Changing background colour and texture problems

[davush]

Hello,

 

Apologies for the endless questions - but this forum is really useful.

 

In my current map project, I have a textured background (parchment) as the lowest layer with several objects placed on top. (I am using Designer).

 

What I want is basically to be able to colour the background which will be the ocean and still allow the texture to come through in the ocean and continents. 

 

So, I draw a rectangle and choose a colour and low opacity over the texture (i.e. across the whole document). However, the other objects (the continents) on top, are also affected by this ocean-colour. I want them to keep the parchment texture, but for the ocean colour to not affect them. I can't have them on 100% opacity because they are duplicated with overlay at a low opacity to allow the coastline to look more hand-drawn on parchment. Is there any way to seep the continents from being affected by the ocean colouring below?

 

Many thanks.

[toltec]

Hello,

 

Apologies for the endless questions - but this forum is really useful.

 

In my current map project, I have a textured background (parchment) as the lowest layer with several objects placed on top. (I am using Designer).

 

What I want is basically to be able to colour the background which will be the ocean and still allow the texture to come through in the ocean and continents. 

 

So, I draw a rectangle and choose a colour and low opacity over the texture (i.e. across the whole document). However, the other objects (the continents) on top, are also affected by this ocean-colour. I want them to keep the parchment texture, but for the ocean colour to not affect them. I can't have them on 100% opacity because they are duplicated with overlay at a low opacity to allow the coastline to look more hand-drawn on parchment. Is there any way to seep the continents from being affected by the ocean colouring below?

 

Many thanks.

 

I am not sure if this is relevant to Designer but in Photo I would put the colour layer on top  and set the layer blending mode to screen. 

[jhoy]

Hi davush

 

Could you make sure that the shape you are putting on to change the colour is below the other objects but above the background layer.

 

There is another option using recolour, could you let me know if you are on a desktop version or iPad version and I can put some instructions together for you.

[davush]

Thanks toltec - Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work on Designer.

 

Hi Jhoy - I am using Mac desktop version. My layer order is (lowest to highest): Parchment texture x 2 (B&W), Rectangle Colour Layer, Continent Shapes (duplicated, with overlay - this is mostly for the coastline stroke, not the fill).

 

What I am doing is: I colour the rectangle an ocean colour, and the background gets the affect I want. However, this also effects the continents as they are set to overlay. I want to be able to colour them independently from the ocean colour layer, but maintaining the parchment texture.

 

Many thanks.

[jhoy]

Hi davush

 

Thank you for the update, could you send me your AD document so that I can see it in the APP, I have put a link below for you to send me the file.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/request/dUv4pa1XUwGTNgpd4P5b

[davush]

Thanks jhoy, I have done so. As you can see, the rectangle is coloured 'parchment colour' at the minute. This gives me the stroke style I want for the coastlines, and also a colour close to what I want for the continents. However, recolouring this rectangle to a blue effects the stroke and continents. I hope my explanation is clear.

 

Thanks.

[jhoy]

Hi davush

 

Thank you for the file, if you select the coastline layer then change the blend mode from passthrough to normal the outlines should then show their normal colour and not the parchment background layer colour.

[davush]

Hi jhoy - apologies for not being clear, what I meant was, I want the outlines to look as if they are ink-drawn onto parchment, so I would like to keep the current affect. Is there a way to achieve this without duplicating the layers and setting blend mode to overlay (the layers group seems to default to passthrough, but the individual layers are actually set to overlay)?

 

Basically, I want the continents and outline to remain exactly as they are now, but to be able to colour the background layer separately.

 

Perhaps I am asking the impossible.  :)

[jhoy]

Hi davush

 

The only way I could get this to work without adding a type of overlay and manually deleting the parts over the land which would be very time consuming is to do the following.

 

Uncheck the Parchment background layer to hide the preview.

Select the coastline layer group and on the swatches tab select the line colour to change it to the parchment colour.

Make a copy of the coastline layer.

On the copy right click and rasterize the layer.

Hide the coastline layer so that only the copy rasterise layer is visible.

Go to the pixel persona.

Select the flood fill tool, change the colour to your desired colour and fill the sea.

Go back to the draw persona

Re-check both the Parchment background and coastline layer.

Set the opacity of the rasterised layer so that the details shows through.

[davush]

Thanks jhoy, very informative.

 

I was wondering if there was any way I could 'flatten' the transparency/opacity of vector objects? Essentially so that a colour with less than 100% opacity is transformed into a solid colour - or would I simply have to rasterise them? Thanks again.

[jhoy]

Hi davush

 

The top layer is already rasterised as such flattened,, the only way to make the colour solid would be to take away or lower the transparency and this would stop the texture showing through.