"Thick Wet Oils" change the brightness of the image for some reason.

[deschamps]

Does anyone have a problem where when you first lay a stroke down with an impasto brush such as "Thick Wet Oils" it changes the overall brightness of your image for some reason?

Is this a known problem or just me? Any solutions?

Thank you,
-Eric

[Jin]

Hi,

It's supposed to do that when we use a brush variant that uses either Impasto Depth or Depth and Color.

Try this to see more clearly what's happening:

1. Open a new Canvas and fill it with R:51 G:14 B:5 (very dark red/black).

2. Choose the Oils' Thick Wet Oils 30 and restore it to its default settings (Brush Selector menu > Restore Default Variant).

3. In the Colors palette, move the small circle in the Saturation/Value triangle all the way to the right point (fully saturated red).

4. In the Brush Controls' Impasto palette, move the Depth slider to 150%.

5. Paint a brushstroke on the Canvas using more than your normal hand pressure to make sure this demonstration works. You'll see the overall lighting of the image change. You'll also see a nice thick brushstroke.

6. Hold down the Alt/Option key and click in the background area of the image.

7. In the Colors palette, if it's displaying HSV values in the little window in the lower right corner, click in the little window to change the display to RGB values.

8. Notice the color is still R:51 G:14 B:5.

9. Take another look at your brushstroke, then click the blue "3D" star icon in the upper right corner of the image window (the Toggle Impasto Effect icon). The icon is now flat, the overall lighting of your image is back to the way it was originally, and your thick brushstroke is no longer thick... it's flat as a pancake.

10. Hold down the Alt/Option key and click in the background area of the image again, then check to see the color is still R:51 G:14 B:5.

11. Click the Toggle Impasto Effect icon again and notice the overall lighting of your image is changed and your brushstroke is again thick.

What's happening is the Impasto Layer is being turned on when we begin painting with a brush variant that's set to use Impasto Depth or Depth and Color. The Impasto Layer is turned off when we click the Toggle Impasto Effect icon after painting an Impasto brushstroke or many Impasto brushstrokes.

Without the Impasto Layer's lighting and depth, we can't have the appearance of depth, or highlights and shadows (thick paint) in our brushstrokes.

I'd try the following on a test image first:

After you paint with a brush variant that uses Impasto Depth or Depth and Color, you can play with the controls in the Canvas > Surface Lighting dialog box to see if you can adjust things to something you like better.

Again, be sure to work on a test image as the effects can be quite pronounced.


Have fun!



Jinny

[deschamps]

Thanks for the walkthrough Jin. It looks like saving as .psd loses the impasto setup so that it keeps being reapplied once I re-open and paint in painter. I came up with a setting in the Surface Lighting dialog box that does a little less damage to the overall image. So, it looks like its a Painter into Photoshop issue I am having. I would have no problem at all if I stayed in Painter throughout my entire work on a painting. Unfortunately I like to go into photoshop with it every so often... so then each time I go back into painter the impasto effect has to be reapplied, causing my image to be distorted progressively lighter...which blows. Should be a little better now though with the new settings. Thanks Jin!

[Jin]

One thing that might help:

If you come to a good stopping point with our Impasto painting in Painter and won't need to work on that part of the painting again with Impasto variants, you can close all Layers, Text Layers, Shapes, etc. that are not part of that Impasto painting, then use File > Clone to make a flattened copy of that part of the image (the Canvas will be included in the Clone since it can't be made transparent or left out even if its Eye icon is closed, so think about that while planning what to do).

With the Clone active, use Ctrl/Command+A to select the entire Clone, then use Ctrl/Command+C to copy it.

Go back to your working image and use Ctrl/Command+V to paste the Clone onto the working image as a single Layer.

Close all Layers' Eye icons that were part of the Clone. If the Canvas was visible as part of the Clone, select the Canvas then click inside the selection using the Layer Adjuster tool to lift it to a Layer.

Group all unneeded Layers to get them out of the way, since the Clone has now taken their place.

When you take the image into Photoshop, the appearance of Impasto depth and lighting is retained in the flattened Clone though the Impasto brushstrokes are no longer "live", just normal flat imagery. When you return to Painter, if you don't want that Layer affected by new overall Impasto lighting, move it to another image temporarily, or move a copy of it to another image temporarily if you need it for reference while painting.

Those are just some ideas that might spark better ones that will work in your situation.

I usually just keep trying things 'til something works because each image can be unique in the way it's structured and in the way I happen to be working at the time.


(Hope this made sense.)


Jinny