PS Background Gradient Fill... w. foreground objects!

[buntyone]

Hi Everyone,

I'm stuck on something. I'm fixing up a single-panel hand-drawn comic in Photoshop (5.0.2). And I'd like to do a soft gradient fill of a moire pattern in the background space to add some texture. However, I have main characters breaking up the background white space. How would I get a gradient fill pattern throughout the background which bypasses all the main foreground elements? Hopefully without having to select and cut every individual foreground element? I've seen this effect in a lot of places and just wondered how to do it. Anyone know?

Thanks,

Buntyone

[Darren Schwindaman]

Well, the solution will be some type of selection.
If the artwork's clean enough, you can use the magic wand tool to select an area that's filled in. So if the white space in the background is all one area contained in black outlines, you should be able to select that.
The longer way will be using one of the selection tools to draw the area you want to fill in around the foreground objects and just do the gradient inside of that.
Hope that helps.

[buntyone]

Hi,

I guess I should have added the fact that many of my main characters are not in completed outlines. There may be a break in the face, where the arms meet the body, or somewhere around the feet, which I do purposely - it's a style thing.
So, if I try to magic wand the entire background, it sifts right into these cracks and ends up selecting parts of my foreground characters as well. Any easy way around this without having to close the character outlines or select around each character practically pixel-by-pixel?

[smygba]

Use one of the lasso tools to select all around a character that you've coloured. and close the polygon off. you'll have 1 character/element selected, but I'm assuming you've got a few of them here so

hold that the Shift button and you'll see a + sign next to the lasso that'll let you select more characters + objects.

once you've selected all you coloured elements, hit Ctrl+I to invert your selection and add your gradient tool.

If you need to remove something from selection use the lasso tool and ALT on a PC, Option Key on a MAC

[tekende]

It helps to plan ahead on these matters and do the background as a seperate layer, so you can just fill it in, and then color the characters and foreground objects on top of it. When I color my strips and stuff, I use lots of layers--background, objects, flesh, clothes, hair, etc. Makes it a lot easier to color various objects without having to worry about things in front, and makes it a LOT easier to make changes later.

[smygba]

It helps to plan ahead on these matters and do the background as a seperate layer, so you can just fill it in, and then color the characters and foreground objects on top of it. When I color my strips and stuff, I use lots of layers--background, objects, flesh, clothes, hair, etc. Makes it a lot easier to color various objects without having to worry about things in front, and makes it a LOT easier to make changes later.

I'm not a colourist, but from what I've read, colourists colour in the channels, not the layers pallette. They could still do that, but they'd have to do whats called "stacking"

[tekende]

I'm not a colourist, but from what I've read, colourists colour in the channels, not the layers pallette. They could still do that, but they'd have to do whats called "stacking"

Maybe in Photo Shop, but I use Paint Shop Pro. Things are a bit different on that, I believe. So far as I'm aware, my version of PSP doesn't have channels. Consequently, I don't know what channels are or what they do either...

[banshee]

Ive experimented with both channels and layers.. and... I found channels to be confusing.. but.. thats me hehehehehe.. I ain't no colourist either But like tekende, everything's on layers, from skintone to anything...

good luck!

[KaRzA]

I also color using layers (on gimp, opencanvas...). It's easy to use one for the background and another one over it for the characters.
I usually don't make selections, just paint... but if the magic wand doesn't work for you, you'll have to do it using the lasso tool, that's the way

[smygba]

Well if you colour in Channels, your file should remain smaller, and its easier to keep the black lines 100% black