Hello everyone,
I'm new here and to Corel Painter. I'm not sure if I'm in the right place to ask my question but I'm hoping someone can help me.
I have Corel Painter 2020 and I'm trying to save a watercolor layer with spatter brush strokes and other watercolor brush strokes.
It looks great on my screen with transparency (example spatter paint.). When I save to PSD or PNG which should have transparency the saved brush strokes have an awful white border around them looking like they were converted to JPEG or raster strokes. While the rest of the layer all around the brush stroke is transparent.
Is this normal or a glitch? There are other fancy brush strokes all save with the same transparency just how it looks on my screen.
I hope I'm explaining this right I'd like to keep the look of the transparency behind all the strokes like it looks on my screen. I have the canvas layer hidden when saving also.
Thank you for any help.
Hi Mags,
Welcome! I'll do my best to help...
There might be a few ways we can work-around this issue, but in order to do so we would really need to understand what are hoping to do with these brush strokes...it sounds like because you are working in PNG/PSD maybe you are trying to incorporate them into a project of sorts? What will the background look like?
For example, one way to work around the limitation of the watercolor brush strokes is to do these steps:
1. Paint the watercolor strokes that you want
2. Create a fully opaque white layer (R=0, G=0, B=0) underneath the watercolor layer (i.e. using Ctrl/Cmd+F)
3. Merge the watercolor layer with the white layer below using Ctrl/Cmd+E. Name the layer 'watercolor'
4. A dialog will pop up, asking if you want to convert the layer...click OK (note this will 'remove' the watercolor properties of the layer)
5. Save the file as PSD
6. Open the PSD file in your target application (i.e. Photoshop)
7. Hide the watercolor layer.
8. Put some layer underneath your watercolor brush strokes (whatever color/texture you need for your project)
9. Select the layer and unhide it (which is now all-white)...convert the merge mode to "multiply". The end result will be nearly identical to Painter 2020.
Hopefully this should help you for most projects...if not, let us know there may other ways to solve this issue!
Thanks, Steve
Hi Steve,
Thank you so much for the quick reply. I will try what you told me later this evening and let you know how that goes, I'm new to the program so I can't picture what those settings or changes in Painter do.
To explain better, I'm trying to create brush strokes or watercolor washes/splashes with a fully transparent background that others can use in their designs. (Logos, etc.) They need to be able to take this watercolor splash and add it to any design so they can see their design behind it or around it. They may not have the option to use a merge mode multiply or burn in another program... it needs to be "ready to use" with all transparent background without doing anything else except placing it in their design and moving it around.
So is this how the water brush layers are supposed to be? That you have to always output with a white or colored raster background? I could have sworn I saw in a YouTube video someone working with the same. Watercolor brush and they had no white around the border or underneath the brush strokes.
And looking closer In the layer panel I saw the white, too but not on my main screen. On the YouTube video on their layer panel I could not see those white borders which is why I was wondering why mine was doing that? Maybe I have a setting in the program wrong?
Mags
Hello,
I tried what you suggested and it works for me but I still would need the brush strokes to have transparency when saving automatically like all the other brushes. It seems every brush but watercolor can be saved with totally transparent backgrounds. I'm not sure why this is?
Thank you for trying to help, much appreciated.
Mags.
Painter's Watercolor brushes (and certain markers and crayons as well) use a "gel" layer to get a dark, pigment-rich look. Unfortunately, it's very hard to extract the transparency without a merge mode.
However, there are a couple of options, depending on what kinds of techniques you wish to use to create these transparent files for your friends/students/colleagues.
For example Karen Bonaker and Skip Allen (who both derserve a shout out, as Karen runs an amazing school over at the Digital Art Academy--https://www.digitalartacademy.com/) has some examples of how to use either Elements or Photoshop to extract the white. (if you have either of these programs handy, you can try pinging her from the website)
Skip Allen, also from the DAA, has some steps as well, which can be done either in Painter or Photoshop:
-------------------------------
"Make your watercolor strokes. Convert the layer to a default layer showing the white that surrounds and is in the actual stroke. Use Select > Color select and select all the white. Once white is selected, delete it…on PC backspace…on Mac delete key. Now the image looks very washed out. Duplicate the layer multiple time…about 4 should do it and you have your color back. Now this is a default layer with a transparent layer of paint on it, but the white is still there....
So basically (keep) doing the same thing, but with multiple Select Color and delete. (For the remaining white) use the lasso tool and grab the remaining white and delete it."
Unfortunately this can be time consuming, but should preserve the look quite well.
So lastly, I experiemented with some steps in Painter 2020 that gave pretty good results and did not require manual selections BUT at some loss of the dark, pigment look. Here are the steps with an example file attached:
1. New document2. Apply Brush strokes with "Splatter Dry" and "Real Dirty Water"3. Ctrl/Cmd + E to drop the layer to canvas4. Go to Menu > Select > Auto Select (under using ensure "image luminance" is selected)5. Ctrl/Cmd + C to copy, Ctrl/Cmd + V to paste as new layer6. Duplicate layer 1 4-5 times7. Select all the duplicated layer, then Ctrl/Cmd + E to collapse to a single layer8. Select Canvas, Ctrl/Cmd + A to select all, Ctrl/Cmd + X to clear the canvas9. Hide the canvas.10. Select Layer 1, then export to a PNG file.
So I'd say the work-around isn't perfect, but perhaps may still suit the needs of the files you are creating. Best wishes on this!
Cheers,
Steve
I just saw your reply! I'm going to try your suggestions and techniques, thank you so much again for your help. I'll reply back after I've tried and let you know how it went.