Painting w/ an Image Reference?

[John Cuevas]

I don’t understand why you can’t see the layer? I just dropped a jpeg into a comp, opened up it’s layer window, selected the paintbrush and started tracing around the picture(badly, but I can still see everything).

When you are in the layer window, do you have view set to “Paint” and the Render box checked?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Max Jackson]

Well I can paint on the image, yes. But the paint is flattened to the image. I want to see the image as a reference guide and paint on top of it separately so what I’m painting is the mask?

Know what I mean? At this point I can’t figure out how to do this in After Effects, only in Photoshop.

[John Cuevas]

I think I’m following. Couldn’t you use paint on the image and then when you are finished, just click the paint effect and change the mode to “Paint on Transparent” And if you want you could put another copy of the image below that layer?

I’m not sure what you mean by the mask as I think that means something different in photoshop than it does in AE. Perhaps I’m not fully understanding what you are trying to accomplish.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Max Jackson]

Right, mask is probably bad terminology. Also, my bad, the paint isn’t flattened to the image in layer mode. it’s a wire on top that you can move around. That’s way comforting.

One thing though, I’m still in layer mode. How do I get this paint on the image in layer mode to it’s own solid or layer to use as a matte or blend mode layer effect?

Thanks John.

[John Cuevas]

Go back to comp mode, select the layer with the paint effect and press “E” to reveal the effects and twirl open “Paint” You have some options here, you can individually change each paint layer to be a different transfer mode. Or you can change the paint toggle “Paint on Transparent” to on. Now you can use that as an alpha matte for the layer below if you want. Or you could animate the brush strokes to reveal a layer by animating the start and end parameters under the stroke options.

Each brush stroke also has parameters that can be further adjusted, color,

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Max Jackson]

When I click the Paint on Transparent ‘on’ the whole frame goes black. I got it to show transparent through the image, but then now all it does is show a black canvas.

Know what I did wrong at all?

Thanks for your help, it’s really encouraging. I’ll have to see if I can’t find some more tutorials on using the paint tool.

[John Cuevas]

Are you painting with black paint over a black background? If that’s the case change push the checkboard icon below the comp window.

Only Tutorial I know of using the paint filter/effect.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Max Jackson]

I’m painting black on a JPG. I thought I hit the same on/off switch and it masked out what I painted, but i hit it again and from here on out it just turns the whole comp black. Heh, not sure what I did.

Thanks John. 🙂

[Max Jackson]

Actually you’re right. I get what you were saying now with the black on black. Silly me, that’s exactly what the problem was.

Thanks John!