Quick βCheatβ Guide to Painties
AKA how to turn that grayscale PNG into a layered PSD for those used to working with Aywas-style bases.
For those of you having issues with the βoverlay colors on grayscaleβ, I found an easy way (on SAI) to turn the grayscale into a layered PSD like the ones Aywas uses.
Open your grayscale image in SAI, duplicate the layers 3 times (so you have 4 total).
Set the first (topmost) layer to luminance, lower opacity to 30%.
Set the second layer to overlay, lower opacity to 50%.
Select the third layer, go to the Layer menu and click on βLuminance to Transparencyβ and set the mode to multiply. (This option basically turns white into transparent, and grayscales as semi-transparent depending on how dark it is! This trick works to rescue lineart youβve merged to a white BG layer or even to eliminate the white BG of a scanned black and white image, btw.)
Lock layer 3β²s transparency and you can now color this layer to whatever color you want your shadows to be.
The final (lowest) layer you lock as well, and just block-color it your base color. You can now create layers above this, clip them to the base and start adding markings.
Make sure to clip all three layers to the base to avoid glowy/white pixels around the edges when you save.
This is what the basic setup looks like when youβre done.
The lumi layer gives you the highlights (adjust opacity of this layer for brighter/duller highligts), the overlay/multiply gives you your shadows. For many you will still want to add another overlay/lumi layer for extra highlights and shines (like eye shines and metal gleams) but this setup does most of the work for basic painties. Hereβs what the above setup looks, I added some different color spots so you can see how the shading behaves:
As for actual edits to the base, you can add them as you would any edit on an Aywas file, with the one differenceβ¦ you want to duplicate your lineart layer and merge it to your base so your base goes all the way to the edge, then set your lineart to multiply, and/or merge with your shading to achieve that βalmost linelessβ look that the Furvilla art style has.
I do recall Photoshop has a trick to βdeletingβ the white from a layer to duplicate this tutorial on it, but I havenβt done it in a while and itβs not quite as straightforward as in SAI. But it IS doable.
