Blacks

[JoeyAt75]

What are some of the solutions you have for dealing with pure black? I always have to ashen my torso and shoulder blacks to get the contours of the uniform visible but it looks off with the pants, helmet & sleeves which are pure black. Am I doing something wrong?

[nmleague]

Pure black is tough to have while retaining the uniform texture, good thing is that if you look at a picture of a black uniform in sunlight most of it doesnt look pure black excect the shadows/creases. This is what I have done to have black uniforms that still show uniform texture. For the jersey as example I use the layered template and do a flood fill of the bottom layer with a color like r20, b20, g20, an almost black. This gives me a result of a dark gray jersey with texture visable. I use Paint shop Pro and then follow procedure. Staying with that layer I click on the adjust menu, select brightness/contrast, and adjust those sliders, I will try -5 for brightness and +5 for contrast. and click ok. The result may a jersy that is a little to black to see the texture well. So I click the edit menu and now click undo brightness/contrast. I then again click the adjust menu, select brightness/contrast, the sliders are still set to -5, +5, so I adjust those to say -3 for brightness and keep contrast at +5, and click ok. This now gives me a jersey that looks black yet retains texture. If not I would continue the edit undo procedure. I use this for most colors since the layers of the templates pretty much lighten all colors I add to the base layer significantly. For the colors that turn out much lighter I may be adjusting the brightness/contrast by -20-40, just play around to get the feel.

[frunky]

If your using Photoshop go to image> adjustments >invert the image must be white with shadows being black of course
In paint shop pro you use negative I don't remember where that is located tho in paintshop pro

[Scotty316]

I use Paint Shop Pro, and what I do is copy the uniform layer and make it pure white. Then on top of that layer is another copy of the uniform and i use black. No adjustments. Then on that white layer, set it to "Overlay", and the black to "Multiply"... You can see the jersey texture pretty good, and brightens up any colors you have in the black.