Do you like Ninja tips for Photohop? Here is a slightly less-known way to quickly and cleanly fill in all the colored areas on a template layer or overlay using Photoshop’s Lock Transparency option.
This technique helps you get the same sharp lines in your original layer while recoloring.
Here is the way many Photoshop users will fill in a layer with a new solid color.
1. CTRL+click on the layer (in the layers palette) to select pixels with color (you get the typical “marching ants” with this method)
2. fill colored areas with the bucket tool.
This step can get extremely tedious if the design in nor contiguous! In the above sample (from Floral Overlays 4 by One of a Kind Design Studio), every one of the flower sections requires an individual mouse click with the pain bucket to recolor. SIGH. Who wants to do that!?
HERE is better, quicker way!
Over in the layers palette, click on the box next to where it says lock:
What does this option do? It locks all transparent pixels so they can not be modified with the bucket tool, brushes, etc. NOTE: no marching ants show with this method.
NOW, you can fill all the colored pixels in the entire with ONE MOVE:
on your keyboard, use ALT+BACKSPACE and watch the magic – all colored pixels are now filled!
Now you can fill in everything with a solid color on template layers and very detailed overlays super quick!
PLUS, if you decide to add shading or more colors to the fill, you can brush over the layer all over the place without every “going outside the lines”
Here is a sample of the above overlay that was colored in just a few seconds with locked transparency, the quick backfill and a brush.
All it needs is a little texture and it’s ready to go!
We have tons and tons of wonderful paper making overlays in the store that work SO WELL with this recoloring method. NOTE: the layer must have some areas of transparency (eg be a .png and not .jpg format for this to work)
CLICK HERE to see our overlays for creating digital scrapbooking kits.
Have fun!
top image credit: freedigitalphotos.net
Another possibility is to add Adjustment Layers, able to constantly change...Hue/Saturation (to change color), Gradient (to vary tones), Pattern (to add texture), etc....and then clip all to overlay. Can also play with blend modes on each.
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