how do you only eye drop one layer??

[trancor]

Sorry, don't think you can, you can however alt click on the eye of the layer you are working on to solo it out, pick the color and alt click the eye to bring back the other layers

[ricefarmer]

Sorry, don't think you can, you can however alt click on the eye of the layer you are working on to solo it out, pick the color and alt click the eye to bring back the other layers



dam that sucks, I alt click the eye dropper millions of times i can't be clicking the visibilty eye on and off, itll kill my production... there has to be a way!!! does any photoshop experts out there have the answer???

[velenosangue]

I'm familiar with the problem you're getting since I had to deal with it a lot at my previous job.

Since having the pencil layer on top of things changes the color of the stuff underneath it, you need to use layers/etc. to adjust the layer so that everything that is supposed to be white goes to 100% white. That way if you use it in multiply mode like i'm guessing you're doing, it shouldn't be a problem. You may want to keep a copy of the original layer on the bottom of the stack.

If you don't want to use blending modes, you can use the pencil layer to create its own mask. To do that you:
-Go to the pencil layer and select all
-Copy it to the clipboard
-Add a layer mask
-Hold alt and click the layer mask icon to show the mask
-Paste into the layer mask
-Invert the mask so the pencil markings appear white and the paper black (white = opaque, black = transparent)
-Use the levels tool to adjust the paper to be totally black and the pencil to be white (though it may be easier to do this part after the next step instead so you can see the results in realtime)
-Click back on the layer to get out of the mask and it will be transparent in all the places that had paper before.

EDIT: To get this to work you also have to clear the pencil layer and fill it with another color

[ricefarmer]

I'm familiar with the problem you're getting since I had to deal with it a lot at my previous job.

Since having the pencil layer on top of things changes the color of the stuff underneath it, you need to use layers/etc. to adjust the layer so that everything that is supposed to be white goes to 100% white. That way if you use it in multiply mode like i'm guessing you're doing, it shouldn't be a problem. You may want to keep a copy of the original layer on the bottom of the stack.

If you don't want to use blending modes, you can use the pencil layer to create its own mask. To do that you:
-Go to the pencil layer and select all
-Copy it to the clipboard
-Add a layer mask
-Hold alt and click the layer mask icon to show the mask
-Paste into the layer mask
-Invert the mask so the pencil markings appear white and the paper black (white = opaque, black = transparent)
-Use the levels tool to adjust the paper to be totally black and the pencil to be white (though it may be easier to do this part after the next step instead so you can see the results in realtime)
-Click back on the layer to get out of the mask and it will be transparent in all the places that had paper before.

EDIT: To get this to work you also have to clear the pencil layer and fill it with another color

well actually im not trying to make a good clean lineart... i want the sketchy mess of pencils to be there, i like the look. the only problem is that in order to do some digital painting under it, i constently need the eye dropper to pick out colors on the painted layer but the sketch layer on top keeps messing it up cuz i accidently pick the sketch layer.

i want the eye dropper to only pick colors on the paint layer and nothing else no matter what the eye dropper is on.

is there maybe an add-on that can do this? its driving me nuts

[velenosangue]

Ah, okay.

Probably what I would do in that situation is do all the painting with the cleaned up line-art then swap in a copy of the original pencil drawing at the end.

I definately agree that a layer specific eyedropper could come in handy, but as far as I know there is no way to do that in photoshop and I don't know of any plugins for it.

[AngelDream]

what I would do as a workaround would be to create an action that toggles the visibility of that particular sketch layer, which should be named in order to avoid confusion. Well, in fact two scripts, one that hides and one that reveals. Then you map those actions to hotkeys and there you've a nice shortcut at your "keytips". Hope it's useful.

[ricefarmer]

action scripting it seems like itll take long.. i think toggling the eye on and off is a little easier. as for the clean lineart idea.. the whole point was so that i wouldn't have to make one ever again.

ok guys heres an example http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/41701257/

this guy paints under his sketch layer, exactly what i wanted i just dont know how he does it.. with his under paintings you'll see that he paints under it too..

i emailed him once and he said he paints under it and then when he wants to finish it he paints over the sketch for more detail... pretty awesome

[ricefarmer]

does anyone in the whole world know the answer?

[trancor]

Actually, if anything doing actions would be faster then alt clicking the eye, because you can set an action to solo out the current selected layer and you can assign it to an f key, so you can assign it to f2 if you wanted and just hit f2 to toggle the solo on the current layer.


Actions window, make a new action, and right on that window, I think it says "hotkey" and just set it to an f key, record making the current selected layer soloed and then stop recording and it should work fine. Don't know if it would toggle or not but you can test it out, I don't have photoshop open. If it doesn't you can make it cntl f2 or alt f2 or something to toggle off the solo.

[trancor]

I just tested it and it does toggle the solo.


Also reading your "how does the guy paint on the layer below and then the layer on top" besides just selecting the layer you want to work on, hit alt [ for selecting the next lower layer and alt ] for the next higher layer.

[ricefarmer]

ok thx trancor and the rest of you, i guess there really is no way of truly making a layer specific eyedropper without toggling that dam eye ball to isolate it...

i guess actions would work or ill have to be stuck making clean lineart which is a pain in the ass..

thx!

[AngelDream]

that's ok trancor, it's the same thing I said.

[trancor]

Yeah, I know AngelDream, I did repeat some stuff though, sorry about that

[AngelDream]

c'mon trancor, it's ok. I even think the farmer understood you better.
cheers!!

[pgraham]

Use layer comps... make one comp with the lineart visible and one without. Set a hotkey for "next layer comp" in the keyboard shortcuts dialog, then you can toggle through your comps by keystroke and you don't have to create an action or change the active layer.

[ricefarmer]

Use layer comps... make one comp with the lineart visible and one without. Set a hotkey for "next layer comp" in the keyboard shortcuts dialog, then you can toggle through your comps by keystroke and you don't have to create an action or change the active layer.

can you elaborate a little more? what are comps? but i think i know what your saying. are you trying to say make a shortcut button for moving the layer up and down the sketch layer?

[pgraham]

what are comps?Layer comps, or comparisons, are a tab next to brushes in the controls bar at the top of the screen. They first appeared in CS1 I believe. You can save the visibility state of all the layers and recall it later, which is useful for making multiple versions of a project and keeping them in the same file, showing different versions for a presentation, or showing before and after versions of a sketch/photo/etc. Search for "layer comps" in photoshop help.

For your purpose, create a comp with all your layers visible, and another with the sketch turned off and the painting turned on. Then assign a key to "next layer comp" and you can turn the sketch on and off with the keyboard.

[goatrape]

I could be wrong and not quite understanding the question, but thought I would chime in anyway:) Couldnt u just throw some 100% oppacity swatches for the colors on the drawing layer, then just eyedrop the color swatch? I dont know how many colors you are working with, so this method might not be right, but if you are using a limited color pallete it shouldnt be a problem. Or make a custom swatch in your palletes menu? Didnt know if this would help you or even come close to your answering your question.

GL

[stylEmon]

I believe you can lock your sketch layer. you can lock transparency, the abilty to add pixel info, the location, or lock all. I'm not exactly sure what problem you are having but hope this helps.

From what I've gathered, you keep painting on the sketch layer. What is causing you to select the sketch layer? If you are painting under that layer, put it on multiply, tweak the levels and you'll never have to select it.

[gorosh]

As PGraham already said - layer comps are one way to go (layer comps are excellent Photoshop option, and have many uses), but I'd like to suggest another way of dealing with color you'd like to sample.

Here's what I do:

I make color scheme which I'll use in my illustration: let's say I want to use 7 different colors - I either make fat brush strokes using each of these different colors, either on one layer (I position it in upper or lower corner of my document, so it doesn't get in a way), or in separate document (which I keep near my working document), or, if I want more "tidy" look, I create rectangular shapes with different color I'll use. Basically it's like having pallete, like oil painter do. You don't have to worryabout layers (since it's either in separate4 document, or in separate layer in corner of your document).

That way all colors from color scheme for that particular document are easily accessible to me (plus that way you get to think about color scheme before starting to paint, which is always good; later you can always adjust colors if you se that some other scheme would be more appropriate).

You could of course define color pallete inside Photoshop for each document, but I find it faster to just lay fat brush stroke with color I'll need.


Speaking of color schemes, take a look at this website:

http://www.colourlovers.com/


Here you can find tons of different color schemes, plus you can download them either for Photoshop or Illustrator. Of course, making your own color palletes is best way, but this resource site is really cool, plus it has some nice articles (and also "thematic" color schemes - for example color schemes from old masters' paintings etc.).

Adobe also did something like that:

http://kuler.adobe.com/

[trancor]

I'm surprized you are using the eye dropper so much anyway. I know most of the time I'm just going at it freehand, I think the eye dropper is my least used tool in all of photoshop.


I still say go with the hot key to solo out the layer.

[Crimsonjassic]

Use layer comps... make one comp with the lineart visible and one without. Set a hotkey for "next layer comp" in the keyboard shortcuts dialog, then you can toggle through your comps by keystroke and you don't have to create an action or change the active layer.

I'd heard of layer comps in earlier CS's, but I never took the time to find out more about them. After spending 2 minutes reading the help menu, I realized that this is just about one of the most useful features ever. For me at least. I used to save multiple PSDs with different layers turned on/off for different compositions, but I didn't know you could save the layer states in one PSD. So useful! Thanks for mentioning it. :D I feel like such a noob... ^^;

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