Tonal blocks of colour needed?

[dicky_mac]

Hi!

I'm having a little problem with picking out tonal colour values, especially with portraits. I'm trying to create a tonal drawing as the basis for some watercolours. Being partially sighted and colour blind doesn't help much!

I have tried using the Magic Wand to select colours of the same value, then use colour picker to select colour from that selection and fill. This does work, but not very well.

Is there a way to convert a picture to blocks of colour with the same value?

Many thanks
Richard

[Doug]

Hi!

I'm having a little problem with picking out tonal colour values, especially with portraits. I'm trying to create a tonal drawing as the basis for some watercolours. Being partially sighted and colour blind doesn't help much!

I have tried using the Magic Wand to select colours of the same value, then use colour picker to select colour from that selection and fill. This does work, but not very well.

Is there a way to convert a picture to blocks of colour with the same value?

Many thanks
Richard

What exactly do you mean by 'picking out tonal colour'?

Do you mean something like this:

Painter let's you setup and save a new colour set based on the colours of the image. Go to Colour Sets and click on the small right facing arrow. In it's drop down menu, click on 'New Colour Set From Image' You now have a new colour set derived from the portrait. Don't forget to save it.

[dicky_mac]

Hi Doug and thanks for the reply!

This is one of those areas that is causing me a few problems.

My way of understanding 'tone' is that if a picture was taken back to a black and white image, then the tonal quality would be directly related to the varying scales of grey, from white to black; so Tone is value based on the grey scale?

When this relates to 'highlights and lowlights' it becomes a simple matter; the hightlights are the lighter tones and the lowlights and the darker tones.

When it comes to picking out the tonal quality of a colour picture, I have a little difficulty.

What I do now is I remove the colour saturation off, so revert picture to black and white, and then use the magic wand to select like tones. This helps when I want to repaint the picture in my own style, but retain the tonal quality.

I hope that makes sense??

In Painter they refer to Luminance, is this the same as tone?

Cheers
Richard

[dicky_mac]

Hi again Doug!

I have just been playing with your advice about creating a colour set from an image. This does the job!!

So many thanks
Richard