Jump to content

color problems - they don't turn out the way I put them in the slots


Mangasakka

Recommended Posts

Hello,

As I've put into the title, I make a color and put it into the primary slot, but when I use it on my drawing, it becomes different. I am a comic drawer and use Paint.net to color my drawings. It works fine, only I drew a red squirrel, mixed a nice red fox color, used the paint bucket on my squirrel and he turned out some sort of taupe... now taupe means mole and a squirrel is not a mole. I tried to make the required color in every which way I can, but it always turns out something different from what I see in the primary slot. I am stuck. Can anyone tell me how to make the colors I need to turn out that way in the picture, instead of just in that slot? Am I not doing something I should do, or doing something I shouldn't?

Thanks for some advice...

squirrel.jpg

Edited by Mangasakka
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Highlight the layer with the red fill on it and press the F4 key. That opens the layer Properties dialog. There you can check the Blend Mode and Opacity of the layer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, toe_head2001 said:

 

15 hours ago, toe_head2001 said:

Did you adjust the Opacity in the Colors Window, or is it at 255?

 

Did change the Blend mode in the Toolbar, or it at Normal?

Hmm... transparency is at 255 alright. If that's what the Dutch equivalent of "opacity" is, for my Paint.net is in Dutch (Belgium, here). There's one on the menu bar that says something that is to be translated literally like "hardness", that I put at 75%. I don't know how they call it in English. 

And yes, the blend mode is at normal. 

"

13 hours ago, Ego Eram Reputo said:

Highlight the layer with the red fill on it and press the F4 key. That opens the layer Properties dialog. There you can check the Blend Mode and Opacity of the layer.

I did that but all I see is something that translates as "coverage", and that's at 103. It's a bit confusing because English names are not always translated litteraly in other languages. One should maybe download 2 versions, one in one's own language to work on, and one in English to see what you guys use as terms...

Anyway, I hope you can give advice based on what I've given. Now what do I do? I can't put the picture here again, since the forum says "you're only entitled to twohundred and something kilobytes" when I want to upload the entire page. I had to turn it into a small jpg and shrink it even, before I could put my sqirrel over there.

Thanks in advance

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OOhh!

Everything turns much redder!

is that going to be only for this color, or is it meant to make all the colors brighter? Or do I have to discover how to make colors one by one?

In fact, I haven't found much in the Help on the colors, except for how to press Ctrl to make a circle in the circle and Alt to make a ray, and the fact that the 2 little square frames are called "slots" in English. Nothing much about what all these things like "opacity" and other things mean and what they do.

I made a printscreen. So what's called "dekking" in Dutch is Opacity in English? (in fact, according to the dictionary, it isn't, but hey, when computerstuff is concerned, my experience is dictionaries are totally useless).

And on the menu bar on top, the 75 % "hardheid", what's that called in English?

 

I'm saved for now about the colors, but I'm guessing in order to get information on this forum, I'd better uninstall my Dutch version and get me an English one... at least I won't have the problem with the translations!

 

 

 

now the squirrel.jpg

Edited by Mangasakka
Link to comment
Share on other sites

" Can anyone tell me how to make the colors I need to turn out that way in the picture, instead of just in that slot? Am I not doing something I should do, or doing something I shouldn't? "

 

If you want to copy colors from an existing image, you can use the Color Picker Tool :ColorPickerTool:

 

pick_colors.png

 

"75% hardheid" is called Hardness/Tolerance in English.  This is useful when you use the Magic Wand :MagicWandTool:

 

Your Modus: Menging seems to mean Mixing in Dutch and means "blending" in English.  Each setting will drastically change the color of your image if not left in Normal.

30b8T8B.gif

How I made Jennifer & Halle in Paint.net

My Gallery | My Deviant Art

"Rescuing one animal may not change the world, but for that animal their world is changed forever!" anon.

 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, Mangasakka said:

I'd better uninstall my Dutch version and get me an English one... at least I won't have the problem with the translations!

 

You can change Paint.NET's language in the UI page of the settings dialog,  click the :Settings:icon in the top right of the Paint.NET window.

See https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/SettingsDialog.html#2.

PdnSig.png

Plugin Pack | PSFilterPdn | Content Aware Fill | G'MICPaint Shop Pro Filetype | RAW Filetype | WebP Filetype

The small increase in performance you get coding in C++ over C# is hardly enough to offset the headache of coding in the C++ language. ~BoltBait

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Pixey said:

If you want to copy colors from an existing image, you can use the Color Picker Tool :ColorPickerTool:

thanks, ma'am. But that I already knew from the other digital art programmes. Only, in my initial picture, everything turned out a lot more vague and bland and greyish than in the color slots, so I couldn't take anything from my existing picture with the color picker tool, everything was bad.

Apparently I had the wrong "dekking", since everything in the picture looked more intense as soon as I had upped the dekking: the acorns look much more like real ones as well as my squirrel, don't they? 

I then wondered why the black drawing stayed black everywhere, except on the HTKC device, where it turns yellow. But I clicked on mutliply layers, and hey presto! the black drawing got trough the brass color, which also looks more like real brass after the upping of the mixture. Clicking on multyply layers was a lucky guess, I had no idea it was going to get better. 

Anyway, it did the trick. 

All I need now is to know how to make my own palette. I hope that will be explained in the Help, for I have no idea how to get all the Hex codes on colors before I actually have mixed them on a drawing! 

But I'll get to that. 

This is the only painting programme that allows me to color drawings like that, where none of the patches are hermetically closed, and brushes that look natural. 

I am worried whether the editor will accept my coloring in RYB, instead of MCYB ? 

5 hours ago, null54 said:

 

You can change Paint.NET's language in the UI page of the settings dialog,  click the :Settings:icon in the top right of the Paint.NET window.

Oh good. So I can switch from English to Dutch and back without having to desinstall and reinstall all the time. Great. Thanks. 

I realize I'm at the "Dummies"-stage... 

Edited by Mangasakka
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Mangasakka said:

I am worried whether the editor will accept my coloring in RYB, instead of MCYB ? 

 

Paint.net does not support CMYK; nor RYB.

It only supports RGB.

(September 25th, 2023)  Sorry about any broken images in my posts. I am aware of the issue.

bp-sig.png
My Gallery  |  My Plugin Pack

Layman's Guide to CodeLab

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, toe_head2001 said:

Paint.net does not support CMYK; nor RYB.

It only supports RGB.

Oh? I always thought RGB was for Rood - Geel - Blauw. So I translated that into RYB. It means something else, then?

And if the editor wants CMYK, what do I do? Simply convert it into Photoshop (psd?), and then put them into CMYK? Won't the colors change a lot in that process?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you haven't done this already, why don't you try:

 

Do the Paint Bucket fill.

Switch to the Color Picker tool.

Click on the taupe color. Use a right click so it goes into the Secondary Color.

Is the Secondary Color red or taupe?

 

Do the same thing, except this time, in the toolbar of the Color Picker, set the Sampling to Image instead of Layer.

After color picking, is the Secondary Color red or taupe?

 

I notice near the edge of the squirrel it's a slightly darker shade. Is that done with a layer above the main layer? If so, could the blending with that layer be the problem?

 

EDIT: I also see the background is slightly blueish. I think that in order to get a useful answer, you may need to describe in more detail the process used to draw in color the image.

 

EDIT 2: I should have read your last answer of carefully. As I understand it, you solved your problem (though I don't know how  "dekking" translates).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

owww... It's gréén. =O  I was thinking 'primary colors' as in red, yellow, blue! In the mind of an old-fashioned artist, green is a secondary color, isn't it....  That's how I never thought of RGB being actually English, since yellow is Geel in Dutch, and that makes RGB rood, geel, blauw (red, yellow, blue). 

Never thought of finding out what it actually meant in English. 0r that anyone would call green a primary color!

Anyway, I'm still wondering what to do if someone were to require my work in CMYK? That's often a requirement, from editors..

 

I'll do all the tests you gave me in a while, I've got to do something else right now, but thanks already!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While artists generally think of the subtractive primary colors as red, yellow, and blue, they're more accurately magenta, yellow, and cyan -- the M, Y, and C of CYMK. The whole thing is quite confusing, since pigments don't really mix purely subtractively. If they did, mixing pure blue and yellow would produce black instead of a (usually dullish) green. Red, green, and blue are the additive primary colors. They work well for color monitors, where the colors are formed by adding the light from tiny colored regions together.

 

Internally, all colors in Paint.NET are 8-bit-per-channel ARGB (where A is the transparency channel). In PDN, any CYMK version would need to be derived from colors stored in that format. There's no way around that if the editing is done in PDN. I doubt the color change from the conversion would usually be too significant. Especially for cartoons, where the precise colors aren't usually critical. What is the usual CYMK file format?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know, I'd have to color it all over again in Photoshop, and I don't like coloring in Photoshop, it's too complex and the brushes are not handy enough. But If I tried it, I would be able to choose from RGB to CMYK and back. If colored in CMYK, on the screen the greens would look pretty much like the green of a fluo marker. But afterward in print, it would look normal. That's why you color things in RGB and afterward switch to CMYK to please the editor. CMYK is required if things have to be printed professionally.

So, if I color my stuff in Paint.net, I can't ever get it in CMYK?

And is Paint.net compatible with Photoshop? Since you all know about it, I might as well ask before I struggle for days and find out it's useless anyway...

 

Or, by "file format", did you mean something else? This language barrier is really a problem, isn't it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you :)

It was meant as a publicity logo for a device called a HTKC, a little brass thing you put in your carburator somewhere, and it makes your car consume less petrol and produce less exhaustion fumes. Since it's economical and natural, and it actually looks a bit like a brass acorn, the idea of drawing a squirrel was obvious. The order didn't come trough, the guy who sold the things left and I'm stuck with my squirrel, but it can be still useful to practice coloring, while I'm trying out all sorts of programmes.

I started out as a comic artist in times when there weren't any computers yet, let alone digital art programmes... only brushes, real ones, Chinese ink, water colors or poster paint. That I can handle real nice! But editors want the stuff digitally colored nowadays, so I have to find at least one programme that I can handle. Most young colleagues use Photoshop, they learned that in Art School. But I hate it... when you look into  a Phs. studybook, they spend 90% of it nagging on about fiddling with photographs, and I don't need all that! Just a tiny bit in the back of the book is about making art.  And I'm too old to learn tons of useless stuff!  I'd rather keep it simple.

Paint. net was easy to color,  especially because it fitted my drawings, they're not exactly Tintin style. (that's called "Ligne claire" , clear line school). That sort of drawings can be colored in Paint, even. But in my rough style, none of the patches are closed, so that is useless. In Photoshop you have to fidget with that lasso for hours, so boring! So slow! >:O

That's why I really want to use this, unless I can't put it into CMYK afterwards, some way or other.

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out

Link to comment
Share on other sites

File format is like JPEG or PNG. Both of those store colors as RGB. I was asking what type of computer files editors expect to receive the images in.
 

As far as converting to CYMK, there are two aspects: the computational one and the practical one of choosing colors that when printed will best match the original colors. The color-change from the first one is, I would expect, usually negligible. The second depends greatly on the printing process used: the method, the inks, the paper, and all that stuff. Unless the artist is provided with a detailed profile for the particular printing process, I don't see how converting to CYMK provides anything beyond the RGB version. On this subject, I'm probably talking through my hat (holding forth on a matter I know almost nothing about).

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope that your hat contains correct stuff, MJW... (that even sounds lik a cat), because it would mean I don't have to worry about all the CYMK-business! 

I do remember that professional printers always ask for posters in CYMK, I don't know why. It was when I was making a magazine, and they wanted me to do it with InDesign which I hate as much as I do Photoshop, being a 100% pc-man, not an apple in sight. I did everything in MS Publisher, and that went perfectly. In the beginning, they al said: "oh, publisher is just a toy, you can't even do anything in CYMK! You can't print without that".

I never checked whether that was true, though.

 

That Krita thing looks a lot like what I tried before, but stopped trying right away, because it looked too complicated: MediBang. It seems there really are a LOT of those programmes! They all look alike, but at the same time, each one is a bit different from the others, although always different in an ohter way!

One could spend years trying them all out thoroughly. Takes so much time... :cry:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...