and texture of your brushstrokes within your painting, whilst carefully observing your subject and being conscious, aware and intentional in all you do.

The image details shown here Figures 5. Three Challenges Photographs present three significant challenges for painting. Too Much Detail Photographs are usually full of detail that is very tempting to reproduce in a painting. Ironically a painting may be all the more powerful and beautiful when we include less precise detail, not more. Often a photograph has a large depth of field where much of the scene is in sharp focus, which again is a temptation to reproduce in a painting.

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By contrast a painting gives us a golden opportunity to be much more selective about what is in focus and to narrow down the depth of field, producing an effect closer to the narrow depth of field and limited focal region that human vision has. Too Easy to Stick with Photo Color Besides the temptation to include too much detail, the other temptation is to stick with the colors in the photo and not dare to be more adventurous. Part of the challenge with color is, ironically, that Painter makes it so easy to paint from a photo with the photo color.

All the cloning brushes and effects in Painter allow you to make brush strokes which follow the color of your source image. Cloning in Painter is an immensely powerful tool but it can also become constrictive. This familiarity is used by our powerful visual perception system to bypass the extra mental processing needed for accurate observation and interpretation of the color and tonal relationships and shapes we see. Instead, our visual perception system makes assumptions based on what we already know and are familiar with.

Although it is an efficient way to work from a survival point of view quick assessment of friend or foe, flight or fight, predator or prey it makes painting what we see much more difficult. It is those shapes, and their relationships with one another, that I am continuously trying to depict in my choice of brush stroke color and tone. Whilst Painter offers the powerful tools of Clone Color, where a brush uses the color from a source image, and Tracing Paper, where a source image shows through in a destination image, neither stops our natural subconscious familiarity with our subject getting in the way of accurate observation.

Accurate observation can be helped by learning to draw, which I recommend for anyone, and by turning your source photograph upside down, which disconnects us from being attached to what we know things are, such as noses, mouths, and so on, and allows us to see better, and thus paint better, what is actually there in the image, such as lights, darks, colors and shapes.

This turns your image upside down. The remaining instructions in this chapter are identical whether you have turned your source photograph upside down or not. It is the virtual equivalent of taping a small photo to the top left of your canvas. Essentially I zoom out reduce the magnification of my source image and place it in the upper left of my screen and then I place a larger magnification of the current working image on the right of my screen.

This generates a duplicate copy of your source image. The source image will remain assigned to be the current clone source until you select another image as clone source, use a pattern or close the source file. The clone copy image is your working image, that is, the canvas that you paint on. The benefit of Figure 5. In other words this is a helpful technique for establishing a template. Click and drag the title bar of your working clone copy image window and move the image window so the top left of the window is neatly aligned along the top of the screen and the left side of the working image window frame is overlapping and covering up the right side of the source image window frame.

Drag the bottom right corner of your working image window down and to the right until it is neatly tucked into the bottom right corner of your computer screen Figure 5. Choose Tab so the palettes show again. Hold the Space bar while you move the source and working images to positions where they are completely unobstructed by palettes. Drag the Scale slider in the lower left of the working image window frame slightly to the right to zoom in and maximize the display size of the working image.

Make sure you can see all edges of both the source image and the working image Figure 5. Adjust the palette arrangement and Scale sliders as needed. Choose Between Many Paths At this stage you are at a crossroads, with many possible paths of where to go with your working image. Some of the possible choices you may wish to consider include the following: If you know in advance you want this option then you could use File 4 Quick Clone instead of File 4 Clone. I orientate the gradient by moving the red dot in the gradient orientation preview. The five options listed above are not mutually exclusive choices.

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I will sometimes purposely generate a series of variations based on a common source image and then mix them together at a later stage. The beauty of working in Painter is that it makes it so easy to follow multiple creative paths, generate many variations on a theme, and then mix and blend elements of the different variations together in a final composite. No path is a waste or a dead-end. Every path expands the realms of possibilities, even if you end up not using the result. To understand what Clone Color is we must first understand the concept of cloning in Painter.

In Painter cloning is a relationship between a source and a destination, which allows certain brushes those from the Cloners category, and brushes from other categories when the Clone Color icon is activated in the Colors palette to derive color from whatever the current clone source is and apply it into a destination. You can see what the current clone source is at any time by looking at File 4 Clone Source. There will be a check mark by the current clone source, which by default is the current pattern.

The destination image can be the same as the clone source image, as in point-to-point cloning, where you clone from one place in an image into another place in the same image. There is a dedicated Rubber Stamp tool shortcut is the Apostrophe key specially for this type of operation. It can be found seven icons down on left of the Toolbox sharing a fly-out with the Cloner tool.

You can set the clone source start position when working with the Rubber Stamp tool by clicking once holding down the Option or Alt key. The Clone operation automatically sets the source file you cloned from to be assigned as the current clone source. Your clone copy is the destination image. The Clone Source setting is only temporary and is not a property of either the source or clone copy image. If you close Painter and return to it later and reopen the source file and the clone copy file, the source file will not automatically be the clone source.

You will have to manually reset it to be that using the File 4 Clone Source menu. The File 4 QuickClone Operation does a number of operations in one. These are defined Preferences 4 General. By default the QuickClone will duplicate the source image creating a Clone Copy , set the source image to be clone source, clear the duplicate image, turn on Tracing Paper which allows you to see the clone source superimposed over the destination image, provided they are the same size and select the last used Cloner brush. Thus, in the context of painting from photographs, it is very useful to make a clone copy of your source photo and be able to paint in that clone with brushes that use Clone Color.

Such brushes pick color from the corresponding location in the source image. Two Quick Paths to Generate Variations: These techniques offer two easy and fast ways to generate variations for later use. The underlying principle is to always work on a clone copy working image, not directly on the source image.

Three Slower Paths with More Heart and Soul While these two fast automatic techniques, Auto-Painting and the Woodcut effect, may produce interesting results, they do not offer the heart, soul, unique individuality or level of variation possible when you apply brush strokes by hand with the use of a Wacom tablet and pen. For that reason my main focus in this book is on the slower techniques of applying brush strokes and effects by hand, rather than the faster techniques in which the computer automatically applies brush strokes or effects, or filters through mathematical computation.

I much prefer paint-by-hand to paint-by-machine. Besides looking better, it is also more fun! To explain and illustrate my slower, paint-by-hand approach, I shall use three different case studies: In some sections of the final painting you can still see small areas of photo grain showing through, which is one of the disadvantages of painting over the photo look carefully at Figure 5. However, in retrospect looking back at the result, I see that keeping the photograph there resulted in a tighter, more conservative and photographic end result.

Whilst I share this example as one of the case studies in this book, my overall advice is to initially let go of photographic detail completely. Ultimately I ended up painting over the entire canvas and covering up almost all my early black on white calligraphic brush marks. Having history buried within your canvas is part of what builds up a rich and interesting surface, and contributes to the painterly quality of your end-result. This is an immensely empowering principle.

In a third example that I share here, Dawn Figure 5. Part of the reason I illustrate my paint-by-hand process with these three examples is to help give you a sense of the freedom you have, and show how different the paths were for these three paintings. The paintings Generations and Waterfall are both subjects of video tutorials on PaintboxJ. You are the judge of what works best for you. I recommend that you start off by trying out all five options, a through e, with a common source image and compare the results for yourself.

Treat this as a research project. Subsequently, for future projects, you can then evaluate what technique, or combination of techniques, feels most appropriate. I rarely know at the beginning of a project exactly how I am going to proceed. You can see from the examples shown in this chapter how dramatically my paintings may transform during the creative process. It is useful to set a vision and have a plan, but it is just as important to be flexible, able to let go of your plans and assumptions at any moment in the process, to be open to serendipity, to expect and accept imperfections, and to respond to the unexpected with spontaneous improvisation.

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This applies on the macroscopic level, that is, with the overall direction of your painting, as well as on the microscopic level, with being able to let go of, and paint over, parts of your painting you may be attached to. Make sure the name begins with the short project name, that it has the next sequential two-digit version number, and indicates in the notes part of the P-V-N file name whether the working image is filled with the photo, white or a color I usually note what Figure 5.

This then automatically changes the current file name to the one you click on, and then you adjust the version number and notes appropriately. This works on both Macs and PCs. Once you start painting use the notes section of the file name to keep track of the brushes you use. As you continue to work, remember to regularly at least every 10 minutes do a Save As and strictly maintain the P-V-N file naming convention throughout the painting process. This is very important! Please try it out and see for yourself. It will be assumed you have read this paragraph and are following this system throughout every project.

This process of transformation, which may Figure 5. Note on this project I began with the source image upside down. To turn your image upside down choose Canvas 4 Rotate Canvas 4 In the remainder of this chapter I shall explain these two phases of the painting process. There will be plenty of time for working in details later. In a closed system, when there is an increase in order in one part of the system, there is an associated increase in disorder and chaos somewhere else in the system.

Thus order is always balanced by disorder, and the two coexist simultaneously. We can think of this as a universal law of harmony that balances the two opposites. An analogy to entropy in a painting is the level of abstraction or disorder. In painting, abstraction and representation coexist simultaneously, just like disorder and order in the universal law of entropy.

Every representational painting, that is, a painted flat surface that represents something three-dimensional, is an illusion. Our visual perception system interprets the brush marks in terms of representing something which they are not. As artists we can draw upon the connections between art and entropy to help us be aware of, tolerate and control the relationship between order and disorder and between abstraction and representation in our painting process.

Try out the brushes in JeremyFaves2. In the three examples shown here you see the use of quite different brushes. Whatever you choose to start with, I recommend you change brushes several times to get variety in types of brush marks. Before you make your first brush strokes, look intensely at your source image. Half close your eyes and carefully observe how the darks and lights vary and contrast in your source image. Start putting some brush strokes into your working image that show you roughly where the lightest lights and darkest darks are, and that indicate the main shapes and lines of movement.

Use your own color choices, not Clone Color. Pick colors that evoke the mood of your subject, not just what colors happen to be in the photo. In the examples shown here look at the similarities and differences between the source image and muck up colors. Rapidly make large, expressive, energetic brush strokes that describe where the lightest lights and darkest darks are, and that follow the basic forms and movement of your source image. Vary your colors regularly. Avoid too much uniformity as you fill the canvas. Continually look back and forth between your source image and your working image as you paint.

Make every mark intentional, not random. This is about rapidly filling your canvas with loose brush strokes. Add a variety of types of brushes and brush marks. Avoid repetition of the same brush stroke and color across the whole canvas. The next step is to selectively reveal some of our main subject, refine and emphasize select details, review what still needs resolving in the painting and then act to resolve it.

The process of reveal, refine, review and resolve is an iterative one that is repeated many, many times. The take away from this information is to be patient and persevere. It can take time. The process of refining and resolving an artwork can take days, months or even years. In some senses it never ends— when I look at a painting I made years ago I often see things that I still want to change and resolve.

One answer is to selectively reveal your subject with a combination of a little clone color for positioning and scale reference, and mostly non-clone color. You can also choose to avoid Clone Color altogether and allow your painting to have a more freehand feel. That is a stylistic choice that is in your hands as the artist and that you may wish to experiment with. Here are some general tips to get you going on this stage of the painting process.

Look at File 4 Clone Source to make sure your source image is the clone source. If not, manually set it to be Clone Source. For some brushes, such as the Sargent Brush and Impressionist brush, in Clone mode you will see a cross-hair in the source image showing where the color is derived from. This can be very useful. Not all cloning brushes show the cross-hair for instance, many of the Cloners category brushes do not. You will see that you bring in color from your source image. These marks are for reference. Because you want to do only what is necessary to engage the imagination of the audience.

Suggestion is always more effective than exposition. Past a certain point, the more effort you put into wealth of detail, the more you encourage the audience to become spectators rather than participants. As you work at this stage of your painting see how little detail you can bring back into the painting from the source photograph to evoke the subject. Here are examples of the three case study paintings showing how I began to reveal the subjects and define details. Note the use of zoomed in views with both the source and working images, and the use of a relatively small brush size.

Prior to the stage caught here, the Tinting 4 Basic Round Brush had been used to create soft diffuse color and the Artists 4 Impressionist Brush had been used for more detailed work. You see in this figure the Cloners 4 Oil Brush, which has a slight Impasto effect, being applied to define the bridge. Refine Selected Details Through Careful Attention to Tone and Contrasts Once you have mapped out some critical portions of your subject stick to non-clone color. At that stage further reduce the size of your brushes and focus on observing carefully in your source image the exact tonal relationships, shapes and contrasts between adjacent blocks of color in regions of your composition that you wish to emphasize and draw attention to.

Then work to reproduce, or even exaggerate, those relationships and contrasts with your paint in your working image. This process involves a lot of looking back and forth between your source image and your working image. It is helpful for both images to be zoomed in so you can easily observe the details. It can be helpful from time to time to choose Window 4 Underpainting and take the Saturation slider all the way to the left with both the source and working images.

This allows you to compare them in Desaturated mode and focus more on the lights and darks. Click the Reset button in the Underpainting palette to return to full color. Review What is Working and Not Working 1 Periodically step away from your painting and take a short break. I suggest you do this at least every 20 minutes, if not more frequently. This is an important time to step back and consider the big picture.

It is easy to get lost in details and lose sight of the overall composition. Try zooming out until the working image is the size of a postage stamp. Does it work well as a composition at that small scale? Are the lights and darks clearly discernible at that scale?

Note that the source and working images are now the right way up achieved using Canvas 4 Rotate Canvas 4 since at this stage of going into detail it felt easier and more efficient. As with the refining process, look back and forth between the source image and your working image, and continuously compare tonal relationships. Periodically use the Underpainting palette Saturation slider to test how your painting is working in grayscale. Bootstrap Cloning If you are finding that you are getting too photographic or are being tempted to use too much clone color, one solution is to use one of your earlier painted versions of your image as the clone source instead of the source photograph.

The Cloners 4 Camel Oil Cloner is a good brush for cloning detail with a smooth oily look when bootstrapping. Return-to-Photo Layer Technique Alternatively you may find that you want to get back more photographic detail. One way to do that is to use the return-to-photo layer technique. Here are the steps. Make sure Preserve Transparency is unchecked.

These oily brushes do not work on transparent layers but do work on imagery already on a layer. This variation can then be used as a clone source for selectively cloning into a layer, as described in the Mix It In section later in this chapter page This centers the image. Let go of the Space bar. This will paste in the source image as a layer over the painted image. Experiment with the different composite methods Gel, Colorize, etc. The Composite Methods pop-up menu is at the top left of the Layers palette and initially says Default. Composite methods are the Painter equivalent of layer blending modes in Photoshop.

One or two may give you an interesting effect you like, or a portion of which you may wish to use. I find that Overlay and Hard Light composite methods are the two I use the most. However, when the current brush is a Cloner Brush, or any other brush with the Clone Color icon active in the Colors palette, then the same shortcut becomes the shortcut for resetting the clone start position, used for point-to-point cloning.

If you do accidentally reset the clone start position, go to File 4 Clone Source and reset the clone source back to the source file you want it to be. If you find the registration positioning of your cloning is offset, choose the Cloners 4 Soft Cloner and click the Restore Default Variant icon left of the Property Bar. Smaller, Finer Detail over Bigger, Rougher Brushstokes As you paint, continuously look for ways to add depth and richness to your painting by varying your brushes, your brush size, your colors and tone.

Look at the ways painters, ranging from the French Impressionist Claude Monet to pop artist Andy Warhol, have used accent strokes and dabs to great effect. You will not complete your painting in one cycle of these steps but in many, many cycles, each one of which hones in on your vision for the painting and, usually, brings you closer to completion. The Imperfect Process The process of refining and resolving a painting is sometimes awkward and ugly!

You may find your painting either veering towards too much detail and too much photo, or conversely veering away again into too much loose abstract brushwork. Just stay committed and work through the process. Please note the large number of versions that I went through in this phase of the creative process with the three examples used in this chapter. I think of myself as wrestling with the painting.

It may sometimes feel like a fight, yet it is also a dance in which the painting is my partner and the subject is my music. Something I always tell my kids, great films have as many flaws and bad things about them as bad films. Then you pull the wick out some more and all of a sudden it lights! The audience comes out and they just talk about the bad things. But then you change it, you move it around, you move it here, you do this, and you tweak it a little.

And when it lights all the bad things go away. Mix It In—Combining Different Versions Together We started this chapter with the exploration of some different options for working from a photograph, including the use of Auto-Painting and the Woodcut effect. Thus we generated some variations based on the same image. One possibility at your fingertips at any stage in the process is to mix from different stages or variations.

Often an effect applied everywhere is overkill. These files should all have exactly the same number of pixels wide by high. Set up your different versions in small, zoomed out display windows on the left of your Painter desktop Figure 5. Although in theory you could have any number of different Figure 5. You can see here how important the file naming system is. If you had a very long project name in your file name you could not know which file is which in the Clone Source list.

Click on the chosen base image and make sure it is the currently active image in Painter. You can verify this by making sure the file name has a check mark beside it at the bottom of the Window menu. Choose File 4 Clone and make a clone copy of the base image version. Make the brush size relatively large. Choose File 4 Clone Source and select which version you wish to clone into the base image. Once you have selected that file name in the Clone Source list it will have a check mark beside it next time you look Figure 5. Click on the New Layer icon, third from the right in the row of icons at the bottom of the Layers palette Figure 5.

Double click on the Layer 1 name and rename with a short descriptive name Figure 5. Now you can clone into the layer, using the Soft Cloner, from your chosen source Figure 5. At any time you can return to File 4 Clone Source, change the clone source, and paint from a different version into a new layer. Painting in the layers allows you to adjust the opacity of each layer in the Layers list.

You could also add a layer mask by clicking on the Create Layer Mask icon on the far right of the row of icons at the bottom of the Layers palette. Painting in black with, for instance, an Figure 5. Airbrush 4 Digital Airbrush Figure 5. Painting with white in the layer mask does the opposite, bringing back the layer visibility and concealing what is underneath. Flatten During the course of your painting process you may end up generating layers, depending on the brushes and techniques you use. An important workflow strategy is to end up flattening your image.

This preserves the editability of every layer. This command will flatten all layers, provided there are no locked layers. Layers can be locked and unlocked simply by clicking on the lower right corner of the layer in the Layers list, immediately beneath the Layer icon that informs you what type of layer it is. A locked layer is protected from accidental painting or moving around or changing of the composite method equivalent of the blending modes in Photoshop. If you have a lot of layers it can be useful to lock the ones you do not wish to alter.

When you wish to flatten an image make sure all the layers are unlocked. This is now openable in all other programs that handle bitmap images, including Photoshop. If you save a layered file in Painter using Photoshop PSD file format, the file will open, with the layers still present as layers, in Photoshop. Learn More about VitalSource Bookshelf.

An eBook version of this title already exists in your shopping cart. If you would like to replace it with a different purchasing option please remove the current eBook option from your cart. Add to Wish List. Description Reviews Contents Author Subjects. Description Jeremy Sutton is one of the world's premier Painter artists www. This edition has been completely revamped to cover all of the new features in Corel Painter 11 and the Wacom Intuos4 pen-tablet, including: The Bookshelf application offers access: