Color variance

[Steve Newport]

Hey, while painting my most recent pic I've come across a dilemna that I can work through, but it would be much easier if it was automatic
When I'm painting it's usually over a gradient in a shape. However, when painting down a gradient from light to dark you need to change your color constantly so it will look natural. The light color i'm painting with will look 10 times lighter a few inches down. What I'm asking is: is there a way to set a specific distance your painting color is away from whatever background color you may be painting over? Like if I wanted my painting color to be 'this much' more saturated and lighter than the color/s I'm painting over automatically, could I do that in PS7?!
Let me know if this is making sense!

Steve Newport

-My Gallery-

-Featured Artist 2002-

[Steve Newport]

Hey, while painting my most recent pic I've come across a dilemna that I can work through, but it would be much easier if it was automatic
When I'm painting it's usually over a gradient in a shape. However, when painting down a gradient from light to dark you need to change your color constantly so it will look natural. The light color i'm painting with will look 10 times lighter a few inches down. What I'm asking is: is there a way to set a specific distance your painting color is away from whatever background color you may be painting over? Like if I wanted my painting color to be 'this much' more saturated and lighter than the color/s I'm painting over automatically, could I do that in PS7?!
Let me know if this is making sense!

Steve Newport

-My Gallery-

-Featured Artist 2002-

[s.winders]

I think I understand what you mean Steve.Try making a new layer and then setting overlay or hardlight maybe or possibly color,try something as the blend mode,dont know if it will work though.The other route you can try is take one of your PS7 color presets from the pre sets folder {preferably one with not many swatches on it,ok now copy that swatch and load it into PS,whack all but one of the swatches.Save this swach and call it null swatch so that you have an empty swatch for making a new color swatch of your own colors.Copy the null swatch and load that name into PS,now plan out the colors you want to use ahead of time for your image and you have just the right colors which you want on your own swatch.



You could also try 50% layer opacity for a shift to a lighter color with lighten or screen,and maybe multiply of 10 or something for a darker color.I think you might be able to do it but it will take quite a bit of tweaking.There could also be something to do it whiich escapes at me this time as well though http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif



Stu.