Switching up colors in a background. Technical question.

[Phemar]

So I've been playing around with a practice background, trying to see where my skills are and the results aren't too bad so far.

In my background I have a section like this, which I drew and then added in the anti-aliasing. Now I've decided that I want to change up the colors.


(Old colors are on top, new colors on the bottom. As you can see, flood filling has messed up the anti-aliasing.)

I can't use the flood fill tool because of the anti-aliasing. Is there an easy way to switch up the colors without manually redrawing everything? I'm using The Gimp by the way. The anti-aliasing was done by hand using 1 pixel pencil tool at 30% opacity.

[Miez]

In photoshop I'd change the hue of the background - or better still: overlay it with an adjustment layer (or a color layer). That way you can play around with it until it matches your expectations.
However I'm not sure if GIMP offers the same functionality...

[Phemar]

It does, however the relationships between the colors aren't too nice. For example, in the original, the hue shifts from the green to red going from the lightest shade to the darkest. With the new colors it shifts more correctly.

So I've tried changing the hue of the layer and playing with adjustment layers using different blending modes and whatnot, however the problem lies with the actual relationship between the colors - so those need to be sorted out before any of those other techniques will work.

Edit: Haha Miez it's awesome you posted here, it's actually your FOY tutorial I've mainly been following while drawing this

[Miez]

Haha cool

Well, to keep the maximum of control takes a little forward thinking: split up your artwork in as many layers as is practically workable. That way you can redo, alter, pimp and tweak to your hearts' content.

For instance, in your example I would have split it in three layers: a base colour, a layer with white (or a lighter color) and a layer with black. These last two layers you can set to 'screen' and 'multiply' and then tweak their transparency. Now if you want to change the color you have full control over the base, the lighter and the darker areas...

[Phemar]

That's probably the way to do it, and I think I already kicked myself earlier for not doing it that way.

I think I'm just gonna redraw it (sigh! haha), but this time do it on a separate layer for each shade. At least it was a good learning experience - you don't learn without screwing up, right?

[Snarky]

No need to redraw. You can split it into separate layers easily using the Magic Wand (non-contiguous setting) and Ctrl-Shift-J (new layer via cut). Then you can flood-fill each with white/black/base color as you need, and start adjusting.

Actually, to simplify it further, you don't even need to split the layer. Just:

-Use the magic wand (tolerance 0, no anti-alias, no contiguous) to select the highlights
-Use the marquee or rectangular selector to unselect any pixels of the same color outside of the water region (by holding down Alt as you select)
-Without canceling the selection, create a new layer and set it as focus
-Without canceling the selection, Flood-fill with white
-Without canceling the selection, hide the current layer, set focus to the old layer
-Flood fill with water color (and now you can cancel the selection)

Do the same thing with the shadows. Also, do the anti-alias pixels separately (and fill them with gray), then merge them with the respective highlight/shadow layers.

[Calin Leafshade]

If using a small palette then the best idea to change colours is simply to make an indexed image and change the palette rather than change the image at all. I realise you are using anti aliasing but if it was done manually then the palette should still be limited.

[Miez]

No need to redraw. You can split it into separate layers easily using the Magic Wand (non-contiguous setting) and Ctrl-Shift-J (new layer via cut). Then you can flood-fill each with white/black/base color as you need, and start adjusting.

True. You might have to redo or fix your AA after this, but it does save a lot of work...

[Snarky]

Photoshop also has a color replace tool, but I use it so rarely that I never properly learn how it works.

[selmiak]

came here to mention the color replace tool too.
There is even a tolerance level on it that might work on normal antialiasing, but it might not work as expected with special gradients.