Help! My digital painting is fading away. UPDATE!

[nikia]

Since I started putting the Aurora creatures in, my digital oil painting has started to fade. I'm working in painter8. No layers. I've put the reflections from the aurora creature in on the team and sleigh several times now. When I save, close the program, then come back to it later, all the reflections have faded to nothing. And some of the original color on the rest of the picture has also faded. ie: the values on the team and the teams' harnesses, the clothing on the people, the flash on the laser gun, etc. Colors that were bright before I started the aurora creatures. I have also used a few acrylics on this painting and the palette knife. I used the blender tool on the aurora creature in a couple of small places.

Does anyone know why this is happening? And can I now go to a different layer to put the reflections in? And to finish the painting? I really want to save this painting.
http://www3.telus.net/nikia1/Aurora_plains.JPG

[Drumwhore]

what format do you save your file? I may be wrong but if you use no layers you shoulkd save it as bitmap (.bmp) or another uncompressed data format (i'm not using painter but usually i save my files as .psd (photoshop format)).. if you save your artwork as jpeg, it will be compressed, then some of you colors will fade away..
hope this will help :)

[nikia]

Hey, thanks Drumwhore. I was saving in jpeg on this one. I noticed that some of the others are okay and they were saved as riff format. I have started on a new layer, and so far the colors are staying bright, so I guess that was the reason. I don't really understand how the layers work. Do you add a new layer for each new color? Or maybe each new area you start painting? Thanks for your help.

[Drumwhore]

It depends of what kind of gfx you're planning to do, but for this one I think a different layer for each color will not suit.. I'd rather use layers from background to foreground.. for example:

layer 7: attachments (on top)
layer 6: animals
layer 5: sleigh
layer 4: guy
layer 3: snow on the floor
layer 2: mountains
layer 1: sky

I think this way it will be easier for you to work on individual elements :)

[nikia]

Thanks Drumwhore, I tried saving in riff, but the colors kept fading, so I redid everything and saved in psd. I'm not sure, but they seem to be alright now. And I've started using layers, and changing the opacity and resat. on it. This seems to help also. Do I merge or group the layers when I'm finished? Then downsize it and save to jpeg for posting? When I save to jpeg for posting, am I going to lose the colors again? Sorry to be a pain. You've helped a lot and I sure appreciate it.

[Drumwhore]

Do I merge or group the layers when I'm finished?
Yes, you can (it will decrease the file size), only be sure the artwork is finished cause once saved, you won't be able to separate them again. I'd recommend you to merge the layers and save it as another file, a 'final' one.. This way you'll still be able to rework it later, or get easily some elements from it if you need them for any reason.. :)
Then downsize it and save to jpeg for posting?
Right :) and, if needed, convert it to RGB mode first, then save it as jpeg :)
When I save to jpeg for posting, am I going to lose the colors again?
It depends of the compression ratio you'll be using.. In Photoshop, you'll be prompted to choose some settings when saving. For Painter, I don't know but I guess you'll find these options somewhere :) Anyway, a high quality jpeg will still look nice, and you won't lose as much colors as you would by saving it as a mid or low quality jpeg.. but file size will also be a bit bigger..

[nikia]

Thanks Drumwhore. You were a fantastic help. It's much appreciated. I guess I'll try using layers more often. :)

[Erik]

I'd only use the compressing image formats (for instance jpg) on the final result -- they are 'lossy' in that they do not store all the information in your painting. They store it only 'sort of'.

If you do save an image repeatedly in jpg you might get interesting results but not what you would want for this painting i think ;-)

Use BMP or Targa or TIFF or something. Maybe bigger but it won;t f*ck with the painting.

[nikia]

Thanks for helping Erik. I tried saving in Tiff for a while, but the colors still faded. I'm currently saving in psd, but I think I'm still getting some fading of colors, although not as bad as it was. I guess I'll try targa and bmp now. I'll let you know what happens.

[nikia]

My painting is still fading. Worse than ever. I've been saving in photoshop. But it's still fading. It fades while I'm working on it. If anyone has any ideas, I sure would appreciate it. You can see where it has faded on the bottom of the sleigh and the difference in the gold on the harnesses. Also fading on the smaller team animals head. The bright colored areas are ones I've just repainted again, including the black areas under the sled and the sled runners. The sled runners faded as I was painting other areas. They were brighter. Why is this happening? :(http://www3.telus.net/nikia1/The_Aurora_Plains.JPG

[Form]

i think its cos u live in BC :D

[nikia]

Okay, I've decided to scrap this one. It's faded even more overnight. I see no reason to keep struggling with it. Thanks for the help on it everyone.

[Erik]

Is there a setting in PS that says to store the painting in the PsD as JPG? I think so but i am unsure... You might be able to set the quality there?

Weird problem...

[Form]

if you save each session you do as a .jpg, it compresses the image and loses quality. until its 100% finished save each stage as a .bmp or .psd
dont give up
may the force be with you

[nikia]

Thanks for replying guys. I've actually deleted all my saved pictures of this back to before it started to fade. The latest one was so faded, it was hard to make out any detail at all. I've been saving in psd, but the picture keeps fading. Erik, I've now saved the above picture in bmp. There was nothing for saving in photoshop as a jpg. I've been saving the quality as high. Maybe I should be saving as excellant?

I'm starting to think it might be a glitch in the oil painting part of the program. I've painted in Acrylics with painter 8 and had no problems. I wonder if I could set a new layer and start using acrylics instead? Although I don't know what would happen when I merged the layers. Unfortunatly I have to start over back to when I just had the two team animals and the sled in. In some ways this might be a silver lining, as I could rework some areas that need help.:)

[nikia]

Hey, thanks for replying bio. I checked, both painter 8 and photoshop have the color management turned off. But I saved the original mountains and icescape in riff. Then after I put the sleigh and team in I saved as jpg. I saved once more as jpg after that. Then I started noticing the fading effect. I then saved in riff again (on advice from ca members), the fading kept happening. I then started saving in psd. The fading continues in both painter, photoshop and my picture files.

From what you're saying I gather the picture is still fading because I saved those two times as jpeg at the start of my painting? And will continue to fade no matter what I save in now?

This is the first time I've tried to use oil paints in painter 8. And the first time I've had a "fading" problem. Previously I've used acrylics in the same program, with no fading problems, (and I saved them all the way through as a jpeg). The acrylic paintings are still as bright as when I first painted them. Could this be a problem using only the oil paints in painter?
I noticed a new members' digital oil paintings in the finished forums today. They also look faded. This is why I'm wondering if it's a glitch in the oil painting part of the program?

Thanks for your help. I guess I'll start my painting over again from when I first saved it as a riff file. It's not a total loss, I've learnt a lot about painter doing this painting! LOL

[nikia]

Thanks for your help bio. Yeah, it keeps fading. By fading I mean the bright colors and clarity of detail are no longer there. The colors have faded to a pastel color, from a very bright color, dark areas have faded to more of a grey color, and the details are fuzzy, instead of sharp and clear. I have one more thought on this problem. That being: if painter is supposed to mimic exactly the effects of a real painting. Is it possible, the background of this painting is showing through the upper layers of paint? Thus making the foreground characters appear to be fading and fuzzy?

ie: In real oil paintings, (and to a lesser extent, acrylics) if an artist paints the whole background with a color other than white, (say the blue of the sky on the whole canvas) then paints mountains, hills, trees and characters on top of that blue. 20 years down the road, the blue of the sky will start to show through the foreground paintings. Or if you paint a character over the top of a tree that has already been fully painted behind that character, eventually the tree branches will begin to show through the character. This is called "ghosting"

So......in this particular painting, I put the background mountains, snow and ice in first, then painted on top of them. Usually I paint each individual area, with no background color other than white behind the area. However in this case, I didn't do that. So if the program emulates real oil painting to the extend that ghosting occurs, (if not done properly), it's possible this is causing my problem. I will have to experiment and see what happens.
Thanks for you help bio. I think I will start a new oil painting, and do some experimenting.