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I have a textured layer made of a series of real watercolor washes scanned in and loaded as a layer in TVPaint. I want to have this texture overlaid on a character . I have no problem using the fill color layer of the character to create a matte to allow the texture to show through from the layer beneath, but the watercolor wash texture is darkening the character's colors too much . I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a blend mode I should use for the watercolor texture to be on top of the character's fill colors that would allow the texture to be superimposed on the character , but not darken down the colors too much ? (Multiply blend mode is much too dark ... I can't find another blend mode that works , but maybe I'm missing something ...)

When I work with these textures, two things are of importance:

- the average lightness of the texture should be approximately 50% gray
- if that is the case, then using the "Overlay2" blend mode (the recent addition that mimics Photoshop's implementation of Overlay) is the most effective.

If you are not familiar with how Photoshop's Overlay works: anything lighter than 50% gray will be applied as Screen to the underlying layer(s), and anything darker than 50% gray is applied as Multiply. Anything that is exactly 50% gray will be invisible. Adjusting your texture to the "sweet spot" will help keep the overall colors about where they should be, with a few light and dark accents to suggest the bumpiness.

neonnoodle wrote:When I work with these textures, two things are of importance:

- the average lightness of the texture should be approximately 50% gray
- if that is the case, then using the "Overlay2" blend mode (the recent addition that mimics Photoshop's implementation of Overlay) is the most effective.

If you are not familiar with how Photoshop's Overlay works: anything lighter than 50% gray will be applied as Screen to the underlying layer(s), and anything darker than 50% gray is applied as Multiply. Anything that is exactly 50% gray will be invisible. Adjusting your texture to the "sweet spot" will help keep the overall colors about where they should be, with a few light and dark accents to suggest the bumpiness.

THANK YOU ! I will try the Overlay2 blend mode.

EDIT : hmmmm ... something is not quite working . Maybe I have not determined the "50% gray" correctly , because when I tried Overlay2 it didn't do anything . I'll keep trying . But this gave me a clue how to proceed . Thanks again.

EDIT 2: Ok, I think I found out what I was doing wrong: first adjust the texture layer with Histogram so it is at 50% gray (experimenting by trial & error to find the "sweet spot" ) , then the texture layer must be Scan Cleaned , then setting the blend mode to Overlay2 allows the texture to be seen.

My knowledge about the blend modes are from Photoshop. I expect them to be the same in TVPaint, but who knows.

Overlay is a blend mode which uses the values which are greater or lower than 50%gray and "burns" them into your image, which means it darkens/brigthens this spots and increases the saturation on them.
I guess neonnoodle meant it should be "around" 50% grey, so you don't get an overkill in terms of contrast and color.
A good way to ged an idea what blend modes are doing is to use an image like the one I attached, put it over a photo and change the blend modes of the gradient image.

Hi David, I think we might help better if we can see some images. If you can't do it in the forum for some reason, you can still send them by email.

About overlay :
- overlay = overlay in GIMP.
- overlay2 = overlay in Photoshop.

We though it was the same during a long time, but the formulas were slightly different.
A japanese studio has shown us the difference on some images, so we added the overlay2 in the 11.0.3

Fabrice wrote:Hi David, I think we might help better if we can see some images. If you can't do it in the forum for some reason, you can still send them by email.

About overlay :
- overlay = overlay in GIMP.
- overlay2 = overlay in Photoshop.

We though it was the same during a long time, but the formulas were slightly different.
A japanese studio has shown us the difference on some images, so we added the overlay2 in the 11.0.3

Thank you Fabrice, I will email you about it.

-DN