Hello everyone:) I’m glad to have found a moment to bring you a new tutorial!
The tutorial I am going to show you is a technique you will use OVER and OVER as a digital designer!
If you already know all about locking transparent pixels, then I’m sure you will agree with me.
I lock my transparent pixels when I recolor overlays / transparencies .. you name it!
Understanding the concept of locking transparent pixels will help you AVOID those nasty, yucky, jagged edges
(unless of course, you are re-coloring something that already has a jagged edge!)
Why is it important to understand and using the lock transparent pixels function? Because it will:
- help you stand out and do your own thing
- It streamlines your designing process by saving time
- avoid jagged edges when recoloring
You must be wondering why I said it would help you by making you stand out by doing your own thing? Say you took a flat pattern out of your CU stash – dots, stripes – any pattern which has enough space between elements to make a selection or to apply the paint bucket. We all know when can purchased layered patterns to help us with multiple colored patterned papers – but why not extend the use of what you have?
I’m going to use a generic flat, single layer polka dot pattern to illustrate my point.
In the above picture, you need to have the layer you want to re-color selected. Then click the lock transparent pixels icon.
*Locking transparent pixels is does exactly as it says – it takes the blank space between the filled pixels and EVEN semi-transparent pixels and locks them up – so if you try to draw or paint in those blank spaces while the transparent pixels are locked – nothing will happen.*
hooray:)
When your layer is locked – you can grab your paint bucket tool and start recoloring the polka dots 1 at a time – using as many colors as you like! If you use your paint bucket tool on the polka dots WITHOUT locking the transparent pixels – you will have jagged edges!!!! AGH! I hate those!!
There will be a degree of anti-aliasing because pixels are square remember – so even on the smooth circles – you will see some anti-aliasing and that is normal – and not a quality issue (ahem.. NOT a quality issue I repeat). Photoshop does a decent job to smooth out those square pixels by altering the color transition which is why you might see a slight stepping (pictured here you can see it at the top of a polka dot)- but I’m not teaching that right now – so let’s move on haha.
It will take forever.. but at least you made it your own, committed your time designing and you will feel pretty darn good about your self.. it’s ok.. go ahead.. pat yourself on your back:)
OR you could use the polygon lasso tool .. also a super way to bulk recolor:)
and the end result. We started with a 1 layer polka dot pattern, and made it our own:) woo hoo!
I hope you learned something, or maybe not:).. regardless thanks for dropping by!
Till next time!
About Jaimee
LOL – you’re making me nervous, Jaimee! I always create a blank clipping mask layer above the pattern and then color fill or paint individual areas with a brush. I am going to play around with this method, but am not convinced there will be no jaggies. However, because you’re you, I’m willing to extend a little faith. ;P
Thanks for the tut!
haha:) surely using a layer fill and masking it works like a charm – but not when you want to re-color individual elements fast:) There are always millions of ways to do things in photoshop – and I hope I have helped people better understand something they may not have known:) Come back and tell me how it went:)
“and I hope I have helped people better understand something they may not have known” – yes, totally, sorry if I was obnoxious with the “this is how *I* do things” comment. At any rate, I tried this on a layered pattern and just followed your tut per layer. Using the alt+backspace tip I had that sucker recolored in no time and when I zoomed in at 100% there were no jaggies! You’re a genius. Thank you!
I’m super happy you gave it a try and it worked:) yay:)
Great stuff here, Jaimee! Thanks for sharing =)
Thanks for the great tip. Am going to try it out today. :O)
I banned the paint bucket from my tool usage years ago after a disaster with jaggies. I’ve been locking transparent pixels for as long as I can remember and often wish my customers understood it’s greatness better. What I didn’t realize was that I could use my paint bucket tool with transparent pixels locked – that really could prove a nice time saver. Thanks for the instructional tip Jaimee. It doesn’t matter that I first learned photoshop when they were only on version 3 of it – I still keep learning every day.
Great tip! I hadn’t been able to figure out who to get rid of the jaggies around re-colored elements, I can’t wait to give this a try. Thanks.
Wow, I had no idea about the lock transparent pixels function! I’ve tended to avoid the paint bucket as well, because of the jaggie issue. I always use the colour overlay, and then when I want to re-colour individual items I go manually and select each one and copy it to it’s own layer, and then go back and erase the part on the original layer. It’s cumbersome and time consuming. This will be a huge time saver for me! Thanks so much!
Yes, Good tip! Locking transparency should be Step One in oh, so many tutorials I see online!
Thank you!! Wonderful tip!
Oh my gosh, I’d totally forgotten about locking transparent pixels after being without Photoshop for a while. Duh! You just reminded me why I was having jaggies around my custom shapes…thank you!
I love you so much right now it is a good thing you are not in my vicinity because you’d get a big wet smack on the lips! How could I not have known this already? Great tip — thanks so much!
Very, very cool! Thank you so much for sharing this!
Jaimee ~ THANK YOU!!! This helped so much! I’m not a designer, but I do like to play around a bit. I use GIMP instead of PS/PSE, but this tutorial translates into GIMP speak very easily! I always wondered what the lock button was for!
Jaimee your so great, fantastic and wonderful. I did not know that. Does it work on Vectors too? I will try. I don’t like the paint bucket tool because of that. I use a brush with magic wand or add a new color layer. I color a lot of digis for PU. Thank you again.
I am SO GLAD I saw this! Thank you so much, Jaimee!
Thanks, I am only starting out and this was a most interesting tutorial. One day I am going to be sooooo glad that I found this tutorial!
This is wonderful!! Thanks for the tutorial!