So
you'll understand how to tell if a brush variant has blending and
smearing characteristics:
- Resaturaton (Resat) controls
how much paint is in the brush stroke.
- Bleed controls how much
existing color is picked up and painted in the brush stroke, along with
the current color.
Brush
variants that have Resaturation set low and Bleed set high, can be used
to paint and blend or used to just blend.
Blending on
transparent areas of
a Layer is going to present problems no matter what you might do to
prevent them. By Blending, I mean painting with any brush variant that
has blending and smearing characteristics, not just the obvious
Blenders' variants.
Here's a little demo to show you what these hazards
can be:
As
you can see, there are three pot holes along the road that you might
run into when painting or blending on transparent areas of a Layer with
brush variants that have blending and smearing characteristics:
- White when painting or blending
on transparent areas of the Layer.
- Wrong color when the Pick Up
Underlying Colors box is checked while
painting or blending and, later, other color is added below the
blending Layer.
- Black when painting or blending
with either
the Preserve Transparency Box checked or a selecton based on Layer
transparency active.
Taking enough time to plan ahead can
help
to avoid these difficulties and sometimes, it's best to do this kind of
painting and blending:
- After you're sure no painting
or
blending will accidentally slop over onto transparent areas of a Layer
because here's enough color surrounding the areas you'll be blending,
- When you're sure it's safe to
check the Pick Up Underlying Colors box
because there will never be different colors added below the Layer
where you're painting or blending, or...
- After multiple
Layers are Grouped and Collapsed to a single Layer leaving no
transparent areas on that Layer, the image is flattened to the Canvas,
or you've made a Clone to work on while fine tuning the image (i.e.
painting, blending, cleaning up details, etc.).
Usually, there's a way to work around
what seem like immovable roadblocks.
Additional Notes:
- You'll need both the Preserve
Transparency box unchecked and the Pick Up Underlying Color box
checked if you want to blend colors on a Layer with
colors on underlying Layers and/or the Canvas. (Be sure to read the
following bug info.)
- In Painter X and X.1 (and maybe
also in Painter IX, IX 9.1 and IX.5 though I don't recall for sure)
there's a bug related to the Preserve Transparency box:
Sometimes it appears Preserve Transparency is not enabled
because there's no check in the check box. Even so, we are not able to
paint on transparent areas of the Layer.
The solution is to click the Preserve Transparency box until a check
appears, then click once more to disable Preserve Transparency.
Happy Planning!
© 2005 - 2007, Jinny Brown
originally published in a forum on December 8, 2005 and December 9, 2005
This version edited a bit and published on September 4, 2007
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