Colouring a fabric - colour & texture accuracy

Hello,
I have a piece of fabric that I'm trying to colour with a variety of different light & dark colours (blues, yellows, reds, black, white, grey, etc). The fabric colour that I'm trying to fill is a light grey which shows the texture (shadows, pattern, etc) of the fabric. In the layers pallet I have the fabric layer set to multiply and placed above the colour layer so that the colour comes through.
My problem is that I'm having some difficulty in colouring in the fabric. With lighter colours it's not a problem, but darker colours appear to saturate the selection too much which results in a loss of texture definition - the cracks in the texture appear that they are filled with paint. At the moment I have been playing with a combination of fabric layers set at different blend modes & opacities: multiply, screen & overlay which works to a certain extent but I'm not happy with the realism of the results especially for the darker colours.
With that said I have 2 questions:
1. Does anyone have any good experience with colouring selections which maintain colour & texture accuracy (to see what I mean, design a shoe at NikeID.com). You can see how they colour a lace in a variety of light & dark colours accurately (accurate colours while maintaining good texture). More generally, what's the 'best' approach here to blend (or some other method) the full spectrum of light to dark colours?
2. Ideally, what colour should the underlying fabric be? (white, grey, black?) And why? I notice that it's easy to colour a predominately white fabric with light colours but increasingly difficult to colour the selection the darker the target fill is.
Anything welcome.
Thank you,
Marv.

Hey Zeno. Thanks for that. I just tested your suggestion with a Nike lace - trying to replicate their results. Colour works well for light colours but increasingly becomes desaturated the darker the colour applied.
Through a quick trial and error I have managed to create a fill effect quite similar to Nike. I'm using their white lace as the test with a target of a dark blue.
There are 4 layers:
1st: Lace selection with 100% black fill set on normal set at 33% opacity
2nd: Lace selection with blue colour fill set on overlay
3rd: Shoe layer set of linear light
4th: Lace section with 100% black fill set on normal with 33% opacity.
I used linear burn for the white fabric with a 100% black layer under set at 33% opacity. This actually gives quite a good result for the dark blue. My only quibble is that its reflecting slightly too much light in places visibly seen with white pixels in my version in close zoom. In comparison with Nike, their pixels are a light blue.
Perhaps the lace colour should be darker so less white comes through and appears more natural? I tried to tone down the contrast, but this spoiled the overall effect.

Similar Messages

How to make a "fabric"-like texture

I've seen a fair number of graphics with cool fabric-like textures lately, where the design looks like it was printed on material, like this: http://tinyurl.com/a6l4oyb
I looked up a few tutorials, but didn't have much luck with the results. Does anyone know how to accomplish this effect well?
Thanks!!

I think you will find Photoshop a more accomodating tool than Illustrator for this kind of job.
As Monika says, you can do it in Illy using an image of fabric as an opacity mask but it’s easier in PS.
Here’s a shot of one I did some time back.
I copied the camouflage pattern from Illie to Photoshop, scanned in a piece of plain cloth and used the result as a layer mask.
To further heighten the effect I had an extra copy of the cloth texture on a back layer that showed through the masked image.

How can I select a colour from the colour 'wheel'

I would like to be able to select a colour like you can in photoshop. The swatches are very limited. I would like to select it from the colour 'wheel', where you can move up and down the slider to select the value and then move over the circle to select your colour? Or where can I find a huge swatch of colours?
Regards
Jenny

Jenny,
How would the Color Picker suit you?
You can DoubleClick the Fill or Stroke (hollow) square in the Toolbox or the Color palette.

Officejet Pro 8500 printed colours not true colours

All of a sudden my printed documents are printing using the incorrect colours - photos are 'greyish' (with muted colours); reds print as browny, etc. We always use genuine HP inks and documents previously printed fine from a colour perspective. When I 'align' the printheads, the page that prints out show black, blue and pink are fine but the red and green look all wrong. All inks are in place and none are low.

Hello Algonquin28,
Please add me a testpage to your post. You can print it by pressing Setup-> Print Report-> Self-Test report. Then add it by clicking the insert/edit page button. I will have a look at it.
Say "Thanks" by clicking the Kudos Star in the post that helped you.
Although I work for HP my posts and replies are my own
Please mark the post that solves your problem as "Accepted Solution"

I have updated to ios5 and latest pages and it has changed table borders and header colours etc, the colour I was using was imported and there border lines are v thick, help has made my docs look rubbish

I have updated o iOS 5 and updated my pages but it as altered my documents, layout, and tables, changing header row colour and thickness of border lines, some thick some thin within same table, if I put default it puts all the lines back, but I only wan them in 2 out f the 4 columns, If I try to change each section then I have to select all borders as default does the whole table, but if I chose all then the order lines are all thick is there any way of changing thickness of lines, and also does anyone know how to pu in a table of contents? I'm currently having to manually put in the info in the table which is v long. Thank you very much

Updated first post with dmesg output. I added all of it, but here's a quick snippet of the tail (which is right after booting up and attempting to autostart SLiM)
[ 13.426857] NVRM: API mismatch: the client has the version 310.19, but
NVRM: this kernel module has the version 304.60. Please
NVRM: make sure that this kernel module and all NVIDIA driver
NVRM: components have the same version.
Why is the kernel getting 304.60 ? That's got to be the issue, but I don't why the kernel is getting 304.60 ...
Output of pacman -Qs nvidia:
local/conky-nvidia 1.9.0-2
An advanced, highly configurable system monitor for X based on torsmo
local/lib32-nvidia-utils 310.19-1
NVIDIA drivers utilities and libraries. (32-bit)
local/libvdpau-git-flashpatch 20120825-1
Nvidia VDPAU library from git with patch to fix flash blue tint and bleed through
local/libxnvctrl 304.51-1
NVIDIA X Ctrl library
local/nvidia 310.19-2
NVIDIA drivers for linux.
local/nvidia-utils 310.19-1
NVIDIA drivers utilities and libraries.

RGB image coloured to spot colour

We have supplied images (jpeg, tiff, wmf) that are RGB Black & White. I want to be able to place the image in a box and set the colour to a spot colour ie PMS 280.
I can colour them up using Transparency>Lighten having set the background colour of the box. This only works for process colours, not for PMS colours. As soon as you change to a PMS colour the image "disappears". Am I doing something wrong? Is it possible??
I work with Overprint Preview ON to get a view of how it will output.
Due to how the customer supplies the files to us and automation involved it has to be done via Indesign.

Not going to happen.
You'll either need to make clear to users of the template that they need to supply the correct form of art or do the conversion yourself. I expect it could be scripted to find these images open them in photoshop, run an action, and return them to ID as grayscale. It probably could be set to run on file open.
http://forums.adobe.com/community/indesign/indesign_scripting

Matching Image Colours with Site Colours

Hi
I would like to match the colour of an image to the site corporate colours. If you see this logo - http://www.portfoliohealth.co.uk/ - you can see that the pastel green colour (#CDE8D9) on the far left of the the graduated image is different to the main colour in the 'p' logo opn the right.
Any idea on mathing these exactly (or as near as)?
Many thanks

Have you tried the Eye Dropper tool over the area?
It kind of difficult to determine which green is the color your looking for since there appears to be an oval in the middle.
Another idea to help pinpoint a color is to draw a Export Area JUST around the 'green' rounded logo. Double click it once drawn and it will take you to the Export dialog. Chnage the output to Gif /256 colors and you can see the exact green color variants in that area. To the right of the Gif, there's a Options icon, click that and from the list choose Sort by Luminance. You can then get a better idea of the darkest to lightest greens. Mouseover/click anyone of them and the rgb/hex shows up. Copy down the ones you need.
You can also choose Save > Save Palette (.act) from the Same Option context list, and load it directly into the Window > Swatches > Panel Options (Add Swatches (.act) command). This way you can interact with the Swatches Panel and you recreated logo.
h

Do you know how to re-colour a single colour gradient?

Hi Everyone,
Perhaps this is simple for one of you Photoshop gurus out there. I would like to know how to change the colour of a single layered, single coloured gradient (foreground to transparent) image. There is nothing more to it than that other than I don't want to use the hue/saturation adjustment as it's hard to get a specific colour. Any help will be much appreciated.
Many thanks

G'day
It might be simpler to redo the gradient using the gradient tool (G)
Select Gradient tool > 'click' on gradient in top tool bar (click to edit gradient)
This brings up the Gradient Editor.
Make sure the Foreground to Backgroumd one is selected in the presets.
Double 'click' the color stop at the bottom of the gradient bar in the gradient editor and select the color that you want from the color picker.
You can also play around with the other opacity and color stops.
Then drag and use the gradient tool.
regards
John

How do I change colour (actually, give colour) to icons such as Refresh, Bookmarks, etc? They are all grey-black.

It makes it much easier for me and my family if the commonly useed icons such as Refresh, Bookmarks, back, forward, history and stop are coloured. Firefox 4.0 has all of these in a grey-black shade. I would like to be able to change the colurs of the current icons, or have a list of colours and shapes to choose from in the Customise menu - which it doesn't have now. Thank you.

It makes it much easier for me and my family if the commonly useed icons such as Refresh, Bookmarks, back, forward, history and stop are coloured. Firefox 4.0 has all of these in a grey-black shade. I would like to be able to change the colurs of the current icons, or have a list of colours and shapes to choose from in the Customise menu - which it doesn't have now. Thank you.

How do you change the colour of the "colour boxes" in themes?

Creating a book in Aperture the various "Themes" offer you different layouts. When you are in a Theme - is there a way to change the colours of the background boxes (Not page colour) - I have searched everywhere to see how to do this and a simple thing like this seems like it is not possible. Yes you could make a photo of the correct colour you want and drag it in but surely there is a simple way of changing the colour of these theme boxes.
The theme I am using is Special Occasion and I want to darken the lightblue boxes behind the text.
Would appreciate anyone out there who could advise on this please, thank you in advance.
Richard
Apperture 3.4.3
iMac 21.5 OS 10.7.5
iMac 27 OS 10.6.8 (the best)

Richard,
there is no built-in option to change the color boxes. You can only change them by patching the Resorces in the Aperture application bundle, and that is risky.
The color of the background boxes is set in the property list (for the Extra Large Book):
/Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/Resources/Book Themes/Special Occasion/ExtraLarge/Graphics/BlueRect.plist
The current value is:
backgroundColor {224, 241, 238, 100}
To try what happens, when this value is changed, I edited it to {100, 200, 255, 100}
You will not really want to patch your Aperture application bundle
What you might try, would be to copy the "Special Occasion" subfolder of the Book Themes and to create your own custom theme from this and install it in your user library
~/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Book Themes/
-- Léonie

Colour labels for colour blind

Hi,
This is going to seem like a very strange request.
I am colour blind and have a great deal of difficulty picking between the BLUE and PURPLE colour labels. Could you please consider changing the colours? Maybe make the BLUE a daker shade or the PURPLE a light grey.
Andrew.

Until Adobe possibly makes Labels slecive colors I suggest that while you are in Library you have Metadata open where you can see the Label indicated as a word and Add Color Labels to your Toolbar (Press'T') in both Lib and Dev Mods via the righthand triangle dropdown in the toolbar, where a highlighted image indicates the color label in the bar.
Also FIltering by color from the filter bar top of film strip will let you check which 'color' you have applied.
I know this is no substitute for viusally identifying them directly, but I hope these ideas will help meanwhile.
Don
Don Ricklin, MacBook 1.83Ghz Duo 2 Core running 10.4.8 & Win XP, Pentax *ist D
http://donricklin.blogspot.com/

Frustratingly my gradient dialogue box does not allow colour gradient the colour stop is inactive

My gradient dialogue box does not allow me to use the colour stop slider, only black and white, the colour stop box is inactive

Your last post was blank. Perhaps you tried to attach a screen shot to an email, which is not allowed on the forums. TO show a screen shot you must come back to the web page and use the camera icon to embed an image, like this:

Batch replace a colour with another colour

I have over 100 documents. In these documents, some of the objects use a regular black colour (e.g. C0, M0, Y0, K100). I need to replace it as a rich black (e.g. C75, M68, Y67, K90). The regular black colour is NOT saved as a swatch, so I can't just update the swatch. The objects are made of paths and shapes, some of which are in groups.
I found a script here and have updated it to suit my needs (The original script requires you to select an object, my update automatically selects all objects in the file). It works fine on a simple document that has a few layers. However, on more complex documents that have multiple nested layers, I get the following error:
Error 1302: No such element
Line: 9
->       myItem=docRef.pathItems[i];
Here is my code:
var docRef = app.activeDocument;
docRef.hasSelectedArtwork = true;
var iL=docRef.pageItems.length;
for (i=0;i<iL;i++){
     myItem=docRef.pathItems[i];
          if (myItem.fillColor=="[CMYKColor]" && myItem.selected){ //implement only for CMYK and selected
     var c1=0;
     var m1=0;
     var y1=0;
     var k1=100;
     var c2=Math.round(myItem.fillColor.cyan); // round the number ( 0,0012 => 0 )
     var m2=Math.round(myItem.fillColor.magenta); // round the number ( 6,8898 => 7 )
     var y2=Math.round(myItem.fillColor.yellow);
     var k2=Math.round(myItem.fillColor.black);
     if (c1==c2&&m1==m2&&y1==y2&&k1==k2){ // compare
     myItem.fillColor.cyan=75;
     myItem.fillColor.magenta=68;
     myItem.fillColor.yellow=67;
     myItem.fillColor.black=90;
      redraw();
                    } // if compare
          } // if CMYK
     } // end for
How can I overcome the error.

Hi @big_smile,
It's ok.
But you are right, I was a little bit frustrated. Because of: no feedback is the "worst" feedback.
And like I said before, your question isn't easy to answer. To check the difficult you can start with this little snippet:
var aDoc = app.activeDocument;
//var pI = aDoc.pageItems;
//var pILen=pI.length;
// please select some items before running this script snippet
var pI = aDoc.selection;
var pILen=pI.length;
var item;
for (i=0;i<=pILen-1;i++) {
    item = pI[i];
    $.writeln("item "+i+": "+item.typename);
    $.writeln("clipped = "+item.clipped);
    if (item.typename == "PathItem") {
        // if GroupItem --> loop through the groupItems.pathItems
        // if CompoundPathItem --> loop through the CompoundPathItems.pathItems
        $.writeln(item.fillColor)
        $.writeln(item.strokeColor)
        $.writeln(item.filled)
        $.writeln(item.fillColor.color)
        if (item.filled == true && item.fillColor.typename == "CMYKColor" ) {
            alert("item "+i+" fillColor: "+item.fillColor.typename);
        if (item.stroked == true && item.strokeColor.typename == "CMYKColor" ) {
            alert("item "+i+" strokeColor: "+item.strokeColor.typename);
Please select some items before running this script snippet (otherwise it may takes a long time).
And please, check your JavaScript console in ESTK after running this script.
I know, this can't be a correct answer, but perhaps this is a little bit helpful for the beginning.

Colour picker custom colours

This is a bit off topic, but something I did recently lost all my custom colours at the bottom of the Apple colour picker palette, which I had customized for use in my Keynote presentations. I have tried previously to find where this file might be located on my machine in order to keep a backup copy, but have never been able to locate it.
Is anyone aware where this might be? It would save a lot of re-construction when it is lost...

This information is stored in your home directory in
Library/Colors/NSColorPanelSwatches.plist
This property list updates anytime you make changes to the swatches. If you back this up you will have all of your customizations restored by simply dropping your backup in to the Library/Colors folder.

Colour Laserjet CP3505 colour fade

Hi everyone,
I was having an issue with a CP3505 where the yellow and magenta would fade on both left and right hand sides of the page. It was a same issue as with the Colour Laserjet 2605, dust and toner in the laser/scanner assembly. Once I cleaned inside the assembly and did a full calibration via the print quality menu the printer worked fine.
Just thought someone might find this info useful.
For some reason the CP3505 service manual isn't on the HP site so I downloaded it from a someone's blog instead. http://printer1.blogspot.com/2008/04/hp-color-laserjet-300036003800cp3505.html Pages 82 - 93 and 128 - 131 detail how to remove the covers/dc controller and the laser assembly.

Hi Oneoffdesign,
I hate to hear you are having issues. Please Click Here to complete steps related to print quality issues. This Link may also help resolve the issue. If you are still experiencing issues after completing all steps contact HP technical support to explore all part and replacement options based on warranty status. Global contact information can be accessed Here. For more information about your product, Click Here.
Hope this helps!
Also, remember a click on the Kudos star to the left is a quick "Thanks" for a helpful post.
Please select the "Accept as Solution" button on the post that best answers your question.
I appreciate your input !
Thank You,
I work for HP.

Colouring a fabric - colour & texture accuracy

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for