[Capt. Fred]

C'mon then! Why doesn't one of you talentend programmers get off your butt and make me a photoshop plug-in for proper colour mixing.

I mean, it totally sucks -- the current method of getting colours I mean.
Like, say I pick the main colours I want to in my pic then If I wanna mix them I ahve top do it using semi-transparent strokes rather than just mixing my colour from my main ones and then painting it on opaque.. well anyway: I want this plug-in by Monday -- you've got the weekend. Get working.

[Deckard]

What I do to mix colours, I open a small empty canvas (256x256), and bring
in colours from from the palette that I want to use, and mix them with the
smudge-tool, with brush-settings set to 'Other dynamics' in the brush preset.

I use a round brush, set to about 20 or 30px to mix the colours.

So when I start to paint I just use the ALT-key (with brush-tool active), and tap
my pen in the 'mixing-window' to get the desired colour, works like a charm.
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[Capt. Fred]

Heh! Nice one. cool, might have to try that one for myself. Smudge tool.. yeah.

Cool.

[Jin]

Hi,

Another quick way to do it is to either open a small canvas, or make a small selection on an empty Layer above your working canvas, pick the two colors, and fill the canvas or Layer with a gradient.

Now you can pick colors anywhere along the gradient.

Make another Layer and do another gradient.. and so on.

Advantages of doing it this way:

Multiple gradients in a single image (Layers).

Many options to pick within the gradient for colors.

You can save the gradient canvas, or copy the Layer to a new canvas and save it.

It can be saved with a similar file name to the image you're working on and opened with that image in a later painting session.

It's only one method, and can be used with others, whenever one or another is most convenient and appropriate.

[zaar]

I wish they would make a keyboard shortcut to bring up the color dialog in PS. Or even better have one that works like a palette/window and with the option to turn it into a wheel and triangle like the one in painter.

Don't think I've heard of any one (that uses PS daily) not complain about this. The sliders are just not a good way to pick colors with. And having to click on the color swatch every time to bring up the dialog is really annoying. A Shortcut or one that's always open is what I want!

[eyalyab]

uhm, the way i see it, mixing colors is the way to get lots of tones for traditional painters using REAL paint, where they dont have like 16 million colors. why do you need to mix colors in photoshop? it makes no sense. just pick all the colors you want, you have them all right there in the colors palette window, no need to mix.
but that's just me, and maybe i didnt undrstand what you asked for. =]

[cheney]

I find that layering and using Photoshop's layer modes really goes a long way to help place colors for lighting and shading.
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[lafolli]

Painter's oil brushes blend colors pretty well. I wish they'd add a plugin or something to Photoshop for a similar brush. Thats the main reason I prefer to work in Painter. Photoshop just isnt as intuitive for painting to me. Sure, you can use the smudge or smear tool to do the same thing but to me that's twice the work
Picking out all the colors you need is a waste of time imo, if you have a brush that can do the mixing. You can just pick out the major colors and then use the brush to blend between them. Besides, I could never pick out every single color I'm going to use, it would take up 2 or 3 pages of swatches!

[Capt. Fred]

eyalyab: I like to mixing colours as I aint becuase it allows me to make them more interesting -- when I paint traditionally I just get the three primary cvolours and white; I don't like 'pre-mixing' colours, it makes stuff look flat and dull unless you're going for the comic-book-style cel-colouring or somthing.

In photoshop it'd be cool to pic 2-4 main colours and then just smush them into each other in a palette or even what would be cooler is to pick up multiple colours on the brush and mix them as you paint on the actually document -- but that's not something for a photomanipulation program; that's more in paitner's line of things.

[Alpha_Meta]

Ah, crud. I read through the color section of Loomis's Creative Illustration

http://www.fineart.sk/loomis/page_01.htm

and now I think I see what Fred's getting at. I did this little test:

[img]www.extinctionlevelevent.com/misc/mixTest.jpg

I've never mixed real paints together before, but if I understand Fred correctly Pshop isn't mixing blue and yellow or red and blue together right. Or at least, when Pshop mixes those colors together they don't come out as bright as real paints would (I assume real paints would produce brighter colors like the ones on the outside of my test image, the ones I mixed with the sliders?). From a painter's perspective, that's pretty messed up.

Can anyone demonstrate a way to mix bright secondaries in an image? Perhaps someone with 7.0 could do a test with test with Deckard's technique and post the results here? Perhaps someone with Painter could do the same?[/img]

[pierre]

I do it like deckard, the window works just as a palette. Just want to add a litte tip though, try to paint in the palette with different levels of transparency, it can produce great colors. If I am painting a scene with harsh sunlight, I prepare my colors according to that etc. Further more, as you progress with your painting your painting itself becomes a great palette.

But one thing that I still can't figure out why Adobe hasn't implemented yet, is a floating color model window, like painter and many other apps. It would be like a blessing from heaven.

[Deckard]

Another nice way to get colours, is to use the channels, fill the red channel with
a gradient of pure red to black starting in the top left corner, the green one
with a gradient of pure green to black starting in the top right corner, and the
blue channel with a gradient of pure blue to black starting from bottom center.

When you go back to the RGB channel you will get the result below.


_________________
"It would be quicker to train an APE!"
-- Basil Fawlty

[Capt. Fred]

I'd much prefer an approah where I mix colours from a select few main colours of my choice and then paint on the resultant colour at any level of opacity I like.

Basically I prefer the way I colour mix in the physical world: I select my main colours for a picture -- often approximately red, approximately yellow and approximately blue -- and then I drag the different colours into/thugh each other in different amounts to achieve the desired color; pretty darn normal method.

I prefer to MIX the colours in this way becuase it becomes more a relative thing, than an absoloute. for example I'm painting a red floor and then it goes into shadow, I want it bluer a little greyer and darker, say, I add some blue a little white and some black, for eg.. This way I'm not deailing with saying, "in sahdow the colour is 'X', I'm saying, in the shadow the colour is 'red gone a little bluer and darker'. It appeals to me to do it relative like that.
Sometimes I wouldn't expect to be using a colour I am using, given the appearnce of the subject I am painting, and I would not necessarily think to choose that certain colour if I were forced to pick it from a colour chart..

Actually, thinking of it now as I am, picking the colours 'absolutely' (as opposed to relatively) sounds appealing and interesting... Hmm.. yeah.. Much more intersting.. and better, but harder. cool

Anyways.. whatever. Losts of good soloutions to my mini-problem. Merci beaucoup.

I'm bored. what shall I go do now? maybe have a shower. yeah. c ya.

[digitaldecoy]

Although this does not exactly solve the problem with having to open the color picker I find it very useful to switch the color picker from hue-mode to R- G- or B-mode.



That�s quite like the method Deckard suggested but saves the step to open a second canvas. It�s quicker to adjust, too.
I use this mode when I have a fixed color (let�s say blue) in my picture and have to drive into the direction of some other color (let�s say green). With having selcted my first color I open the color picker and switch between R- G- and B-mode untill I find both colors in the same color field (like in the lower part of the picture above). Now, all the color between blue and green lie before me and I�m free to choose the desired hue.
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