Masking more automatically

[Phelon Profile]

Maybe this can already be done: when starting to use the brush, and say you have an all-one-color background, that you can make a swipe anywhere on the one-color background and you can have an AUTOMATIC FILL of the background. This could also be used conveniently on replacing some not too complicated skies (that means your brush would go thru a few or several colors) and would be automatically filled with masking color.

Phelon

[Penningtons7 Profile Website]

I agree instead of painting allow us to have it detect the colors (much like a bucket fill would do) as an optional brush choice.

[admin]

Selecting a sky should be a very quick task at the moment: you just need to run the edge finder (brush) quickly over the top of the horizon, that should be able to get all the bits of sky you can see in-between tree branches etc, which a flood fill wouldn't get. Then, to get the rest of the sky, just click on the flood fill icon that appears above the sky. Out of interest did you know about that method? It should be almost as quick as a flood fill because you can use a large brush and very roughly match the horizon, letting the edge detector do all the work, but should get better results because there won't be a problems with leaking through to areas you didn't want, not filling far enough if the colours in the sky are too varied and not getting parts of sky that are cut off by tree branches. Not saying flood fill isn't a good idea, but there's always a trade off with adding more complexity to a product.

[Phelon Profile]

Thank you for the information! That helps. Knowing how to use masking tools is very important to the creative person.

Please discus about a picture I recently posted here showing a Roadster 3-Wheel. It has an all-black background. What would be your method of quickly masking just the black area? I might want to put the Roadster in a completely different environment which might be a different color, landscape, etc.

Phelon

[admin]

Masking for pretty much anything should follow the same pattern: go round the edge with the edge finder, then use the flood fill icons to fill in the large areas.

With the roadster, you will benefit from a new feature in the upcoming version 1.16: hard edge finder. The current brush is good at doing soft, discontinuous edges like sky and hair, but doesn't produce perfect results on all hard edges. With the new edge finder, you can choose a soft or hard edge finder depending on the edge, with a sensible default chosen depending on your selection name. When the edge is easily found like on a plain background, you can make the brush bigger and select quicker because the edge is easier to find. For complex edges on camouflaged backgrounds, you may need a smaller brush and have to be more careful.

Tony

[Phelon Profile]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for all your good information. I have a lot to look forward to!

Phelon