Technical Slop

Picking Colours

I don't do a whole lot of painting with PhotoShop. One of the biggest reasons is that I have problems with picking colours. While working with HSB, aka HSV, is good, the Colour palette in HSB mode still isn't quite enough for me. I have a real hard time visualizing how to use the damn thing when I'm trying to achieve specific effects. Oh, I can use it, but not with great proficiency when painting. I need more.

It all started when somebody mentioned using the Alt key to temporarily get the Eyedropper. That's easy to do, eh? So I started using it. Great little tip.

The Eyedropper works on Merged. Cool beans. That means I can make a new Layer, add some colours, then Gauss them to get a decent spread. Then I can go back to painting on a different Layer while still having access to the colours on the other Layer. Not only that, but I can turn the "palette" Layer on/off and move it around as needed.

One thing I noticed is that the Alt for Eyedropper trick works on documents that aren't active. I could have a totally seperate doc with all of the colours that I could possibly want. Sure. Why not? It would beat the snot out of using the sliders in the Colour palette or that dinky little box across the bottom.

So I made my own colour wheel.

The bottom Layer is an Angle Gradient using the full spectrum. Then an added Layer with a Radial Gradient set to Hard Light. Works for me and is usually enough to most things done.

This is the colour wheel with some vector tossed on top. Basically a "mask" on a Custom Shape Layer. It's 50% Grey to help prevent tricks being played on the eyes.

When I made the Custom Shape, I took advantage of the various Boolean operations that can be used on Paths in a Custom Shape. One big Add circle on the ouside, a smaller circle Subtracted, then an even smaller Add circle. I also added 3 long rectangles that Subtract. Becaues it's vector, and the various parts are sub-paths, I can move it around and do all sorts of things with it. Free Transform on one of the paths with Alt held down is great.

I tried saving the paths as a Custom Shape, but it just didn't work. The paths got optimized and I lost all that tweakability. That is, I couldn't Free Transform the individual circles and all that. It got turned into one big Add shape. Talk about suck. So, to keep that tweakability, I keep it in a PSD as is, then drag-n-drop to another doc if I need it there for some odd reason.

This version of the colour wheel, with the vector tossed in, is great for exploring and experimenting with colour theories. It's also a great help when picking a colour scheme for a web-site.

Take a peak. Download basecw.zip ~59k

Sometimes, when I'm feeling really frisky, I'll add and HSV Adjustment Layer in between. It may seem a bit like over-kill, but it really does help me when doing various things with colours. In the HSV Ad-Layer, the only slider that I play with Saturation.

It is kind of neat to play with the Hue slider and watching the colours "rotate".

Here is a little variation on the above. This one has the added bonus of markers on a seperate Layer. Sometimes I get lost in the values that I pick, and I need some help finding my way back.

And here we have an example of really getting nuts with the Layers.

A Linear Grad on the bottom. Then a Gradient Map Ad-Layer. Then and HSV Ad-Layer. Then the Hard Light Layer. In this particular example, the Saturation in the HSV Ad-Layer is up all the way.

While this may seem like total over-kill, the amount of control is tremendous. I doubt you'll ever have the need to take things this far, but it is fun to play with.

Swatches! This is an excellant way of keeping colours organized. Personally, I don't use swatches, but I felt the need for this discussion.

Some of the colours in this particular set are actual flesh tones and the rest of them were taken from the above. As a matter of fact, I used the real flesh tone colours to make the Grad-Map Ad-Layer. Then I grabbed a few extra colours. Nothing like taking existing things and expounding on them.

Well, now I've got a comfortable way of getting colours that I want to use. This is a way that makes sense to me. It's not always the whole ordeal, but just an extra Layer with some sample colours and Gauss. Sometimes it's just a snippet of a doc that has the colours that I want (usually various flesh tones). Because of this, I have been practicing my painting skills. Believe me, just by having a colour picking system that I am comfortable with has really improved my painting skills as I can now concentrate more on actual painting.

One last thing. Personally, I am constantly changing my Eyedropper setting. I am constantly changing it back and forth between Point Sample and 5x5. Both setttings have their uses. However, this setting does affect how the Magic Wand.

Here is an example of that. In both, I used the Magic Wand with Tolerence: 0 to select the little red dot. The one on the left is Eyedropper Point Sample, and the one on the right is Eyedropper 5x5. I'm sure you can see the difference.

I'll never forget when I first learned about this little feature. At the time, it was a foible since it was wreaking havoc on what I was doing and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Talk about a hair-pulling experience. Now that I'm aware of it, I know what to look for when things go wrong. It is no longer a foible, but a feature.

That's about it and my travels with picking colours. Currently, I don't have much more to offer along these lines. However, you might want to check out Brush Making. Colours and brushes -- now it's just a matter of practice practice practice.