Isolating Line art in Painter8

[pgregory]

Does anyone know how to isolate line art cleanly that's been scanned into the computer. In particular I'm trying to create a layer of colored prismacolor pencil line art (it's very dark prismacolor line art). Whenever I do it using the magic wand, or auto select/image luminance (or any of the options under the auto select menu) I'm able to isolate the line art but it's got a halo of light area around it. I've also tried selecting it in the above manner then transforming it to a path-based selection and trying to isolate it in that way but without luck. I want to retain the crispness of the original line. Can anyone help on this?

Thanks,
PG

[pgregory]

Does anyone know how to isolate line art cleanly that's been scanned into the computer. In particular I'm trying to create a layer of colored prismacolor pencil line art (it's very dark prismacolor line art). Whenever I do it using the magic wand, or auto select/image luminance (or any of the options under the auto select menu) I'm able to isolate the line art but it's got a halo of light area around it. I've also tried selecting it in the above manner then transforming it to a path-based selection and trying to isolate it in that way but without luck. I want to retain the crispness of the original line. Can anyone help on this?

Thanks,
PG

[Thelonious]

hello,

I'm only up to Painter 6 myself but here's a couple of things that might help.

P6 has options in the magic want to control the "feathering" and "tolerance" which might help.

Also you could make the magic wand produce a user mask instead of a selection. Then you could apply filters to the user mask to clean it up.


Also perhaps you could go to the "curves" control (don't know where that might be on P8) and steepen the curve, ie move the top point to the left and the lower point to the right which will increase the contrast. Mayber "levels" would be better than curves come to think of it. This might make the selection cleaner, then try the image luminance auto select again. You could use the curves either on the original before selecting or on a user mask after selecting.

[Jinny Brown]

Hi Thelonious,

Painter 8 has Alpha Channels instead of User Masks. (Everything, like Layers, Channels, Colors, etc. is in its own palette instead of grouped in the Objects or Art Materials palettes.)

With Select > Auto Select, Using: Image Luminance, you can get a fairly good selection. Then open a New Layer and with the selection active on the Layer, you can use Select > Feather, then Effects > Fill.

You might be happy to know (as I am) that awful black on the Layer problem when we painted on a Visibility Mask onto corresponding transparent areas of the Layer... is gone in Painter 8!

Painter 8 has Layer Masks used to hide parts of the Layer or show previously hidden parts of the Layer, and we paint, as with Photoshop, black to hide and white to restore to visibility.

Needless to say, Photoshop users are happier with Painter 8 than they were with previous versions.

In a lot of ways, I like it better too, though I hate the Brush Creator (used in place of the Brush Controls palette) as it opens like a separate program and disconnects the user from his/her artwork while making setting adjustments. Still, it has some neat addtions to brush controls.

Progress! Good and bad mixed as always.

Jin
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