Comment on Holly by Kittenpants
I sorted through about twenty stock photos to find the leaves I wanted. I think the bushes of the pics I used were in a greenhouse or something. They were so very shiny!
Yeah, I'm not all that thrilled with the background, and how it works with the berries... I actually ripped it out and re-did it a couple of times. I'd like to re-do it in black and deep burgundy, but this was supposed to be for a cheery holiday card, and I thought that'd be too dark. I also thought about sort of a neutral steel-blue, with sketchy charcoal shadows. I think I'll play with it more once we get past the holidays.
How masks work in Painter 5. Step one: forget that they're called masks, because that's not what they are, really. A better name would be "stored selections". In art class, when I masked off a section of my work with tape or rubber cement or whatever, it was a permanent thing that would stay there no matter what other goofy thing I did, until such time as I peeled it off, revealing the crisp, pristine space that had not been subjected to whatever madness I had inflicted on the rest of the canvas/paper/Volkswagen. This is the way many art programs treat masks: You create a mask, it stays there until you turn it off. Not so with Painter 5! You click on another layer, you use the wrong tool, and WHAM! Your mask is off and suddenly you're smearing paint over the wrong thing. Guh.
In my copy of Painter, you carefully lasso off the area you want to work with (or inverse to protect it) -- ctrl-lasso to remove sections from your selection, and shift-lasso to add to it. Once you have it exactly the way you want it, go to the Select Menu and choose "save selection" It asks if I want to save as a new selection or copy over an old one. I always choose new because I'm scared of blowing away the wrong one. Now, when you look at the "masks" dialog, you see that you have a new mask. You can double-click it and rename it and fiddle with some controls, but mostly I leave 'em be. So, I continue puttering around with my piece, and sooner or later, I get sidetracked or swap to a pasted layer and my selection is no longer there, but I'd hate to have to lasso off that funky area again just because I can't color within the lines. So I pop down to the masks dialog and select the mask I want to use, then press the button that says "load selection". It then asks me whether I want to replace what's currently selected on my painting, or add to it, or subtract from it, or intersect with it-- basic boolean operations. Most of the time, replace is what I want. When I click, that original selection I made is surrounded by the magical crawling ants once again. :woot: I've noticed that for whatever reason, going through the Select...Save Selection menu is the only way I can consistently get a working mask, the button on the dialog does nothing, and the options from the mask drop-down don't seem to work.
This is how I was able to re-do the background. I had made masks for each leaf and berry and section of stem as I went (yeah, I'm a bit obsessive), so when I wanted to try a new background, I was able to add together all of those masks to make a colossal mask of everything but the background. After laughing maniacally over my newfound power, I realized I still didn't know what to do for the background. I'd promised my editor a card in red and green, but neither red nor green backgrounds looked good. So I messed around with dark splotchy stuff and decided I could always go back later... because I had a mask! BWA HA HA!
Caveat Pictor: This is a version of Painter at least three versions out of date. Other software and other versions of Painter might behave NOTHING like this at all. Beats me.
I am being really verbose tonight. I have no idea why, I'm really not like this all the time. I never make comments this long. I wonder if I have a fever...
Yeah, I'm not all that thrilled with the background, and how it works with the berries... I actually ripped it out and re-did it a couple of times. I'd like to re-do it in black and deep burgundy, but this was supposed to be for a cheery holiday card, and I thought that'd be too dark. I also thought about sort of a neutral steel-blue, with sketchy charcoal shadows. I think I'll play with it more once we get past the holidays.
How masks work in Painter 5. Step one: forget that they're called masks, because that's not what they are, really. A better name would be "stored selections". In art class, when I masked off a section of my work with tape or rubber cement or whatever, it was a permanent thing that would stay there no matter what other goofy thing I did, until such time as I peeled it off, revealing the crisp, pristine space that had not been subjected to whatever madness I had inflicted on the rest of the canvas/paper/Volkswagen. This is the way many art programs treat masks: You create a mask, it stays there until you turn it off. Not so with Painter 5! You click on another layer, you use the wrong tool, and WHAM! Your mask is off and suddenly you're smearing paint over the wrong thing. Guh.
In my copy of Painter, you carefully lasso off the area you want to work with (or inverse to protect it) -- ctrl-lasso to remove sections from your selection, and shift-lasso to add to it. Once you have it exactly the way you want it, go to the Select Menu and choose "save selection" It asks if I want to save as a new selection or copy over an old one. I always choose new because I'm scared of blowing away the wrong one. Now, when you look at the "masks" dialog, you see that you have a new mask. You can double-click it and rename it and fiddle with some controls, but mostly I leave 'em be. So, I continue puttering around with my piece, and sooner or later, I get sidetracked or swap to a pasted layer and my selection is no longer there, but I'd hate to have to lasso off that funky area again just because I can't color within the lines. So I pop down to the masks dialog and select the mask I want to use, then press the button that says "load selection". It then asks me whether I want to replace what's currently selected on my painting, or add to it, or subtract from it, or intersect with it-- basic boolean operations. Most of the time, replace is what I want. When I click, that original selection I made is surrounded by the magical crawling ants once again. :woot: I've noticed that for whatever reason, going through the Select...Save Selection menu is the only way I can consistently get a working mask, the button on the dialog does nothing, and the options from the mask drop-down don't seem to work.
This is how I was able to re-do the background. I had made masks for each leaf and berry and section of stem as I went (yeah, I'm a bit obsessive), so when I wanted to try a new background, I was able to add together all of those masks to make a colossal mask of everything but the background. After laughing maniacally over my newfound power, I realized I still didn't know what to do for the background. I'd promised my editor a card in red and green, but neither red nor green backgrounds looked good. So I messed around with dark splotchy stuff and decided I could always go back later... because I had a mask! BWA HA HA!
Caveat Pictor: This is a version of Painter at least three versions out of date. Other software and other versions of Painter might behave NOTHING like this at all. Beats me.
I am being really verbose tonight. I have no idea why, I'm really not like this all the time. I never make comments this long. I wonder if I have a fever...