Adjustment Layer don't work after Erase White Paper

[Adria Tormo]

Hi,

 

I have a drawing that I have scanned, later, I have passed it through affinity photo to eliminate the white background and to leave it as png, after doing this, to be able to apply contrast to it, the effects do nothing on the image. However, if I open any other png that has not been passed by that effect leaves me no problem. Is there a way to remove white backgrounds and use the adjustment layers?

Thanks!

[Adria Tormo]

Well, I do it manually and can make adjustments layers but I think that 'Erase white paper' is more effective to erase all white background whitout affect to the drawing that this manner. Is there a bug or a problem within this effect and the adjustments layers?

[Gabe]

Hi @wolfmius,

If you used Erase Whitepaper, you are most likely left with black text and a transparent background. Some adjustment layers ( like contrast ) will not have a visible effect as they rely on pixels to "fake" contrast. If you only have black pixels and nothing around them, the contrast will not do much. 

If you attach your file we can have a look.

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[Adria Tormo]

Here you have Gabe, 

Is the saved image of the scanner and already applied the erase whitepaper effect

Thank you!

Scan.afphoto

[Gabe]

Right. So here's what happened. 

That image is not actually grayscale, but black varying in opacity to "fake" grays. No adjustment layers would work on black so technically that's correct. To get around this, Create a new, white rectangle to cover the whole image. Place it below the image in the layer stack. Select both layers and Merge visible. Hide the bottom 2 layers, and only leave the new created layer on the top. With that selected, click on Blend Ranges, and adjust the range as below. 

After that, you should have grays instead of black, and the adjustment layers will work

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[Adria Tormo]

Woah! Thank you so much Gabe, that's awesome this will be my workflow for clean drawings.