Process: Locking transparent pixels

This week Monkey shares how to lock transparent pixels in Photoshop to make coloring things easier.

Okay, so recently I found out about locking transparent pixels, a feature in photoshop that allows you to change the color of your linework very easily.

So the screencap below is some calligraphy-ish type lettering I did for my friends' wedding invitations that I'm working on. However, they're not too keen on just black lettering, as it doesn't go with the rest of the color scheme, so I needed to change the color. Rather than go and repaint the lettering with a new color (and what if the color wasn't right?), I decided to try out this new (at least to me, PS noob) feature.

So as you can see (if you click on the image to see a larger version), I've circled the toggle button for the "lock transparent pixels" feature. Basically, what you are doing is that for whatever layer you are editing, you are making it so you can only edit the pixels that already have information in them. You can now no longer paint where it's transparent (until you unlock the transparent pixels). This lets you freely color in the pixels that have information (ie. your line work).

You can see in the above screencap that I'm now just using the brush tool to quickly swipe in color..I'm replacing the black with red.

Other applications for this would be when you are digitally painting and you are working in many layers. Say you are painting someone's face on a single layer. You've got the proportions down and you want to quickly replace some color on the edge of the face. Instead of carefully filling in color over your painting, if the background is transparent then you can lock the transparent pixels and then just paint away!

Anyhoo, I hope this helps a bit (it's really useful for logos!) and feel free to leave questions/comments/clarifications in the comments! Thanks for stopping by!

We're Graduating!

So Monkey + Seal have a confession to make - the pictures above are not from Academy of Art's graduation ceremony. They're actually from 4(!!) years ago when we both graduated from UC Berkeley.

However, the big news is that after meeting with our awesome department chairs, we have successfully petitioned to graduate! Yay yay!

So we should be walking come the end of the Spring semester, but since we are both not taking classes in the mean time we'll be making art for art shows (we hope to have another show lined up in February, and we're working on a March show as well) and keeping busy! Thanks to everyone who has supported us through the past few years and for understanding when we disappear for months at a time to focus on our classes. Congrats to everyone else graduating this Spring!

Vote for the CPAF on FB today!

Monkey + Seal just heard (via Disgrasian, etc.) that the Center for Pacific Asian Family is in the running to get a $1 million dollar grant from Chase in their FB charity contest.

With budget cuts and all these other shenanigans marking our crap economy, CPAF needs your help! They're an awesome LA-based org that provides 24-hour multi-lingual hotline, emergency shelter, counseling and outreach services, and a transitional living home for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Regardless of who you are, your gender, your sexual orientation, if you have not been affected by domestic violence, rape, or sexual assault, chances are someone you know and love has. Especially in patriarchal communities (ie. nearly all of them), silence is enforced by fear and shame. Help the CPAF break that silence and make a change so that no person has to live in fear and that we can start holding the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity accountable.

So yes, you have to dl the stupid FB app, but this one allows you to vote and really do something positive with all that time we all spend wasting on Facebook. It's super quick and easy, and really, it takes like 20 secs to do.

If you still aren't convinced, listen to all these famous people preach it:


Sweet, and thanks for voting ahead of time.

Links:
CPAF official site
Get the app to vote here!

Sam Tsui Sweetness

We might be a bit late jumping on this bandwagon, but if you haven't seen it, here is the video of Yale student Sam Tsui doing an a capella medly of Michael Jackson - with himself.



Monkey likes this as besides the fact that he has a great voice, there's also uber video-editing. Anyone know how he did this? Monkey would love a tutorial.