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Thread: How do you get 'True Black' ??

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2021
    Posts
    2

    How do you get 'True Black' ??

    Hello,

    I started using Art Rage recently and I really like it,

    However, some very 'basic' things are extremely difficult to do in this program.

    Right now I started trying to 'edit' references by simply wanting to get 'true black' and spray-paint (or whatever) 'around' the image to clean it up and leave only the reference area I want to see.

    Thought it would be a pretty simple thing but soon enough I realized every tool I picked always ended up 'gray-ish' on the picture.

    Note the first picture I opened had a clear 'true black' on the sides so I basically 'dropper-ed' it (used the dropper tool to 'grab' the black from the picture),

    but when I 'applied' that same black, no matter the tool, I always got some muddied gray out of it.


    So basically, -- How the Heck do you get "True Black" in this program?? And apply it as such??


    Thanks all for the help


    (Honestly this ties into a more fundamental question -- how exactly do you get a 'true colour' in the program in general?

    If I want to apply a colour like a typical 'digital paint program', without any 'realistic colour tool effects', how do I do it?)

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Location
    Australia
    Posts
    3,400
    Hello and welcome Valen,

    View/Color Picker Moving the sliders will get you pure black.

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    June.

    Oh God of homeless things, look down
    And try to ease the way
    Of all the little weary paws
    That walk the world
    today.
    -
    Unknown.

    http://enug66.deviantart.com/gallery/

    [My setup: hp 15in laptop,11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz 2.70 GHz, 8.00 GB RAM, 24in Acer 2nd monitor, Huion Kamvas 20 Pro display tablet, Windows 11, ArtRage Vitae.
    My painting real-estate is extended across three monitors.]

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2019
    Posts
    176
    If you really paint true black, of course also depends on what painting tool and what settings you use (menu "View"/"Tool Settings"). For example the oil brush will not paint pure opaque black if the Thinner slider is dragged to the max. And the Airbrush will not do it with the Opacity slider set to a low level. Even the Opacity of the layer must be set to 100% ("Layers" panel, on each layer there is a circal symbol that appears if you hover over it - if you click on it, you can adjust the opacity).

    If you paint in ArtRage, you do it in the RGB colourspace, this means that you paint with the colours of light. The basic colours are red, green and blue (RGB=additive colour mixing). Possibly what you mean with "true colours" are so called body colours. The basic colours for this are cyan, magenta and yellow. And because you can't mix true black only with this colours, there is an additional so called keycolour, black (CMYK= subtractive colour mixing).

    The reason why the first one is called "additive colour mixing" is because the basic situation is absolut darkness - black. No colours without light. In RGB you have three channels that are like three spotlights, assigned to the same focal point. If you for example up-regulate the red channel, you will get an, in the lower levels, dark red that gets the more luminuos, the more you up-regulate the channel. If you push it to the max, you get pure red. If you up-regulate the other two channels simultaneos, related to each other, you can mix all other colours. And if you push all three channels to the max, you will get pure white (remember Isaac Newton).

    Body colours are colours that are reflected (or better refracted) by physical materials. Even this colours wont exist without light, so essentially light colours are rather more "true colours" than body colours. But body colours behave different than light colours, because here the basic situation is the colour of the canvas, ideally white. White is maximum reflection of light. The more colours you apply to the canvas, the less light will be reflected. And depending on what colours you apply to the canvas, it will reflect the relating parts of the spectrum of light. The others will be absorbed. Because of this it is called "subtractive colour mixing", because it subtracts light.

    ArtRage doesn't support the CMYK colourspace, so for professional printing your paintings must be converted by using an image editing software like Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Paintshop Pro or even Krita. You, of course, can even let professionals do that. Nevertheless it wouldn't be a good idea to paint in the CMYK colourspace, because it contains much less colours than RGB. You will get much more colur brillance with RGB.

    In ArtRage you have the choice between two colour mixing modes for painting: the normal colourblending and the "Real colour blending" (menu "Tools"/"Colour Options"/"Real Colour Blending") . The first one blends colours directly, while the "Real colour blending" blends colours related to the colour wheel. For example if you blend red and green, in the blending range nuances from orange over yellow to green will be mixed. Just test it out and you will understand and see what you like most.

    Hope this will somehow help.
    Last edited by Somerset; 04-12-2021 at 11:54 PM.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    671
    Quote Originally Posted by Valen View Post
    Hello,

    I started using Art Rage recently and I really like it,

    However, some very 'basic' things are extremely difficult to do in this program.

    Right now I started trying to 'edit' references by simply wanting to get 'true black' and spray-paint (or whatever) 'around' the image to clean it up and leave only the reference area I want to see.

    Thought it would be a pretty simple thing but soon enough I realized every tool I picked always ended up 'gray-ish' on the picture.

    Note the first picture I opened had a clear 'true black' on the sides so I basically 'dropper-ed' it (used the dropper tool to 'grab' the black from the picture),

    but when I 'applied' that same black, no matter the tool, I always got some muddied gray out of it.


    So basically, -- How the Heck do you get "True Black" in this program?? And apply it as such??


    Thanks all for the help


    (Honestly this ties into a more fundamental question -- how exactly do you get a 'true colour' in the program in general?

    If I want to apply a colour like a typical 'digital paint program', without any 'realistic colour tool effects', how do I do it?)

    That small amount of grey you are seeing might be canvas lighting.

    Usually, a color might have slight shadows and highlights caused by the undulating canvas, but the average color looks "right" because the darks and lights average out (a kind of optical blending). With the pure black color though, there are no darker than blacks which can offset the lighter than blacks... the result is something which looks a wee bit brighter than pure black. Lighting on the canvas makes pure blacks on the canvas, appear lighter than black.

    [Note: The dropper tool can be set to sample with or without the canvas lighting]

    In typical canvas and lighting I get resulting lightness values of about 3-6 (out of 255) for pure black paint.


    If you do not want to simulate reality, (which never has black levels on any canvas of 0 anyway), you can just turn off canvas lighting, and what you see will be the pure RGB color.

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