Masking / Tinting / Filtering 2

[Bell2550]

I need to alter colour photographs to either be filtered, masked, tinted or whatever the term into shades of one colour. I only know theatre-speak to show you what I'm trying to do - take a regular light and put a blue gel in it to colour everything blue.

I'm trying it in Corel Photo-Paint8 but can't seem to make it work or make the help understand what I'm lookin' for. Is this possible in this program? If not, what program or kind of program am I looking for? My photographs are bmp, jpg, tif, gif, files.

Thanks for helping!

 

[dzine]

I'm using Corel 11 so not sure if this will help or even if this is the correct way to do this....

..with the picture up.. go to

Image/Mode/Duotone

..in "type" select Quadtone..

Double-click each colour to change for the one you want.


Hope this helps?

 

[Bell2550]

Hi dzine - I'm using Corel-PhotoPaint-8, so I don't even have a Duotone or Quadtone that I can find.
So, so far, I'm still lookin' for help!!!

Thanks for trying!

 

[javabearSTL]

Yes, you do, you're just not looking in the right place Off of the Image menu you should see a Color Mode option (dzine got the name wrong, i believe)... in there you'll see options like RGB, CMYK, Greyscale, etc... one will be Duotone

 

[Bell2550]

javabearSTL, I do see duotone, but it is grayed out and I cannot choose it. is there another option?

 

[javabearSTL]

what format is the image in?

 

[Bell2550]

Currently it is in jpeg, but I can get it into gif or any other format.

 

[javabearSTL]

Never ever use JPG to edit! It is a lossy format. A good rule of thumb is that if you're given a file format other than CPT, the first thing you do is to save it off as a CPT and work from there. The CPT format is nonlossy. JPGs and GIFs cannot be duotones. CPT can... I believe TIFs can as well as EPS - you might need to make DCS files, too. What is the final product going to be used for? That final desitination will determine what you need to do with the file.

 

[Bell2550]

JavabearSTL, I'm so glad you mentioned the lossy re jpgs. The printer we are going to requested that it be put in as jpgs - I don't know why. These photographcs are going into a tabloid document (in In-Design) - to be printed (11x17) and also to be posted on a website.

The format used is for all full colour photos to end up either washed in blue or green - the only colours in the document.

I had to make the backgrounds transparent - which meant I exported to GIF - that from another post on this forum. Can I make the backgrounds transparent in a CPT file? I've never used them before.

 

[Bell2550]

I converted by jpgs into CPT by exporting them to CPT, but they still won't allow me to select duotone.

 

[javabearSTL]

Well, you're going to have to have two completely different sets of images for print and web - that's just the nature of the two beasts as Web is always RGB mode and print is CMYK.

For the web, you'll have to convert the images into duotone and then you may need to convert it back to 24-bit color to export out to JPG.

What color modes do you have available to you in PP? I don't have v8, but in v9, it is Image/Mode (my mistake earlier... in v10 and v11 it was changed to Image/Color Mode, so my apologies there) and Duotone is the 3rd option... you're saying you don't have such options?

 

[Bell2550]

In my version, it is Image/Convert to/duotones... When I have the CPT one I created open I still cannot select it. I am not sure if it has something to do with the transparent background.

It does have Image/Colour Table but I cannot select it either. I do have Image/Adjust/Colour Hue or Colour Tone but it gives me an error message about masks. So I tried it on one without and it allows me to move the tone, but not Duotone. While it does allow me to change the tone, I can't seem to make the whole thing blue or green, but it gives the green/yellow a bluer tint. I just need the whole thing a blue tint.

Even after tinting it, can I still have a transparent background?

 

[javabearSTL]

I guess it depends on what you mean by "transparent background." Many people use that term to describe different things. JPGs can't have transparent backgrounds. Ever. You gave the impression that you converted a JPG to a CPT so what you're saying is very confusing. Please explain what you mean by "transparent" in this instance. Also, there is no Image/Mode in your version of PP?

 

[Bell2550]

I aplogize, being self-taught I am not in with the lingo. Some of my photos have been cropped into shapes (oval/circle) and the background has been white, but I managed to find away to get the non-photo part of it to disappear. You are right it wasn't a jpeg it was a gif then.

There is no Image/Mode - my version is 8.232

 

[javabearSTL]

Had to go run to someone else's PC that had such an old version on it. In v8 you have to convert the image to greyscale first...THEN you can convert to duotone.

I think you're using some terminology wrong again here (sorry, not trying to give you grief - just trying to help you understand the process and be able to communicate issues better). Bitmaps can only be square/rectangles by their very nature. So while it may look like you've "cropped" an image into an oval or square, it's not been cropped to that shape. Bitmaps are made up of pixels. Pixels are square. Therefore the only shape a bitmap can be is in some variation of a square item.

Now, you can give an illusion of something being oval/circle/other shapes, but it's technically an illusion since the bounding box of the object will always be a square or a rectangle.

GIFs (which should only ever be used for the web and not for anything else) achieve this illusion by making *one color* "transparent."

Other formats do a more complex way of doing transparency via different types of masks.

Now, how is this being printed? Are you supplying a print-ready file? Just images and they do layout? PDF? Is this spot color or process color?

 

[Bell2550]

listen javabearSTL, I am grateful you're telling me the right/wrong way, and the terminology, believe me!!!

This will be exported to PDF file for printing, I'm doing the layout, etc. They are just printing it and someone else is posting/publishing to the web site.

I do have the original photographs (digital camera downloads them as jpegs) and can go back there to do what I need. I have just converted the original jpeg photo and it washed into blue beautifully!!! Just the way I need it to be. Thank you so much!

I'm assuming once I send this out to CPT I can mask it into a circle/oval? without using a lossy-format - what is lossy by the way?

You are a great help javabearSTL, thanks!

 

[javabearSTL]

well, what app will you be laying everything out to? That will determine what format you'll wanna use image-wise. I'm very happy to hear you had the originals to work from - that makes things for you much easier... because not only will you have to convert the color, you'll have to modify the "header" of the image, per se, for print. Digital cameras save images as "72dpi" (it's a misnomer as it's really PPI and not DPI - DPI=dots per inch... there are no dots in a bitmap, only pixels, so PPI is "more correct", but people use the terms interchangeably - not saying that is correct, but people will and I'm just mentioning that as a bit of triva

Depending upon what your printer needs, you will need to resample the images to a new DPI/PPI setting. Generically, we'll say they need to be 300dpi (i'll just use dpi from here on to save typing). In other versions of PP, it's Image/Resample and you can enter in a new DPI setting... but make sure you have the checkbox marked for "keep original size". That's very important. You're not really resampling as in physically making the image larger or smaller, but you're telling the app you use to lay this stuff out in what the physical dimensions of the image are.

For example, make a new file in PP that is 300x300 pixels in size at 100dpi/ppi, choose whatever color you want for it, and save it (CPT format). Now do a file/save as and give it a new name and recolor the image. Then resample it and tell it that it's now 300dpi/ppi and tell it to keep the original size.

Import both files into Draw but also keep them open in PP. In PP, you'll see both files are the same size - that's because PP doesn't care what your dpi/ppi settings are. It only cares about the actual number of pixels for height and width. Draw, however, will look at not only the height/width in terms of amount of pixels in the image, it also looks at the file's header which tells it how many pixels are supposed to fit in a one-inch line (or centimeters, etc). Your 300x300px images in Draw will show at 2 different sizes. One will be 3-inches square and the other will be 1-inch square.

So, what app will you be doing your layout in? Are you using the full version of Acrobat to make your PDFs (or some other 3rd party converter?)?

 

[Bell2550]

I have done the resampling to 300dpi in both EPS and CPT formats. However, this project is being done in In-Design, so I'll have to work with EPS and CPTs aren't recognized.

I've already done one and it looks great. I'm printing in In-Design out to Acrobat's Distiller which is already setup for the higher end graphics - I've tried it in the last 10 minutes on my sample and its come out nice and clean.

In PP - when masking with the circle tool, is there any way to go back and adjust the mask? I can't seem to get it to the "perfect" stage in one go.

I appreciate the trivia on the how-to/why since I have no one to ask or bounce ideas/info off at this end as I'm the only one using this software.

 

[Bell2550]

The only problem I have is that the graphic, while crisp and clean and oval/round is showing as black and white and not the blue wash - this is once exported and printed from PDF format. also on screen it is showing as b/w - there is a bit of blue there, but not much... vs. the full-colour photo I haven't yet removed.

 

[javabearSTL]

Sounds like you've got it all down. TIFs would work, too - if you need "transparency" with the TIFs or EPSs you can make "alpha masks" for the transparency bits.

The masks can be a real PITA - when I'm masking stuff off, I usually do clipmasks (like when I"m restoring a photo), but those won't really work alpha channel-wise for you. You've saved your mask as a channel, you can always re-load the mask and do a Mask/Shape/Grow, etc... if you're only talking about masks in terms of blocking something off for various effects, the clipmask works nicely.