Digital painting with Krita 5 intermediate level

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome. My name is 3D takin from Experts Academy. In this online course, you will learn how to create two different illustrations step-by-step from start to finish. These two illustrations have something in common. And that is, they both combined vector and raster techniques. But the wave vector graphics are used in each of these illustrations is very different. In the first illustration, which is a strawberry house, vector graphics are used as the base color rostral techniques or the news on top of it to add the shadings, highlights, textures, and so on. While in a second illustration where we will draw a robot warrior, vector graphics are used to create the outline or the line art. For the coloring process, we will explore a different technique. That is, we will start with defining shading and highlights in gray scale. Then we add colors to it using the gradient map filter. And after that, we apply various trust or techniques to add lighting effects and finalize the illustration. Because there are so many features and techniques involved in making these two illustrations. Of course, we are not going to jump straight into making the illustration. You will be guided to learn the basics first, then gradually move up to more advanced techniques. In this course, you will learn various adverse selection techniques, then loan vector techniques in depth from creating basic primitive objects to being able to create custom complex shapes. You will also learn thoroughly the filter mask features. We will discuss various filters such as HSV, levels, color valence, and so on, including how to access hundreds of genomic filters. Then you will also learn the gradient feature in detail from the process of creating gradients, Presets, anything new gradient colors, until applying gradients using various methods. There are still many things you will learn from this course. It is impossible to explain them all one by one. In this short video, please refer to the curriculum section to learn more. But before you decide to join your scores, I need to remind you that this course is not designed for complete beginners who have never used Krita before. The curriculum of this course is designed as the continuation of the basic level of course. So just to be safe, I recommend you to take the basic level of course first before taking this one. The second thing I also need to remind you is that you will need a drawing tablet to be able to learn from this course effectively. A drawing tablet is an input device which generally consists of a board and append. This device is equipped with sensors to detect how hard you press the pen when growing. Although you can use the mouse to draw an illustration, still, it will be much faster and more effective if you use a drawing tablet. I hope this course can be helpful for you. Was solemn while icon. 2. Exercise files and other information: Before we start discussing the lessons, there are so for important things that you need to know for us regarding this course, the force is where you can download the exercise files or the project files of these scores. You can find and download the files from the following lean. Please pay attention to the case of the letters because the link is case sensitive. For convenience, I combined all of the files and compress them into a single zip file. After you download an uncompressed file, you will see that the files are already sorted a named according to the lesson videos. Next is about the curriculum. I have carefully crafted the curriculum for adolescents are arranged sequentially, meaning that the lessons you get from one video will become the foundation for the next videos. That is why it is very important that you take the scores according to the order of the curriculum. Avoid learning by jumping around randomly. If you do that, at some point, you might get confused. Indeed, sometimes I repeat previous lessons if I consider them important. But of course, it will be impossible to repeat everything over and over again in every lesson. So again, by default, I will not repeat the lessons that I have already explained before. The next thing I need to remind you of this, that you need to practice. This online course is not just about theory. Most of the lessons are practical skills. So if you really want to benefit from this online course, then there is no other way but to do a lot of practice, at least for each lesson video, try to practice it yourself. Once. For this online course, I recorded all the lessons using a PC with Windows ten OS. So all the keyboard shortcuts data. We'll be using R for a PC or Windows. If you use Linux OS, it should not be a problem because basically Linux uses the same hardware and keyboard layout as Windows. What might become an issue is if you use an Apple Mac computer, since the keyboard layout is slightly different from the PC, you should anticipate some differences in the keyboard shortcuts. You may need to spend some time looking for additional references on the Internet. In general, you need to swap the control key on a PC to the Command key on your keyboard. You may already know from the start before taking this online course. Krita is a free and open-source software. You don't have to pay anything to be able to download it and use it. Corita's official website is krita.org. For safety reasons, you do not want to download greta from other unknown sources. In terms of Krita version, when I started recording for this course, Greta was available in version 5.02 and then midway, Greta version 5.1 was released, followed by version 5.1, 0.1 shortly after that. So some of the early lesson videos in this course are using version 5.02, while some of the later lessons use Krita version 5.1, there are slight differences between these two versions, but in terms of functionality, it is still the same. To anticipate any confusion, I've made an additional short video to explain the changes. I placed this short video right after the effect that lesson video. Originally, I recorded all of the videos and the audios myself. But there are times when I had bad flu while the production schedule is very tight and I just have to keep moving forward, the videos turn out to be alright, but the audios are not quite alright. For these videos, I decided to use a professional voiceover service. This is the voice that you will hear. It is very different from my voice, but in many positive ways, I'm not a native English speaker. So compare it to my voice. I believe this voiceovers articulations are way better. I hope you understand my decision. And I also hope that the voice-over can actually help you better understand the lessons. The last thing that I need to mention gives the copyright issue. Throughout this course, I may show some pictures or perhaps even videos. Some of these are not made by me. I use them as references or to help explain lessons. I never claimed that these images or videos are made by me. If I can find the owner's name, I will put it on top of the content. But if I cannot find it, at least I will put the URL of where I got the content from. 3. UI customization and custom shortcuts: In this lesson video, we will cover how to customize the UI and how to create custom shortcuts. We have already discussed this in basic level, of course. So I am going to review the techniques again quickly just to refresh our memory. And also to make sure we have the same UI layout. To start with. The first time you install an open Krita, this is probably what you will see. To see the complete UI of greta, we need to open or create a new document. During this course, I will probably be using the air for 300 ppi document preset most of the time. Let's use the landscape orientation. We have covered in detail all the parameters related to documents invasive course. So we're not going to discuss them again. Now, click the Create button to create the document. After we have a document opened, we can see the concrete UI of greta. This is the default UI layout of Greta, but this is not the ULL I will be using throughout this course. If you want to, you are free to use this default layout or perhaps your own custom layout. But if you want to match your UI layout exactly to do and I will be using, you can follow these steps. First, click and drag the toolbox so that it is located at the top. We want order to likens to be in one row. Then I prefer this advanced color selector broker to be on the left side to move the Docker, since it is currently attached to another Docker, you need to first click on this button, then you can drag it to the left side. The same thing with the tool options Docker. We want to move it to the left, also, just below the advanced color selector. We can adjust the width and also the height of the left Docker's if needed. Finally, I want to close this brush preset Docker because we can access it above via this button or by using the F6 shortcut. The less UI element that I want to change is the color picker model of the advanced color selector. Currently, the center area ship is triangular. I prefer to use the rectangular model. To change it. We can click on this little icon, then click here and just choose the color selector model that you like. I prefer this rectangular type. Then click Okay to confirm. You can see that the advanced color selector is now rectangular. Next, let's discuss creating custom shortcuts. We all know that keyboard shortcuts are very useful to speed up the workflow. Throughout this course, I will be using custom shortcuts a lot. Some of the shortcuts were created earlier in a basic level, of course, while some of them are new shortcuts, which we will discuss later when the time comes. For now, I just want to set up two custom shortcuts, which we covered earlier in the basic level course. For us, I want to set the letter Z for the free-hand selection tool. Then the second, I want to set the letter q for clearing the selection. The official name for this command is dyslexia. Keyboard Shortcuts. You can open the Settings menu, then configure Krita, an open-door keyboard shortcuts category. Here, you can find certain commands by typing the name in the search field, e.g. let's type in freehand selection. You can see only the free hand selection tool listed below. Clicking this area, then press the button and then press the letter Z on the keyboard. Then press OK. Next, for a second shortcut, we can use the search field again by typing the slag. We can see that this command already has a default shortcut, which is Control Shift a. It is a hassle to use the shortcut because we need to press three buttons at once. Well, we need the dislike command. Very often. We want a simpler shortcut, but also we don't want to remove the default one. So we don't want to click here. We want to click on the alternate column. Then click the non button and press bladder Q on your keyboard. Click Okay to confirm. The final setting that I want to do is to add a new brush preset to the popup pellet. Previously, we set up the pop-up palette to use a tag with a unique name. I use my own name, weedy. We've covered how to use the brush tags and how to use the proper pellet feature in depth in the previous basic level. Of course, just to remind you, let's say we want to add a new brush preset to the papa pillar, e.g. this brush preset called dry roller. Just right-click on it. So I assigned to tag and then select the name of low-tech use by the pop-up palette, in my case, the tag 3D. Now, if we use the Brush tool and we perform a right-click in a pop-up palette. We can now see the dry roller brush preset. So those are the things that you can prepare before moving to the lesson videos. Again, you don't have to do all of these things if you don't want to. But at least if we have the same UI layout, custom shortcuts, and Papa pellet, it can help us to reduce the risk of confusion down the road. 4. Basic selection techniques: Starting from this video and the other next few videos, we will cover various advanced selection techniques. But before that, just to refresh our memory, in this video, I want to quickly review and summarize all the selection techniques that we have covered in a basic level. Of course, if you feel confident and already know all the basic techniques for creating selections, you can skip this video and go directly to the next one. Basically, we use selections to limit the area that we want to edit. Krita provides many tools for selection, and all of them are located in this cluster. In general, you can find dotted lines on our tool icons. This is for creating a rectangular selection. This is for creating a circle selection, and this is for creating a polygonal shaped selection. To use this, we have to do a series of clicks and release us. Then to complete the selection, we can double-click or we can press the Enter key on the keyboard. Or we can also just click again on the starting point. As for the free hand selection tool to use it, we need to perform a click, Greg, just as we draw using the brush tool then released to complete the selection process. Alright, next, there are some important shortcuts for controlling selection. The forest is Control a to select all auto, select the entire canvas area. Then we can press Control Shift a to deselect or clear the selection. As I mentioned in a previous video, because we will use this disliked command very often, highest signed the letter Q as the custom shortcut. And then glare shortcut. There is no less important is control shift I for inverting the selection region. E.g. if I make a selection like this, then I press Control Shift I. Now this area is not selected. Instead, the area outside is the one that is being selected. You can see the dotted lines indicate the selection radian is now onto Canvas border. If we press Control Shift I again, the selection area is reversed back to this region. In case you forget all the shortcuts, just open the Select menu. Here. You can access all the commands and also see the shortcuts. Now, let's discuss the rectangular and the ellipse selection tools. When using these tools, you can make use of the modifier keys. What modifier keys mean or Shift, Control and Alt on your keyboard. E.g. if we click drag to make a selection box, before we release the mouse button, we can hold down the Shift key to make the rectangular shape a perfect square. If you hold down the Alt key, you can move the selection process to another location. If you hold down the Control key, you can change the center of the selection scale. Again, besides the rectangular selection tool, this modifier keys techniques also apply to the circle or Elliptical selection tool. The only difference is the shape of the selection. Holding shift will make the selection of perfect circle. Alright? So those were the basic selection techniques that we discussed in a forest Greta course. Make sure that you already understand all of this S. We will cover more advanced techniques in the following videos. 5. Adding and subtracting selection: In this lesson video, we will cover various techniques for revising the selection radian. Sometimes after we make a selection, we still want to subtract it or edit. For this, there are three methods that we can use. The forest is to use the modifier keys. The second method is to use the action modes available in the tool options Docker. And the third method is to make use of the global selection mask feature. We will cover the first and second methods in this video. Let's see how we can use the modifier keys to change the selection tool behavior. Let's say we created the rectangular selection like this. Then we want to add more to the selection area. Notice if we hold down the Shift key while making the selection again, instead of replacing the entire selection, the new selection area we create a will add to the previous existing selection. And we don't need to make the new selection radian intersect or touch the previous radian. If linear selection area is far apart, it will still walk. We can use this method with the other selection tools, e.g. while using a circle auto selection tool, or using the polygonal selection tool, or while using the free hand selection tool and so on. Alright, next, the opposite of the shift key is the alkene. If the Shift key adds to the selection holding the Alt key, we already use the existing selection. This technique also applies to various selection tools in Krita. Please try it yourself and experiment with these two modifier keys. After you are done, press Control Shift a, Doppler, the selection. Or I usually just press Q, S, the custom shortcut for the de-select command. The next modifier key technique is combining the Shift and Alt keys together. This will cause the selection radians to intersect. Let's just see an example of this. Suppose we have a rectangular selection like this, then we use the Elliptical selection tool. Now, if we hold the Shift and Alt keys together while making the selection, as you can see, the remaining selection region is the result of the intersection with the previous selection, which is the rectangle with the new selection that has a circular form. As before, you can also use this technique with other selection tools, e.g. with the freehand selection tool and so on. At this point, you may be wondering, how can we combine this technique with the modifier keys technique for making perfect squares and perfect circles. Just to refresh our memory previously, at the basic level, we discussed that we can use the Shift key to create a perfect circle or a perfect square. We can also use the alt key to move the selection process and use the control key to switch the scaling center of the selection. In essence, we also need to use the Shift key and the Alt key for this operations. To solve this issue, what you need to pay attention to is the timing or when you press the keys. If you hold down Shift and Alt before click dragging, then what you activate is the mode for adding or subtracting the selection. But if you hold down the Shift okey after pressing the mouse button or while doing a click drag, then the feature you activate, it's making a perfect square or circle or relocating the selection process. Just an example. Let's say we create a rectangular selection. Then I want to create a perfect circle selection that adds to the existing selection region. For this, we must first hold down the Shift key and then click drag. While holding down the mouse button, release the Shift key, then press and hold the Shift key again. This will make the selection a perfect circle. After their release the mouse button, you'll complete the process. As you can see, we just created a perfect circle selection, which is also additive to the previous selection. You can also do this hold and release technique with the other modifier keys. If you want to. At this point, you might want to complain. Why is it such a hassle to use and combine these modifier techniques? We have to press, drag the mouse, then release, then press again. What if we forget the sequence? Well, you don't need to worry because you can use the second method. And it is by using the action modes in the Tool Options Docker. If you use one of the selection tools, e.g. the free-hand selection tool. In the tool options Docker, you can see these buttons are icons called action. By default, the active icon is the first one, which is the replace mode. Basically, in this mode, the new selection, we'll just replace the previous election. If we activate this icon called add, the selection region we create will be in edit mode. This is similar to when we create a selection. We're holding the Shift key. From here, you may already see the pattern. This icon is the Subtract mode, which we already use the previous selection. This is similar to holding down the Alt key. Then this icon is the intersect mode. This is similar to holding down Shift and Alt keys together. Then last one is the symmetric difference mode. Essentially, this is the opposite of D intersect mode. It will keep all the selection radians except the intersecting area. At this point, you may be wondering what will happen if we use these modes together with the modifier keys, but each contrast of the other, the answer is Krita. We'll prioritize the modifier keys to give you an example, if we use the freehand selection tool in a subtract mode. But when we create the selection, we press the Shift key. You can see that the selection area becomes additive rather than subtractive. Alright? Now, if you have the need to access all these icons are the selection action modes. You may want to create custom shortcuts to help speed up your workflow. For this, I suggest that you use the letter a for the add mode, letter S for the Subtract mode. And lateral are further replace mode or the default mode. This letter keys are positioned relatively close to our left hand, while the letters also match the names of the selection modes. Personally, I don't use these custom shortcuts all the time. Sometimes I use them when I need them. I don't need to use vector graphics in Greta to set up the shortcuts, just as we discussed before. You can open the Settings menu, then open up configure Krita window, select the keyboard shortcuts category. What you need to type in a search field is selection mode. And here are the commands. This is the add mode, the Subtract mode, and replace mode. Again, you can assign this to a, this one to S, and this one to R. For now, I don't want to create this custom shortcuts because later I'm going to use the letter a and letter S for other things. So I just hit Cancel. 6. Global selection mask: In this lesson video, we will cover advanced techniques for adding and subtracting selection areas. Previously, we discussed the modifier keys technique and also the action mode technique. Now we will discuss the third technique using the global selection mask. If we create a selection box like this, the area inside the selection will have a maximum selection strength represented by a value of 255. And the area outside the selection has no selection power at all. Or in other words, it has a value of zero. We have discussed in depth in a basic level, of course, why the maximum value is 255. Now, if we imagine this selection is a grayscale image, then the middle area, which has a value of 255, we look completely white, while the outer area, which has zero value, we look completely black. Now the question is, what if we want to make a selection with gradual strength? Or in other words, in a gray-scale spectrum, not just black and white. One way to do this is by using the globalist selection mask feature. With this feature, we can adjust the selection as if we are working with the grayscale image. Given the global selection mask, we can open a Select Menu, then activate the show global, a selection mask option. We can see that our document is now filled with red color, too close or hide the global selection mask, simply click again on the same option. Apart from the menu, you can also access this feature by right-clicking on a canvas. But remember, the right-click method only works if you have one of the selection tools active, we already know that we're clicking welder brush tool is active, will open a pop-up pellet instead. Alright. You can tell that the global selection mask is active by the presence of this red color overlay. Besides that, in the layers darker, you will also see a unique layer called the selection mask. We can show or hide the red color overlay using this layer's visibility icon. As you may already realize, this red color is basically just a representation of the non-selective area. So again, strong red color indicates that the area has a selection value of zero or it is black. If we assume the selection as grayscale image, while the bright or non overlay area indicates the maximum suction value of 255. It is considered white in a gray-scale spectrum. Now we're in this mode. We can use the brush tool with any brush preset if we want to manipulate the selection area, if you color it white, e.g. then you basically turn the value to 255 in the area where you apply the brush strokes. And if you use black, then the value of the area affected by the brush stroke will turn to zero. If you use any of the gray colors, can apply the color on a canvas. The area vector by the brushstrokes will still be selected, but not at maximum strength. So this is what is unique about the global of selection mask feature we can use to gray-scale spectrum instead of just black and white to the final selection area. Next, half in red color in semi-transparent like this allows us to see the image behind it. So it is easier if you need to trace the image when editing the selection region. But sometimes we just want to see the selection area F, the grayscale image. To do this, you can hold down the Alt key and then click on the name of this selection mask layer. With this, Krita will hide the other layers if there are any and only focus on showing the selection region as grayscale colors. We can continue to work in his condition, such as adding or subtracting selection using the brush tool. Once you are done, you can restore the visibility of the other layers by holding down the Alt key and clicking on the name of this layer again. Then as before, to exit the global of selection mask mode, you can open a Select Menu again, disable the show global selection mask option. At a glance, the selection area is similar to regular selection area. But notice, if we try to apply a brush stroke in this reaction radian, in the area where a selection color is gray, the brushstrokes do not look very clear as it is being blocked or limited by the strength of selection. In conclusion, the global a selection mask technique is very useful if we want to add the selection just as we are drawing using the brush tool, the black color, we'll clear the selection. The web color will maximize the selection. While the gray color spectrum, we will produce selection strength according to how close to the color to white or black. 7. Raster vs Vector selection: In this lesson video, we want to discuss the types of selection in Krita. One thing that makes Greta unique, at least when compared to other similar graphic software, is that Greta has two types of selection, raster and vector. What many Krita users don't realize is that by default, the selection region created by most of the selection tools is actually a vector, not roster. Almost all of these tools create vector type selections except the contiguous selection tool and a similar color selection tool. Only these two tools produced raster type selection. Just e.g. if we create a rectangular selection like this, then we radically, you can see a command called Convert to raster selection. This indicates that the currently active selection is actually a vector. Then if we click on the edit selection option, then activate the Edit Shape Tool. We can drag this point to just drawn corner radius. If we right-click and select two path, we can even edit the shape of this selection further, just like we added vector graphics in a vector editing application. Another example is if we create a selection with the Elliptical selection tool, then use the edit shapes tool again. We can drag these points to create a pie shape or a Pac-Man shape, e.g. just like before, we can right-click and select tool path. We can now add it the shapes further using vector techniques. For now, we need to skip discussing vector editing as there will be a dedicated chapter where we will discuss this in more depth. For the next several lessons will focus only on raster type selection. Alright? So how can we convert a vector of selection to Raster? The first method is to it, the Convert Raster selection command. Let's see, we created a selection using the polygonal selection tool. This selection is a vector type selection. To convert it to raster, we can right-click, then choose the convert to raster selection command. Or you can also open a Select Menu, then choose Convert to rostral selection. So that was the first method. The second method is to add a gray-scale spectrum into the selection. Vector type selection can easily be edited using vector techniques. But the drawback is that it cannot contain colors other than black and white. This is the reason why these two tools do not produce vector type selections, because both produce a grayscale selection. In a previous lesson, we covered selection editing techniques using the brush tool and a global selection mask. Whether we realize it or not, this technique actually converts a vector type selection into raster type selection automatically. E.g. we can create a selection with the freehand selection tool. If we rightly, we can see this option convert to raster selection. Again, this indicates that the selection is currently a vector type. If we activate the show global selection mask and we use the brush tool, then choose a gray color and draw some brush strokes to edit the selection. Currently, the selection has turned into a raster type. To prove it, you can open a Select Menu. You can see that the convert to rostral selection command is not disabled, but the convert to vector selection command becomes active. Alright, at this point, you may have a lot of questions in your mind, such as why and when do we need a certain type of selection, etc. Don't worry, all of these questions will be answered along the way. For now. You just need to know that in Krita, there are two types of selection, raster and vector n. By default, the selection created by most of the selection tools is a vector type. 8. Selection transformation: In this lesson video, we will cover transformation techniques that we can apply to selection shape. What transformation means is everything related to changes in position, rotation, and scale. At once, transformation techniques even allow us to apply various distortion effects. You need to remember that what we are discussing now is the transformation of the Thracians shape, not the image or the pixels inside the selection. We will discuss image transformation more in-depth in yard one's level. Of course. The most basic selection transformation is the movie e.g. we can start by creating a circular selection. To move the selection area, we need to hover the mouse cursor to the selection border until we see a four-way arrow symbol. Then click drag to move the selection area to a new location. Remember, for this to work, you need to have one of the selection tools active. If you try to do this while using the Move tool, e.g. not only disruption area we'll move, but all the big solace in your selection area will move as well. Again, what we want to discuss now is the transformation only on a selection region and not on the image itself. Next, let's try to make a random selection using the free hand selection tool. To further transform a selection area, we can use the edit selection command. You can access it through the Select menu and then choose Edit selection. Or you can right-click and choose edit selection. Now, if you do that, the global selection mask will automatically be activated. You can see the red color overlay on Canvas as well as the selection mask layer in the layers darker. Then you will find a bounding box around the selection area. In this condition, you can move the selection by hovering the mouse Buddhist center of the bounding box. Then click drag to move it to another location. To perform a scale, you can click drag one of the control points in a bounding box. If you want to scaling process to be uniform, you need to click drag while holding down the Shift key. Then to rotate the selection area, you first need to move the mouse cursor until it is close enough to one of the corner points, but not touching them. When you see a circular arrow symbol, you can click drag to rotate the selection. And Leslie, you can also skew the selection shaped by moving the mouse until it is close enough to one of the points in the middle of a line, not the points at the corners until you see the symbol of two opposite arrows. In this condition, if you click drag, you are skewing the selection of shapes. So far, we have been using a tool called the Select Shapes tool. You need to know that this tool is actually a vector tool. And the reason why this tool is active is that the selection is the vector type. Notice if I activate DNA chips tool, we can edit the shape of the selection just as we are editing a vector shape. Now in terms of transformation, vector is more limited when compared to raster. At least that's how it is in Krita. When using raster. In addition to standard transformations, we can also perform advanced transformations that can have distortion effects. So how do we use the raster type transformation? The method is quite easy. Just activate this transform tool. You can perform standard transformations as before with this mode. But more than that, you can also perform perspective distortion. With this mode, you can perform what? Distortion, etc. We will cover all the features of this transform tool in your advanced level course. For now, you should be aware that using this transformation on a vector selection will convert it to a raster type selection automatically. If reopened the Select menu, you can see that the active command is convert two vectors selection to complete the selection editing process, just as before, simply turn off the global selection mask option. The last thing they don't need to mention is if the selection that we have is roster type selection, clicking on the edit selection command will take us to the Transform tool and not to the vector editing tools as before. 9. Contiguous and Similar selection: In this lesson video, we will cover a slash and creation through color of sampling. For this, we can use the contiguous selection tool, or we can also use the similar color selection tool. For this lesson. You can use the file I provided. The way the contiguous selection tool works is similar to the magic one tool in Photoshop. That is why the icon is also similar, which uses a magic one symbol. Because I use this tool very often, I assign the letter W as it's custom shortcut. I choose the letter W from No.1. Basically, these two creates a selection area based on the pixel that we click. It will calculate the color and then expand the selection to the surrounding pixels if they have similar colors. To try out this tool, to make things simple for us, makes sure you set this option to all layers. This will make Krita take into account all the visible layers. For now, set the fuzziness value to five. For the other values, you set them all to zero. Alright? If we click on this yellow square, we can see that all of these Euro square area becomes selected. Likewise, if we click on this area and so on, the whole square area that has the same color as the pixel we click will be selected also the most important parameter of the contiguous selection tool that we need to pay attention to is this fuzziness value. Because this determines how tolerant Krita with the color difference. E.g. if you right-click here or middle click. And then we type in 20. In this condition, if we try to assemble this yellow box again, now the box next to it is also selected. Likewise, if we sampled a box in the middle, we get three boxes selected even though the colors are not exactly the same. You can also try on this gradient color. Again, the point is, the higher the fuzziness value, the more colors will be considered similar and swallow selection area will be wider. Vice versa. If I set this to five again, e.g. the smaller the fuzziness value, the less tolerant Krita will be with the color differences resulting in a smaller, tighter selection result. Next, you can also increase and decrease the size of the selection area by using these grow shrink selection parameter. If we set this to ten, e.g. the resulting selection area will expand outward by ten pixels. If we enter a negative value, say minus ten, the selection area will narrow down by ten pixels from the original boundary line. For now, let's set this to zero. Alright? Next is the feathering radius. Basically, this parameter will make the boundary of the selection area become blurry. Higher the value, the further away the blurring effect will be. To see the difference, let's use zero for now. Then create a selection by clicking here. If we right-click and select Show Global selection mask, hold the Alt key and click on the name of the selection mask layer. As you can see, the color in the middle is white, while the colour outside is black. There is no gradation or transition between the tool. To go back, you can hold the Alt key and then click on the 01 layer. This will exit the isolation mode and at the same time activate the 01 layer. Now let's try to increase the feathering radius value to a larger number, e.g. 20 pixels. Then we click again on the same box area. At first glance, the result is similar to when we use the groove parameter as it seems to just expand outward. But watch as we press the Alt key and click on the selection mask layer. This is the function of feathering. It will make the selection border become blurry. Or in other words, there is a color gradation from white in the center to black on the outside. From here, you also understand why the contiguous selection tool produces laughter selection N knot vector, because it can produce a gray-scale spectrum selection. Let's set this to zero again for now. Next, we want to discuss the reference small or delay your options. If we set this to current layer, then under contiguous selection tool will only care about the layer that is currently active. E.g. if we are on the 01 layer and we tried to create a selection from this gradient color, which is on the zero to layer. What happened is that this entire outdoor area gets selected instead. This is because creator does not care about the other layers. So this is what Krita see is when the current layer mode is active. On the other hand, if the array or smoke is active. Then Krita will consider all visible layers onto Canvas. Alright, now the question is, what if we want to select a layer or layers, but they are not the active layer. E.g. say we want to select from the 01.02 layers, but not from the 03 layer. To do this, we have to make use the layer color labels. We've covered how labels before in a basic level, of course, just e.g. we want to color this layer yellow. And this layer to yellow also. On second thought, let's make this one red. In the Tool Options Docker, you need to use the third mode called color evokes layers. If this mode is active, we can click on the drop-down list below it and activate any color labels of the layers that we want to use as the reference for the contiguous selection tool. If we activate the yellow label and red label, even if we are on a different layer, say on a background layer, we can create a selection based on the pixels that exist in layers 01.0 too. But we won't be able to sample the pixels in a 03 layer because the year 03 does not have any color label that matches the tool settings. Alright. The last row we want to discuss is the similar color selection tool. Just as before, this tool create selections via Carlo sampling. What makes this different from the contiguous selection tool is that it does not only detect pixels in the area around the point weekly, but it calculates all the pixels in a canvas that is ineffective layers. Just e.g. if we assemble these yellow box, again, we can see that not only does this box area gets selected, but also this area because the color is similar. Likewise, if we sample this green box, e.g. this area is also selected. We can try this under magenta color and so on. Again, Krita will calculate the entire canvas area to find similar colors to the one we clicked. That is why it is possible to have multiple selection regions that are far apart. We can also use the techniques for adding and subtracting fractions. With this tool selection tools, we can use the shift key for the add mode, use the alt key, photo subtract mode, and use Shift and Alt together for the intersect mode. Alternatively, you can also use the action icons, interruptions, Docker. We covered all of these in-depth in the earlier lesson. Just e.g. if we create a random selection with the freehand selection tool that overlaps the yellow box, then reactive with the contiguous selection tool. If I hold down shift. 10. Selection tools UI changes (Krita 5.1): In this video, I want to explain the UI changes that affect the cost equals selection tool and a similar color selection tool. Since Krita version 5.1 update. I need to explain this because in a previous lesson, when we discuss these two tools, I was still using Greta version 5.02. If you are using Greta version 5.1 or above, when you use one of these tools, you will see some UI differences in neutral option is Docker will only explain the changes since the functions are still similar to what we discussed in a previous lesson. The first one is this parameter. Previously, this parameter was called fuzziness. Now it is called selection extend. The way we use the parameter does not change. Essentially, the higher the value, the more tolerant Krita to color differences, thus making the threshold result larger or wider. The next change is this preference mode. Previously, we access these parameters by a drop-down list. Now they appear in a form of radio buttons with small icons. So this is the current layer mode. This is the multiple layers mode, and this is the color labeled layers mode. It is only when we activate the last mode that the color boxes below appear. Basically the scholar books as alive check boxes. You can click on it to activate it and break again. To disable it. You can turn on multiple color labels if you want to. Again, in terms of how it works, it is still the same as what we discussed in a previous lesson, so we don't need to discuss it again. What I need to remind you is that later in a strawberry house illustration project, because we're not recorded the video at the time, Greta was only available in version 502. So you will see that the contiguous selection tool and a similar color selection tool still have the old UI. The reference mode is still in a form of drop-down lists. Meanwhile, when robot warrior illustration project, because I'm already using Greta version 501, you will see the new UI, which looks like this. 11. Select opaque: In this lesson video, we will cover how to extract a selection from a layer using the select command. But before we can discuss that, we need to first discuss one of the important concepts in Krita, which I call layer encapsulation. For this lesson, you can just use the file I provided for a previous lesson. The layer encapsulation is probably one of my favorite features in greta. And I think it already surpasses the layer features in Photoshop. Essentially, if we have a group layer, no matter how complex the composition inside that group layer, from the outside the layer group is considered, are treated as if it is a single layer. E.g. this layer is actually a group layer. If we expand it, we can see that it actually contains six layers. If we use the contiguous selection tool and we set the tool to use the current layer mode. To select this color boxes, we need to be in the correct layer. If you are not on the correct layer, then we wouldn't be able to select the color box that we won. But notice if we select their parent or the group layer, Crito seems to flatten all the sublayers into a single layer. Therefore, we can create selections from these colored boxes even though the tool is in the current layer mode. So again, in Krita, we can just close a group layer and treated as a single ordinary layer for getting all the complexities that happen inside it. Alright, let's move on to discussing the select Copy command. Basically, we can use this command to extract a selection from layer, or in other words, converts the alpha channel of layer into a selection. There are several methods to use this command. The fastest way is, of course, with a shortcut, you can hold the control key and then click on the thumbnail of the layer that you want to extract. Remember what you need to click the thumbnail or be small image on the left side of the layer, not on the name of the layer. You also need to remember that we can be in any tool to use this technique. You don't need to have the Selection Tools active. So even if you are using the brush tool, e.g. we can still hold down the Control key and then click on the layer thumbnail to extract the selection from its alpha channel. Next, we can combine this technique with the layer encapsulation feature we discussed earlier. So we can perform the select command on a group layer. If it is a single layer, just e.g. we can hold down control and click on the thumbnail of this group layer, or colored boxes that are inside each of the sub layers will get selected. Alright? Furthermore, we can also combine this select Open command with the shortcuts for adding and subtracting selection. That is using the Shift and Alt modifier keys. E.g. we can create an oval selection like this. Then if you hold down the control key together with the Shift key, and then click on this layer thumbnail. This will activate the add mode. So the selection will add to the previous selection. Let me undo this. If you hold down Control and Alt keys at the same time, and then click on this thumbnail, these reactive with the Subtract mode. So it reduces the previous selection. Let me undo this again. And finally, if we hold down Control Shift and Alt keys all at once, then click on this layer thumbnail. This will activate the intersect mode. Selection intersects with the previous selection. Now, in addition to using shortcuts, you can also access the commands via the menu or through right-clicking. Let's say we right-click this layer. You can see the command here, select opaque. And to use the menu, you need to make sure that the layer you want to extract is selected first. Then open the Select menu and choose the command select opaque. If you notice here, there are also a select operator commands with the add mode, subtract mode, and intersect mode. I personally prefer the shortcut method as it is way faster to execute. 12. Selection mask: In this lesson video, we will discuss local selection, also known as selection mask. In a basic level, of course, we already discussed what a mask is. As a reminder, basically, a mask in Krita is additional information that we can attach to a layer. At first glance, a mask looks similar to layer. What makes a mosque different is that in general, it cannot exist by itself, but must be attached to layer. There are different kinds of masks in greta, the selection mask or local selection. Here's the mask that can store a selection to create a mask, the method is similar to how we create layers. But first, we need to select the layer where we want to touch the mask. E.g. we want to add a selection mask to the 01 layer, make sure the layer is selected. Then click the small carrot icon, another side of this plus button. Note that all the options above this line are different types of layers. While all the options under this line are masks. Previously, in a basic level, of course, we discussed how to use a colorized mask. Now we will focus on local selection or selection mask. If we click this option, now the 01 layer has a selection mask called selection one. You can rename a mask if you want to deselect, you will rename a layer. Now, notice how the position of this mask is slightly shifted to the right. And there is also an elbow line indicating that this mask does not stand alone. But this bond order of 01 layer, we can add more selection masks. We do say method as many times as we want, e.g. until there are three selection masks. To save a selection condition or region into one of these selection masks, we need to be in the parent layer. Then we need to activate the mask by clicking the circular icon. In this condition, we can then create a selection. E.g. I. Can create a selection using the free hand selection tool on this mask. Then, for the selection to mask, Let's create a rectangular selection. And for the selection three mask, we can create a circular of selection. If you are done. Anytime you want to use any of these selections, just press the circular icon again. Next, you can also hold Alt and then click on the mask name to enter layer isolation mode. This will display the corresponding selection in a grayscale color spectrum. Hold Alt, and click again to exit the isolation mode. Furthermore, if you want to clear the selection, you can also click on the circle icon again until it becomes inactive. Or you can always use the usual method, that is by pressing Control Shift a. I personally prefer pressing the letter Q F, So custom shortcut for this command. The disadvantage of selection mask is that it is local, meaning that all these reactions can only be used if we are on layer where it exists. If we are on another layer, then it doesn't matter which of these selection masks is active. It does not have any effect at all. But don't worry, there are at least three ways that we can do to transform selection from one layer to another layer. The first method, which is the easiest one, is to use the select opaque technique. So you can hold down control. Then click on the thumbnail of the selection mask that you want to extract. We can do this method even if this reaction mass is on another layer. The second method is by moving the selection mask to another layer where we want to use it. Then select the layer, and then click on the selection icon. So that is the second method. The last method that we can use, a smoothing the selection mask to the top. This will turn the selection mask into a global selection mask. Currently, it is not feasible in layers darker because we need to display it for us via the Select menu. So yes, this is what makes the selection mask unique when compared to other types of masks. And that is, it can exist on its own without being attached to layer. In this condition, the selection mask turns into a global selection mask. We've covered the global selection mask in-depth before, so we don't need to discuss it again in this lesson. If you no longer need a selection mask and need to remove it, you can select it and then click on the trash can icon. Or if you prefer shortcuts, you can press Shift Delete, just like how you remove regular layers less than x we want to cover is turning grayscale images into sections. Or in other words, we want to create a selection based on a value level of an image. Just e.g. we can create a new layer, then fill it with black color. On this layer, we can add some brush strokes with the air brush preset. Alright? Suppose we want to create a selection based on the strength of the white color. We can just use the contiguous selection tool or a similar color selection tool. But these totals will perform sampling. Essentially, it will not 100% correctly convert to grayscale colors into a selection. If you have used Photoshop before, you are probably already familiar with the RGB channel extraction technique. Unfortunately, in Krita, we cannot do that on a general docker. At least not yet in a version that I'm currently using. But we can achieve a similar result in greater by converting the layer tool selection mask. Now, because this is the conversion method, if you still need the layer for other purposes, for us, you will need to duplicate the layer. For this, we can press control J, then select the duplicate that layer, right-click and choose Convert, then select convert to selection mask. Now the previous layer is gone, acid is converted into a selection mask. As you can see, the resulting selection mask will attach to the closest layer, which is in our case the original layer. We can drag this up to convert it into the global selection mask. In this condition, we can use the selection e.g. to limit the area where we can perform brush strokes and so on. 13. Selection operations: In this lesson video, we will cover some additional operations that we can perform on a selection region. The first two operations or the grow entering commands. If you create a selection, say a circular selection like this, then as long as you are using one of those selection tools, if you rightly then select Transform, you can see these two commands, grow and shrink. You can also access them via the Select menu. This is the Grow command, and this is the shrine command. Let's try to grow command for us. Basically, the Grow command will make the selection area larger or wider as far as the pixel value input here. Let's say we type in 30. Then to confirm, you can click the Okay button or just press the Enter key on your keyboard. You can see that the selection area is now expanded. Next, let's try to shrink command. This command is the opposite of grow. It will narrow down the selection area as far as the value input, e.g. we can input 20, then Enter. And here is the result. Alright? The next selection operation is the stroke selection. Essentially, this command will draw a line or a brush stroke along this direction border. Since we are going to create a stroke, we need to make sure that we are on regular paper layer and not on a group layer. To access the command, we can right-click transform and then choose Stroke selection. Or if you want to use the menu, you need to open the Edit menu, then choose Stroke selection. So yes, this one is a bit different from the other direction commands which are in a Select Menu. The stroke selection command is located in the Edit menu. At least that's how it is in a version of Krita I am currently using. If you click this command, the stroke selection properties window will open. This type parameter is used to define the line model. This is if you want to use a plain, solid line. And this one, if you want to simulate the Brush Preset that is currently active. As you can see, if we activate the current brush option, some of the parameters below become locked. This is because Crito uses the settings in a brush tool. For now, let's just use the solid line option. Next. Here, you can use the color that you want to use. E.g. we can just use the foreground color. Then here we can set the thickness of the line. Let's say we set this to five pixels. Lastly, we can use this option only if we want to fill the central area of the selection with the color. We don't want to feel the center area with any color. For now. Let's just leave this setting to none. If we click Okay, Krita created a line along the border of the selection region. Perhaps we need to clear the selection for us to see it better. So here is the result. The next operation is the border of selection. Basically, this operation will remove the middle area of the selection and only keep the border by the thickness that we can define. E.g. we can create a selection like this. Then you can access this command from this select menu, then border selection. Or you can also right-click Transform, then select border selection. Let's say we input our thickness value of 20 pixels and then Enter. And here is the result. We can use the brush tool and make some strokes in the new selection area. You can see that with this method, we can actually create a stroke line just like the previous drop method, but with more color variations. The last selection operation that we want to cover is the feather selection. To try this command for us, we need to create a selection, e.g. a. Circle selection. As with the previous operation, we can access it by right-clicking. That is, if one of those selection tools is active or you can also access it via the Select menu. In the earlier lesson where we discussed the contiguous selection tool, we covered the feather parameter. Just as a reminder, basically, feather is a blurring effect on the border of reflection. It creates a smooth transition from the white selection area to the selection area to see the difference before refactoring process. If I use a solid brush preset and row some brush strokes in the selection area. You can see that the border of the selection area is sharp. Let me undo this first. To see this even clearer, we can activate the show global selection mask option. Hold out, then click on this mask. So this is the condition before feathering. Now notice if we use the feather selection command, then when both large value say 50, then Enter. You can see how this command of x, this reaction area, the border becomes blurred. Now if you hold down Alt and click on this layer, and we try to draw some brush strokes. Again. It is the result because the border area is blurring, the brush strokes gradually become transparent. 14. Anti aliasing: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss NP aliasing. Aliasing is not a feature exclusive to Krita, but it is a general concept in computer graphics. So you will find this feature on almost every graphic software that exists in the world. You can even find this feature scattered throughout different sections of Greta. Just e.g. if you activate the contiguous selection tool, you can see the option here, n by aliasing. And if you have the brush tool active, then open the brush editor window by pressing F5 or by clicking on this icon inner brush dip category. You will also find an empire aliasing checkbox here. Another example is if you open the Configure Crito window in the display category, in the miscellaneous tab. You can see to anti aliasing options here also. There are still other places where you can find the n Pi LLC in options in Krita, but you get the idea that this option is everywhere. So what is exactly n by aliasing? Simply put, it is a graphical feature that can smooth out sharp edges by adding semi-transparent pixels. Mostly, you always want to use or turn on anti-aliasing unless you intentionally want to create sharp or pixelated borders or jagged edges, such as when you are making pixel art work. Just to show you the difference really quick. If you use a solid brush preset and make the graph size a bit bigger by holding Shift and dragging it to the right. Then click on the canvas to draw circle, oval shape. This is the default condition where the anti aliasing option is turned on. Now let's press F5 to open the brush editor window and turn off the anti aliasing option. Press F5 again to close this window. Then click to draw another circle just beside the previous one from a farm. They look identical. But notice if we zoom in, we don't any anti aliasing effect. The border of this brush stroke looks Jackie or picks later. The official name in computer graphics for this condition is aliasing. While the one we then by aliasing effect looks much smoother because Krita adds these semi-transparent pixels accordingly. So again, this is the LES in condition and this is the anti aliasing condition. 15. Raster versus Vector: In this lesson video, we will discuss the differences between raster graphics and vector graphics. We have discussed this lesson in a basic level course. So you can consider this lesson as a refresher just to make things easier we need or we discuss more advanced topics related to vector. If you feel you already understand the topic, you can freely skip this video and move on to the next lesson video. Alright. In the world of computer graphics, there are many types of image file formats. But in general, they can be divided into two broad categories, raster and vector. Force. Let's talk about Ross data. In general. Almost all images you'll see on money Doris auto screens are raster images, including images captured by cameras, scanners, and alike. All of them are raster type in ages. Some examples of raster image formats or PNG, JPEG, GIF, HDR, the XOR, and so on. What do you need to know about raster images is that they are actually formed by many small squares. When you see an image at this zoom level, at first glance, everything looks good or smooth. But notice, as we zoom in to see the image up-close, we began to realize the fact that this image is actually just a collection of these small squares. These small squares are called pixels. If the image is to building, you can think of the pixels as its building blocks or bricks. The word pixel comes from the abbreviation of picture elements. Each pixel contains only one color. Since raster images are a collection of pixels, quality depends on the resolution. What resolution means is the number of pixels contained by an image by measuring its width and height, e.g. 100 600 image means it has 100 columns and 600 rows of pixels. So the total amount of pixels contained in that image is 60,000 pixels. High resolution images can store and display more detail, but we do consequence of a larger file sizes. So again, the higher the resolution, the better the quality of the image. But at the cost of a larger file size, vice versa, the lower the resolution, the more limited the image quality, but the file size is smaller. The second type of image is a vector. We rarely see this type of image because it requires special software to be able to open it. What we usually see on the web or screens are mostly the results of conversion to the roster version of them. Some examples of vector image formats are AI, which can be opened with Adobe Illustrator, CDR, which can be opened with corralled row, DWG with AutoCad, and so on. All of these formats are proprietary. But there is one upon whether file format called SVG. For this one, you can simply use a web browser to be able to view it. So what makes Vector Graphics different from raster graphics? A vector image consists of points, the curves or lines connecting the points, NFL area formed by a closed curve. These points, curve and fields are all stored as mathematical values, not as a grid of pixels like raster images do. So the implication is that in general, vector images have smaller file sizes, then the raster image versions, vector images are also independent of a solution. To see this more clear, here, I am using Adobe Illustrator. Watch SE zoom in to see this vector image as closely as possible. We won't see any pixel grid. We can change the size of a vector image freely, be it small or large. There is no risk of losing image information, like what can happen on raster images when we scale them down. Working with vector images can also give us more flexibility. Why? Because we can edit them easily and non-destructively. E.g. if we draw a circle like this in Illustrator, at anytime, we can deselect it, change its shape, change its color, and so on. This is something that you cannot do with pure raster images. At this point, you might be wondering, why don't we just use vector types for all our images? The answer is, not all types of imagery are suitable or can be represented by a vector. Complex imagery such as photographs, e.g. will be more easily represented by the roster method. Vector graphics are more suitable for simpler imagery. Those that only have a few colors or gradations are regular patterns. E.g. logos rather have designs, cartoony majors and the like. Next, if we compare the two from the perspective of computer performance. Since vector images are essentially a collection of mathematical formulas, they need to be calculated for us to be displayed on a screen. So in general, vector images, especially complex ones, will be more demanding on the computer performance compared to raster. So in conclusion, in terms of resolution, the quality of raster images depends on the resolution. While vectors are not affected by the image resolution. In terms of file size, vector is the winner because it is generally smaller than raster. In terms of edit turbidity. Vector graphics are better than raster graphics. In terms of software availability, roster is superior to vector. This is because most vector formats can only be opened by the software that created them for displaying complex photos or imagery, raster is better than vector n. Finally, in terms of computer performance, generally, vector requires more processing than roster. 16. Vector implementation in Krita: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss how vector is implemented in greta. At the core, Krita is raster based software. Vector is an added feature. That is why you cannot compare or expect Krita to walk like specialized vector editing software, such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, corralled row and so on. However, if you compare Corita to similar raster based software, such as Photoshop, game, Clip, Studio pain and the like. There are features in Krita are on par. And even for some of those software to be able to use vector in Krita, you need a special layer called the vector layer. You can create this layer as you would create any other type of layer. You can press the small arrow button or lose sight of this plus button. Then select Vector Layer. Here you can see that the shortcut is Shift insert. You may want to memorize the shortcut S. We're going to work a lot with vector layers in the upcoming lessons. Once we have a vector layer, you may notice the difference in its icon. If you compare this with the regular pin right here, you need to be aware of this icon, as we cannot rely on the layer's name to tell if it is a vector layer. As you may already know, the name of the layer can be changed to anything that we like. So again, we need a vector layer to contain the vector graphics. Alright? So how do we create vector graphics? If you look at a toolbox area, these four tools are special tools for vectors from the Select Shapes tool to do calligraphy tool. While the three tools that have no name brush behind them are tools specific to Raster. They are freehand brush tool, dynamic brush tool, and multi Brush tool. If you want to use any of these three tools, you must use a pin layer, not a vector layer. Now, the rest of the tools are unique. Why? Because you can use them as the Raster tool and also as a vector tool. If you use them on a per layer, they will produce raster graphics automatically. While if you use them on a vector layer, they will produce vector graphics automatically. These tools are the Line Tool, Rectangle Tool, and so on, and the other freehand pen tool, just e.g. if we select the ellipse tool, set this brush size to five pixels. For the foreground color, we choose a light blue color. As for the background color, which was a light orange color. Remember, as we discussed in a basic level, of course, to pick a color for the background, you must use the right-most button. Now, for autofill option, we can set this to background color. And for the outline option, we can set this to brush with this, Krita will use the foreground color as well as the brush size setting to create the outline. Alright, now let's try to draw a circle on a regular paint layer. Click drag on the canvas to create a circle. After that, we can try drawing a circle again, but now in a vector layer, just click drag again. As you can see, the Ellipse tool works perfectly fine on two different types of layers, the upper layer, n vector layer. At a glance, the results look similar, but these two circles are fundamentally different because the image in a pain layer is a raster graphic. We can use the Brush tool to draw on it, erase it, blurry, smear it, or do various other brush operations. As we already know, wild image in a vector layer cannot be manipulated using the brush tool. But because it is a vector graphic, we can edit it using the Edit Shape store, just like with any vector objects in vector applications. We will go into more depth on Vector Editing in the upcoming lessons. One important thing that you need to know about vector implementation in Krita is do a crystal displays or random vector graphics. If you zoom in very close, you can see that this vector image becomes pixelated. This is in contrast to reappearance of vector graphics in vector software such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, e.g. so why is this happening? Well, because in Krita, even though behind the scenes follow vector of features work normally, what we see on the screen or do canvas is the rough the representation of the vector data. Vector data itself is independent of the document resolution, but grassed representation of it is dependent. You can e.g. freely scale the vector objects smaller or bigger. The original vector data will not be degraded due to the scaling process. But if you make the scale to small, since what we are seeing is the Roster representation of it, the image will look more pixelated. The opposite also applies. If you scale it very large, the image will look sharper because we have more pixels to represent the vector data. You may think of this as a limitation to the vector of features in Krita. But this kind of implementation is actually very common on raster based software that also provide vector of features. You can find a similar situations in Photoshop, Gimp, Clip, Studio Paint, et cetera. 17. Vector transformation: In this lesson video, we will cover vector object transformation. To start, we can first create a vector layer by pressing shift Insert. Then we can create a random shape using the polygon tool. Let's create two more. So that in total, we have three vector objects. We don't need to provide a vector layer for each of the vector objects. Because in Krita, one vector layer can contain more than one object. Alright? Previously, we have discussed what transformation is. And briefly, we have also discussed transformations in vector when discussing selection techniques, the point is we need to use the Select Shapes tool to perform transformation on whether objects. We have also discussed that you do not want to use this transform tool on vector objects. Only use this tool on raster images. When you force the stall on a vector object, Greta will apply the transformation to the whole layer and not the individual vector object. Mostly, this is not what you want. So again, use the Select Shapes tool if you want to transform vector objects, okay? To select a vector object with this tool, simply click on the object. The selected object will be surrounded by a rectangle that has control points. This rectangle is known as the transform bounding box. Previously, we have discussed that we can move vector objects by clicking and dragging on the middle area. Then we can scale them by clicking dragging on a control points. You can hold the Shift key if you want to perform uniform scaling. And we can also rotate by moving the mouse cursor close to a corner point, but not touching it. When you see a circular arrow symbol, you can create Greg to rotate the object. If you hover your mouse over the point in the middle of the line, not the one in the corner. This will activate the skew mode. We can use this transformation mode, those skew or tilt the object. Alright? If you radically transform sub menu, here, you can see some common are frequently use transform commands. Perhaps we don't need to discuss each of them in detail as to the functions are quite obvious just by looking at their names. This will rotate the object 90 degrees clockwise. This one will rotate the object 90 degrees counterclockwise. And this will rotate the object while 90 degrees. Then this will flip it horizontally, while this one will flip it vertically. And finally, we can use this command to reset the transformation so that the object returns to its original shape, at least in terms of orientation and scale proportions. If a vector object is selected, the tool options Docker will display various parameters associated with that object. Created a vector object parameters into three categories. Geometric, stroke, and fill. The parameters related to transformation are located in a geometric category. So this is what we are willing to cover for us in this lesson. These two fields are used to display all set the location of the selected vector object. This is the x coordinate and this is the y coordinate. You can see if I change the object position, the values in the fields change dynamically. At this point, you may be wondering this object has an area or a dimension. So based on which reference point the coordinates are calculated, the answer is this red midpoint. This is what Greta uses as a reference for calculating the coordinates. If you want to, you can change this reference point to another location by pressing one of these arrow buttons. So in total, there are nine reference points that we can use. Next, these two fields on the right show the size of the selected vector object. This is the width, and this is the height. Both of these values will change when we scale the object. Now by default, these values are local, meaning that even if you rotate the object, these two values do not change because the reference use to measure the width and height also rotates. But if we enable this global coordinates option, Crito uses static bounding box to calculate its size. So the way it is always in line with the documents horizontal line, aldehyde is always in line with the documents vertical line. In this condition, rotating the object, we also change its width and height values. For now, let's just turn off this option. Then we can use this chain button to log ratio or the proportion between width and height. When it is active, the current object can only be scaled uniformly, just like we are holding the Shift key. One drawback of the vector feature integrated version I am currently using is that it doesn't have a rotation parameter. Again, we can input the location precisely with these two fields. We can also input the size or scale precisely with these two fields. But we cannot input precisely how many degrees of orientation. Hopefully, this feature will exist in future versions. So those are some of the features related to vector transformations in Krita. In the next lesson, we will cover how to control colors on whether objects. To save time, I will continue to be using this file. So you may want to save the file first before moving on to the next lesson video. 18. Vector colors: In this lesson video, we will cover several techniques for adjusting the color of vector objects. But before we get into that, there is one parameter in the geometry category that we haven't discussed yet, and that is opacity. As the name suggests, we use this parameter to set the transparency. I'm discussing the parameter now and not before because it has nothing to do with transformations, but more to do with the visual appearance of vector objects. You should note that this parameter is different from the opacity parameter in the layers darker. This parameter is used to set the transparency of the layer as a whole. So this opacity value will affect all vector objects in that layer. While the one in the Tool Options darker is more specific, it only affects the currently selected vector object. Alright? As I mentioned earlier, Vector Graphics have two elements that we can color separately. The first is stroke, also known as outline, and the second is fill. To set the color of the stroke, we can open this tab. Currently, the active vector object has no stroke. Or in other words, the parameter is set to no color represented by the cross symbol icon. To add a stroke color, we can click on the second icon. Then we can choose the color by clicking on this color box. For the stroke element, we can adjust the thickness by setting the thickness parameter. Let's say we set it to ten pixels. The larger the value, the thicker the outline will be. Then to set a solid color on the fill element, it is basically the same. But what we need to open is the Fill Tab. So this is the no color option useful to remove the fill color area. While the second icon is for setting a solid color to the fill area, we can click here and choose a solid color from the provided palette or through the color picker below. We already discussed how to work with the color palette before in the basic level course, so we don't need to discuss it again. Now, one thing that bothers me, at least in this version of critter, is the size of the color picker, which is too small. Unlike the color picker above, which can be enlarged if we press the middle mouse button on it. The color picker below does not do that. So is there a better solution for picking colors on vector objects? The answer is yes. And that is by using the foreground color and background color. One thing that is unique and critter in terms of vector coloring is that the foreground color is linked to the fill color, while the background color is linked to the stroke color. So if we choose a foreground color, which is by using the left mouse button when the foreground color changes while you have a vector objects selected, this will also change its fill color. Likewise, if we choose the background color, that is with the right mouse button, this will automatically affect the stroke color of the selected vector object. So with this method, we don't need to press the color boxes in the Tool Options darker to set the colors. The second type of vector color is gradient. We will discuss more complete techniques for controlling gradient colors in a later chapter. For now, let's just look at the basic implementation of gradient color on vector objects. You can use gradient color on both the stroke and the fill element. Let's just focus on the fill area because it's easier to see. First, we have to activate the gradient color type by pressing this icon. Basically, gradient is a transition or a spectrum of colors from two or more key colors. You can choose the gradient color from the presets that are already available. E.g. let's select this preset and if necessary, you can also adjust the color of each point in the gradient by double-clicking on the color point, specify the color you want. Then click the OK button. Again. We'll discuss this in more depth later. In the version of critter I'm currently using, there is some kind of bug when using gradient colors for vector objects. That is, it is very difficult to select the color stop that we want. We have to triple-click by holding down the mouse button on the third click. Of course, this is an abnormal condition and hopefully this bug has been fixed in the version you are using when watching this video. Critter supports two types of gradient distributions on vector objects. The first is linear, which spreads the color in a straight line or in one direction. And the second is radial, which distributes the color from a center point and then spreads out to all directions. If you set this to linear, you will see two yellow control points. We can use these two points to set the orientation of the color gradation. If we use the radial type, then you will see three control points. This X-shaped defines the center point of the gradation, which by default uses the color on the left. Then we can use this to set the farthest radius. This will define the location of the right color. And while this point is in the same location as the center point, by default, we can drag it to shift or bend the color towards another location. In other graphics software, this color banding feature is known as pinching. If we move the pinch point to the edge, e.g. now the gradient color looks like a spotlight emitted from this area toward the center point of the gradation. So that's how you add and control gradients on vector objects. The last vector coloring technique is mesh gradient. This color feature is only available on the fill element and is not available for stroke. If you've used Adobe Illustrator before, this feature is similar to the Mesh Tool feature in Adobe Illustrator. Essentially, you split a vector object into columns and rows. These column and row values determine the number of ColorPoints available on the vector object. Each of these points can hold a single color, e.g. we can click on this point. Then we assign a bright red color to it. Then we can click on this point and we give it a dark red color, slightly towards purple. Then this point, for this, we can assign a green color and so on. You can also click on the points located on the border to change their colors. Color gradations are formed due to the color differences between these points. Using this feature, you can create or simulate complex shading. Personally, although I occasionally use the mesh gradient feature inside Adobe Illustrator, I have never used the mesh gradient feature in credit for any real projects because there are several supporting features that I think are important but not yet available in critter. Hopefully, this feature will continue to be developed so that one day it can be easier to use. When creating a new vector graphic. In the fill color category, there is one option called pattern. We will discuss the topic of pattern later in the advanced course. But even then, what we are going to discuss is the use of pattern on raster graphics, not on vector. Currently, the pattern feature for vector is still in the development stage, at least if you're still using critter version five and below, you may want to avoid using it. 19. Stroke appearance: In this lesson video, we will cover some parameters related to the appearance of the vector stroke. To see the stroke component clearly on this object, we can first remove the fill color. Then for the stroke parameter, make sure you use a solid color. You may use any color you like, as long as it's not white. And for the thickness, we set this to 20 pixels. Later, we want to try the arrow feature. Currently, the shape of this vector object forms a loop. Or in other words, the ending point is connected to the starting point. What we need now is a vector shape that does not form a loop. For this, we can use the Edit Shapes tool. Then right-click on the line. We want to delete, select the command break at segment. Now, this vector object is not looping anymore. We can reposition these points if necessary. We will cover Vector Editing in more detail in a future lesson. Alright? If we have a vector objects selected and the Select Shapes tool is active in the Tool Options darker. In the stroke section, you can see these three drop-down lists. We can use these to create arrowheads. This is for defining the starting point. This is for the points in the middle. And this is for the endpoint. Generally, we only want to display the arrowheads at the end of the line. Credit provides several types of arrowheads that we can use. I think the first type is too big. Let's just use the small one. I think this will be great. You can see there is now an arrowhead at the end of the line. Feel free to experiment with other arrowhead options and also on the other types of points. E.g. we can try using the circle type for the midpoints and also for the starting points. Then we can use this drop-down list to change the style or the appearance of the lines. Unfortunately, in critter, in the version I am using, there is no way to customize the arrowhead size further. And also, there is no way to create a custom dashed line model. For now, let's just return everything to its default. Okay? The next parameter we want to discuss is the cap or the shape of the ends of the lines. We can access it by pressing this button. If we choose this option, now, the line and shapes look like a circle. Then the right and left options are almost similar. Both make a flat shape. The difference is that the one on the right will make the ends extend a little bit more. Then the three options below can be used to define the appearance of the joins are the points where two lines meet and form an angle. Basically, they are the points other than the end points. The default option is bevel join. This option will make the joints look cut off. The second option will make the joints look curved. While the first option will make the joints formed sharp corners. If the first option is active, we can set the maximum distance or how far the sharp corners can be formed. This is important for cases where the lines are joining at very small angles. You can see if I lower this to zero pixels, this is basically similar to the third option, but as I keep increasing the value, the farther and sharper the corners will be. 20. Vector graphics management: In this lesson video, we will cover several techniques for managing vector objects. In this file, I have created a vector layer and also created four vector objects with different shapes and colors. At this point, I'm sure you can create all this yourself, so there is no need to explain the process. The first step in managing vector objects is to select them. For this, you need to activate the Select Shapes tool. If you want to select more than one object, there are at least two methods that you can use. The first method is to hold down the Shift key and then keep clicking on the objects that you want to select or add to the selection. But please be aware that shift clicking on an already selected object, we'll de-select it instead. So this technique works like a toggle. After you have multiple objects selected, you can perform a transformation on these objects all at once. Then to de-select or clear the selection, simply click on an empty area on the canvas. The second technique for creating multiple selections is using click drag. If you notice doing a click drag from left to right will result in a blue selection box. Meanwhile, if you do it from right to left, this will produce a green selection box. So what is the difference between the blue selection technique and the green one? If we click drag from left to right or the blue method, we are performing a window selection. What window selection means is that only vector objects that are completely inside the bounding box will get selected. Meanwhile, if we click drag from right-to-left or the green method, we are performing a crossing selection. It means that the vector objects do not need to be fully inside the selection box to get selected. If it overlaps with the selection box, even just a tiny bit, it will get selected. You can combine this click drag technique with the Shift key technique. Say you created a selection like this. Then hold shift and click drag. The new selection will add to the existing selection. Alright? The last selection technique that I want to cover is control-click. Suppose we have a lot of shapes or vector objects that are stacked like this. It will be very difficult if we want to select a shape that is blocked by other shapes. In this condition, you can make use of the control key. To do this, just hold the Control key and keep clicking on the same location. If we do that, each time we click, critter will cycle through the selection of all the vector objects that are directly under the mouse cursor. But you need to be careful when doing this. You don't want to perform clicking too fast as that will trigger a double-click and double-clicking while using the select Shape tool will activate the Edit Shapes tool. We will cover this tool in more depth in a future lesson. Essentially, we use this tool to edit the shape of the vector object. To return to the Select Shapes tool, you can click on the tool icon in the toolbox. Or you can also double-click again. So essentially, double-clicking can be used to switch between the Select Shapes tool and the Edit Shapes tool back-and-forth. We already know that doing a double-click is rather difficult when we are using a drawing tablet. It is a good idea to switch to using your mouse first when you need to edit vectors. Later, you can go back to the drawing tablet after you are done. Or if you often use the vector features, you may want to assign custom shortcuts for these two tools. I suggest that you use the letter a for the Select Shapes tool and the letter S for the Edit Shapes tool. But if you are left-handed, you may want to use other letters that are closer to your right-hand position. As with other graphics software, the vector objects and critic can overlap or stack on top of each other. There are at least two ways that we can manage the stacking order. The first method is the local method, which means we are doing it within one layer. The second method is by making use of additional vector layers. Let's take a look at the first method. Let's say we want to move this green box to the top. You can right-click on the object, then select Bring to Front. If we want to move it to the bottom, we can right-click again and then select Send to Back. If we want to pull an object one level up, we can right-click and then choose raise. If we do this multiple times, the object will eventually be at the top. The opposite of the raise command is lower. With the lower command, the object will drop down one level at a time. Now, we can combine this technique with the previous control-click technique, e.g. this red circle object is blocked by other objects, but we want to select it and bring it to the front. We can hold down control and click several times until the shape is selected. Then right-click and select Bring to Front. So that is the first method for managing the stacking order of vector objects. Sometimes we have too many vector objects in one layer, so it's difficult to manage. In this case, you may want to reduce the complexity by separating some of the objects into another vector layer. For this, you can use the cut and paste method. Suppose we want to move these two objects to a new layer above this layer. Select both of them, then press Control X to cut them. Then press Shift, insert to create a new vector layer. Make sure we are on the new layer, and then press Control V to paste them. Now, these two vector objects are on a separate layer. Please keep in mind that if you have many vector objects spread across multiple layers, you need to be on the appropriate vector layer to be able to select or edit the object. For now, we can undo so that everything returns to the same layer. The last vector management technique is grouping. To create a complete image using vectors, most likely you will need more than one vector shape. The problem is, the more vector objects involved, the higher the risk of accidental changes. Such as sometimes we want to click drag to create a selection box, but we end up moving some objects unintentionally. To reduce this kind of risk, we can make use of the grouping feature. To create a group, we must first select all the vector objects that we want to group. Then right-click and select Group. Once they are grouped, each of them is protected. And we can handle them all as if they are a single object. We can select the group with just a single click. Then we can also perform transformations on it. Unfortunately, in the version of critter that I'm using now, there is no group editing feature. So the only way to edit the contents of a group is to break it down back into regular shape objects. If you want to ungroup, just right-click and then select Ungroup. Besides grouping, one alternative method to protect vector objects from accidental changes is to lock the vector layer. Of course, first, you need to move the vector objects that you want to protect inside the same vector layer. 21. Primitive shapes: In this lesson video, we will discuss primitive shapes. Before we begin, I need to inform you that starting from this lesson, I will be using custom keyboard shortcuts for these two tools, the Select Shapes tool and the Edit Shapes tool. Just so you know that when later one of these tools activates itself without me pressing the tool icon. That is because I am pressing the shortcut on the keyboard. Alright? So what is exactly a primitive shape? Basically, they are special vector objects that still maintain their basic parameters when they were created. In critter, there are only two tools that can create primitive shapes. The rectangle tool, the ellipse tool. Let's first discuss the rectangle tool. We covered these parameters already in the basic level course, so we don't need to discuss them again In this lesson. For now, let's set the field parameter to foreground color and then set the outline parameter to brush background color. Next, we can set the brush size to five pixels. Only. Choose a color for the foreground color, and also choose one for the background color. It doesn't matter what color it is, as long as it's not white, makes sure we are now working on a vector layer. If you are ready, you can click drag on the canvas to create a rectangle. Alright? Now activate the Edit Shapes tool and then click on the Shape object. Notice that instead of seeing four points that we can move around, we only see this one point. If we click drag the point to the left, it turns out that this point is not an ordinary vector point, but a special control point that we can use to adjust the roundness of the corners, also known as the corner radius. You can also change the values from here if you want to. Essentially, the control points you see on the object are visual representations of the parameters in the Tool Options darker. If you want to use credit to make charts or diagrams, etc. You may want to keep the object in the current state, which is a primitive shape. As this will make it easier when later you need to adjust the corner radius. But if you need the shape for making illustrations, most likely that primitive shape condition will be too limiting. To convert this object into a regular vector object, we can use the two paths command. You can do that by clicking on the convert to path button in the Tool Options darker. Or you can also right-click and then select two path the object. Now an ordinary vector object, or what is often referred to as an editable path. One thing you need to keep in mind is that once the object has turned into a regular vector object or an editable path, it can no longer be able to change back into a primitive shape. Well, except if you press Control Z to undo the process. That is if the undo history still exists, you can tell if a vector object is an editable path by looking at the parameters in the Tool Options darker, you can see different icons related to vector editing. We will discuss all of these in the upcoming lessons. Let's try creating another primitive shape, but now we use the Ellipse tool. Let's set this to foreground and set this to background. Then you can pick any color you like for the foreground color, for the background color. After you are ready, just click drag on the canvas to create the object. Now, if we activate the Edit Shapes tool, you can see two control points here. There are actually three control points. It's just that the two of them are at the same location. If we click drag this up. Now we can see all the control points. We can use this one to set the end angle. And we can use this one to set the start angle. And this one is for changing the mid point. Basically, the position of this midpoint will determine the type parameter. Currently, it is set to the archetype. If I drag this point to the center, then the type parameter changes to a pie. And if I drag this point to the connecting line, the type parameter changes to chord to quickly return the shape to a perfect circle, just click on this button, closer lips. And just like before, we can convert the object from its primitive state to an editable vector by right-clicking and then choosing two path. Or you may also click this button, convert to path. 22. Vector elements: In this lesson video, we will get to know different types of vector elements and then learn how to select them. We can start by creating a rectangle primitive shape. Then we convert it into a regular or editable path. Alright, let's first discuss the standard naming of vector elements in critter. These dots are called points. While the lines connecting the points are called segments. Sometimes a point has handles attached to it. To be able to see the handles, we can try click dragging this segment up a bit, and also click dragging this segment to the left a bit. You can see that this point has two handles. It is possible for a point to only have one handle. The function of these handles is for controlling the curvature of the connected segments. The full name of these handles is actually Bezier handles. The term Bezier was originally a person's name. He is a French mathematician who invented the algorithm to control curves using points. As a tribute to his work, we use his name for features or tools that use the algorithm. That is why this tool, as well as this selection tool, has the word Bezier in front of their names. So again, to recap, these dots are called points. The lines or curves connecting the points are called segments. And finally, the handles that attach to the points are called Bezier handles. Okay? Next, let's discuss how to select vector points and segments. To select a point, you can just click on it until the color changes to light-blue. To select multiple points, you can hold down the Shift key and then just click on the points that you want to add to the selection. If you perform Shift-click on an already selected point, it will make a de-select. So at a glance, the technique for selecting vector elements is similar to how we select vector objects using the Select Shapes tool. You can also perform a click drag to select one or more points. In point selection, the crossing method does not apply. So click dragging from left to right or from right to left is considered the same and will behave like the window method. The points need to be fully inside the selection box to get selected. Next, let's discuss segments selection. You can click directly on the segment to select it. The problem is, in the critter version I'm currently using, there is still a small bug. Sometimes credit doesn't want to select the segment that we click on. Hopefully, this bug will already be fixed in the version of query you are using. But if you still experience this bug, one workaround for this is to select the points that make up the segment. E.g. we want to select this segment. Instead of clicking on the segment, we can just click drag to select these two points. In critter, selecting two points like this is considered the same as selecting the segment that connects the two. Alright? The selection techniques for points in segments that we have just discussed will be very important in the future lessons, where we need to convert points in segments from one type to another. 23. Vector element types: In this lesson video, we will learn about the different types of points, as well as different types of segments. In critter, vector points can be divided into two categories, line point and curve point. What line point means is a point that does not have any Bezier handle. While at the opposite, a curve point is a point that has Bezier handles to change a point from a line point type to a curve point type or vice versa. You can use the right-click method, makes sure the points are selected. Otherwise, you need to right-click on the top of the point that you want to convert. This is to make it a curved point, and this is to make it aligned point. We can tell that this point is aligned point because the line point option is not active. And also, of course, visually, the point doesn't have any Bezier handle. If we change this point to a curve point. Now we can see Bezier handles on that point. Also, if we right-click again, the curve point option becomes inactive. Apart from the right-click method, we can also use these two icons in the Tool Options darker. This is to change the selected point to a line point, and this is to convert it to a curve point. But remember to be able to use this method, you have to make sure that the points you want to convert our selective. Next, the curve point type can further be divided into three sub types. They are corner, smooth, and symmetric. You can switch between the three subtypes using these three icons in the Tool Options darker. This is corner, this is smooth, this is symmetric. Alternatively, you can also use the right-click method. This is corner, this is smooth and this is symmetric. So what is the difference between these three types? Let's first look at the symmetric type. This point type has two Bezier handles which are always symmetrical, both in length and orientation. So this type of point always produces a smooth curved surface. The second subtype is smooth. This type of point has two handles that are almost symmetrical. That is, they are only symmetrical in terms of orientation, but not in terms of length. One handle can be longer or shorter than the other. But if we try to rotate one of the handles, the other will follow. So they always form a straight line. The last type of point is the corner point. This type has Bezier handles, but each is completely independent of the other. It means we can adjust the length and orientation of one handle without affecting the other handle. Due to this behavior, corner type points can form sharp angles. Now, the corner type also has another unique characteristic, and that is, it can have only one handle. So if you ever see a point that has only one Bezier handle, you can be sure that it is a corner type point. In conclusion, vector points can be divided into two types. Lyme point, which does not have any Bezier handle, and curved point which has Bezier handles. Then for the curve point, we can divide it again into three sub types. Corner points have handles that are independent of one another. Smooth points have two handles with uniform orientation but non-uniform lengths. And lastly, the symmetric point has to Bezier handles that are completely symmetrical, both in orientation, in length. So those are the types of vector points in critter. Next, let's discuss the types of segments that exist in critter. Segments can be divided into two types. Curve N line. Curve is a segment type that can bend or turn. While line is a segment that can only go straight to change the segment type. The methods are similar to how we change the pointer type. We can do this via the right-click menu or via the tool options darker. If you want to use the right-click method, you can simply right-click on the segment. This is to make the segment a curve type, and this is to make it a line type. Meanwhile, if you want to use the tool options darker first, you need to make sure the segment is selected. As we discussed earlier, selecting the segment directly is difficult because of a bug. The workaround for this is we can select the two points that make up the segment. In this condition, the segment is already selected. After that, we can use the tool options darker. This is to convert the segment into a line type, and this is to convert it into a curve type. One thing you need to keep in mind though, is that changing the type of segment can affect the types of points connected to it. Vice versa, changing a point type can affect the types of segments attached to it. Just e.g. if we right-click on this point, then we convert it into a symmetric type. This will automatically change the two segments attached to it to a curve type. If we right-click on this segment, then we change it to a line type. This point just changed to a corner type automatically. And if we right-click on this segment, then converted into a line type. Also. This point is now aligned point type and therefore does not have any handle anymore. 24. Vector editing: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss various vector editing techniques available in critter. The first technique we want to focus on is adjusting the curvature of a segment. I have shown this technique several times before, and so you might already be familiar with it. There are two methods that you can use to change the shape of a curve. The first method is by moving the Bezier handles at the points connected to the curve. Because every curve has two points. Therefore, there are two handles at maximum that we can use to adjust the curvature. So this is the first method. The second method is to click drag directly on the segment. This method will automatically change or move the Bezier handles of the current segment. It's important to remember that the position of the mouse cursor when we click drag determines how it affects the surrounding handles. Essentially, the closer we get to a point, the stronger the click drag influence on the handle of that point. Feel free to experiment with this technique yourself. You can try combining both techniques. Moving the Bezier handles and click dragging on the segment directly. Next, let's discuss how to insert and remove points. To add a point, we can use a command called Insert Point. As with other vector techniques, there are two ways to do this by right-clicking or via the tool options darker. If you move the mouse cursor on any location in a segment, then right-click and select Insert Point, critter, we'll place a new point at the mouse cursor location. So this right-click method is more suitable if we want to place a new point at a custom location. Now, if what you need is to place the new point exactly at the center of the segment. It might be difficult to rely on the right-click method. For cases like this, you should use the tool options darker instead. To do this, first, make sure the segment is selected. Then click on this icon called Insert Point. I will place the new point in the middle of the selected segment. The point may seem not exactly at the center. If the segment is a curve that bends towards a certain direction, the alternative method to insert points is to double-click on the segment. To be able to do this first, make sure the mouse cursor changes to a hand symbol. Only in this condition, you can double-click to add a new point. Honestly, I prefer not to use this method. Why? Because double-clicking is very difficult to do when we are using a drawing tablet. And even if we switch to using the mouse, the segments selection bug we discussed earlier often gets in the way. Sometimes the mouse cursor does not want to change to a hand symbol. And if we keep double-clicking on a segment, instead of adding a new point, we activate the Select Shapes tool. So again, you need to be extra careful if you want to use this double-clicking method. Alright? The opposite of the Insert Point command is removed point. Essentially, we use this command to delete points. We can use the right-click approach. That is by right-clicking directly on the point that we want to delete and then choose remove points. Or you can also select the point first. Then click on this icon in the tool options darker. Next, we will discuss the break and merge commands. We can use the break at point command to break a vector shape at a certain point, e.g. let's right-click on this point, then select breakpoint. At first glance, nothing seems to have happened. But pay attention when I move this point. It turns out that the previous point has been split into two. This also causes the vector line to break. Perhaps we can see this clearly if we remove the fill color. Notice how the vector shape does not form a loop anymore. As this part is detached, this command is different from the previous remove command. If you remember, the remove command only deletes the point. It does not break the vector shape. While the break at point command does the opposite, it does not delete the point. In fact, we ended up with more points, but the vector shape breaks. The opposite of the break command is merge. Basically, the merge points command will reunite two separate points. To be able to use this command, of course, you must select two points that are separated. You cannot apply this command to points that are already connected. E.g. we can select these two points. Then right-click and choose this command, merge points. As you can see, the two points moved and merge at the center location. Just as before, you may also access these two commands via the tool options darker. This icon on the far left is the break at point command. While this icon at the far-right is the merge points command. Besides using the points, you can also break and join vector shapes using the segments. I have shown this technique before briefly. Let's say we want to break this vector shape at this segment. Just right-click on that segment, then choose break at segment. Or you can do it via the tool options darker. That is, by pressing this icon break at segment. To reconnect the vector shape with a segment, you must first select two separate points. Only then can we right-click and choose this option joined with segment. Or you can click on this icon. What makes this command different from the previous merge points command is that the merge points command will move the points to meet at the center. While the join with segment command will not cause the points to move. Critter, we'll just create a new segment to connect the two points. 25. Align, Distribute, and Spacing: In this lesson video, we will cover the arrangement features for vector objects found in the Arrange darker. If you want to follow along, just download the file I provided for this lesson. You may also use your own file if you want to. First, we need to open a darker called Arrange. You can position this darker anywhere that you like. Then make sure you are currently using the Select Shapes tool. If you use other tools than the arranged darker, we'll have nothing to show. Alright? In this darker, you can see a lot of commands which are grouped into four categories, align, distribute, spacing, and order. If you notice, we have discussed all the commands in the order category before using the right-click method. The icons here are for managing the stacking order, such as bring to front, center, back, and so on. Then this is group and this is ungroup because they are practically the same as before. In this video, we will only focus on the three categories above. Let's first discuss the align commands. As the name implies, we use these commands for aligning vector objects. To use them, you can start by selecting several objects. The three icons on the left will align the objects horizontally, while the three icons on the right will align the objects vertically. With this icon on the far left, we can align objects using their left borders as the reference. Let me undo this. This one is for aligning the objects based on their center lines. Let me undo this again. While this icon will align the objects based on their right borders, you may already see the pattern here. This is for aligning vertically using the top border lines. This will align vertically using the center lines. And finally, this one is for aligning based on the bottom lines. Alright? One thing you need to remember is that you can also use the align commands only on a single object. If you do this critter, we'll use the canvas area as the second reference for the alignment process. So this can be useful when we need to align a vector object against the canvas area. E.g. we want this object to be exactly at the center of the canvas. Make sure only this object is selected. Then you can click on this icon to center the object horizontally, and then click on this icon also to center it vertically. The next commands we are going to discuss are the ones within the distribute category. Basically, these commands will distribute vector objects so that they have uniform distances horizontally or vertically. To see them in action, I have prepared a vector layer. You can see that the shapes are size ratios of these boxes are different. If we select all of them, then press the icon on the left. Now, the distance from one object to another becomes uniform based on the left boundary of each object. Let me undo this first. If we press this icon at the center, the objects are also evenly distributed in a horizontal direction. But unlike before, critter now uses the center lines of each object as the reference. From these two examples, I believe you can already guess the functions of the other icons. This is to distribute the objects horizontally, but using the right border lines as the references. And these three icons are similar to the previous three icons, but for the vertical directions. The last two commands are the ones located in the spacing category. At a glance, these commands are similar to the distribute commands in that they are also used for uniformly distributing vector objects. The difference is the Spacing Commands do not use any lines to reference the distance. Instead, they used the gap lengths between objects as the reference for distributing the objects. So if we select all of these objects, then press this icon. Now, the gaps that exist between these vector objects become uniform. The last icon is almost the same. It will perform spacing also, but in a vertical direction. 26. Logical operations: In this lesson, we will discuss logical operations. If you used other graphics software before, you have probably heard the term boolean operations. Well, logical operations is just another name for Boolean operations. I don't understand why Credit developers prefer to use this name. Essentially, with logical operations, we can perform various math operations on vector objects, such as adding, subtracting, and intersecting. To perform logical operations, make sure that you use the Select Shapes tool. Then you need to select to vector objects that overlap with each other. Then right-click and choose the logical operations sub menu. You can see that critter provides four types of logical operations. Let's try the one called Unite. Now, the two objects that we selected earlier have merged into one object. Please keep in mind that this unit operation is very different from the group command. If you remember, group only binds or wraps vector objects so that we can handle them as if it is a single object. But each of the vector objects still exists inside the group. We can access them again if we perform ungroup. Meanwhile, logical operations will delete both vector objects that we select it and then create a new vector object that has a new shape. You can see if I use the Edit Shapes tool, this vector area has become a single unit. So we can conclude that the Unite operation will add or combine the areas of two vector objects. Let's undo this first. The second command is intersect. The result of this command is the intersection area of the two vector objects that we selected earlier. Let me undo this again. The next operation we want to discuss is subtract. Now, this operation is a bit different from the previous two operations, because the order in how we select the objects will affect the outcome. If we select this object first, then hold shift and click this object later. The last object we selected will reduce the area of the object we first selected. Let's just see it in action. Right-click. Choose logical operations, then choose Subtract. And here is the result, just as we expected. Let me undo this again. Now let's try the opposite. We can first select this one, then hold shift and click this one. If we try to do the subtract command again, this is the result we are going to have. So again, the object we selected last will reduce the object we selected first. The last command is split. Basically, we use this command to break down a compound shape into its components or regular vector objects. Now, you may be wondering, so what exactly is a compound shape? Compound shape is a vector object that contains two or more vectors structures inside it. There are several operations that can generate compound shapes. First, because we perform the break at point or break at segment commands in more than one place. Second, it is because we perform a subtract operation on a vector object which creates a hole in the middle. And third, it could also happen because we perform the Unite operation on to vector objects that do not overlap. To make things clearer, I will give an example of each one-by-one. If we select this object, then switch to the Edit Shapes tool. We can break this segment and then also break this segment. When we return to the Select Shapes tool, you can see that this vector object is still considered as one object even though it contains two separate vectors structures. This is the first example of a compound shape. The second example, we can copy paste this circle. Maybe we can give it a different color first, just so we can differentiate the two better. Make the new one smaller, and then position it so that it is inside the area of the big one. Because we're going to perform subtract, we need to pay attention to the order of the selection. Make sure we first select the large object, hold Shift, and then click on the small one. Next, we can perform the subtract operation. As you can see, the result is like a doughnut shape because the center area is hollow. This kind of object is also considered a compound shape because these two circles by separate structures, there is no point or segment that bridges the two shapes. The last example, if I select these two shapes, then perform the Unite operation. This will also produce a compound shape. It is a single vector object, but consists of more than one structure. Alright? Only if we have compound shape objects like this, can we perform the split operation? If we choose this one, then right-click and then choose logical operations. As you can see, the split option is now available. If we click on it, the two structures that made up the object now becomes separate vector objects. We can do the same for the other compound shape objects. First, select the object and perform the split command. You may notice that although the colors still looks the same, they are already separate objects. So we can adjust the color independently from the other object. 27. Bezier curve tools: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss Bezier curve tools. In critter, there are two Bezier curve tools that use similar methods but produce different results. The first is the Bezier curve tool, which we can use to create or draw shapes. While the second is the Bezier curve selection tool, which we use to create selections. Because the way they work is similar. If you master one of them, you automatically master the other. In other graphics software, such as Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, the Bezier curve tool is known as the pen tool. While in 3D software, this tool is usually known as the spline tool or Curve tool, and the light. In general, all of these tools work similarly. So if you have prior experience with these tools in shallow, you will immediately be able to use the Bezier curve tools in critter. Like the other drawing tools and critter, the Bezier curve tool can work on raster layers as well as on vector layers. The tool automatically produces different graphic types depending on the type of layer it is currently on. For now, we're focusing on Vector Graphics. So makes sure we have a vector layer active. Then use a small brush size, say five pixels. If the Bezier curve tool is active in the Tool Options darker, you will see parameters similar to other vector tools. Let's set the fill perimeter to not filled and set the outline to brush. This option will use the foreground color. Pick a foreground color that you like. For now, I choose green. Before we start, first, make sure the auto smooth and angle snap options are turned off. We will discuss these options later. Alright? If we click and release on the canvas using this tool, then we are creating line point types. Or in other words, these points do not have any Bezier handle. Therefore, they can only form sharp angles. Now, if we do a click drag instead, what we are creating is a curve point with a subtype of symmetric. To end the creation process, you can click again on the starting point. Or if you prefer an open-ended curve, you can double-click or press Enter on the keyboard. Sometimes after we make a lot of points or segments with this tool halfway, we change our minds. We want to undo the last point, or perhaps several points we just created. For this, we can right-click. The more we perform, right-click, the farther we move back, or the more points get cancelled. If you want to cancel everything, just press the Escape key on your keyboard. So those are the basic techniques of using the Bezier tool. The more advanced technique that may require some practice is creating corner type points using the Alt and Shift keys on the keyboard. Let's first focus on the Alt key technique. There are two ways to use the alt key. The first technique is you hold down the Alt key first, then perform click drag. Or secondly, you perform click drag first and then hold down the Alt key. The difference is if you do the first method which is holding out first and then click dragging, you will create a corner point which only has one Bezier handle. But if you perform the click drag first, and while doing that, you then hold down the Alt key, you will create a point that has two Bezier handles. The second method is the one I use most often, and this is also the most common method found in other graphics software. The last technique is to use the Shift key to lock the position of the handles and free up the position of the point. E.g. after I click here once, I want to make the point handles of the next point here. And here. For this case, we can just use the old method. That is, we can click drag like this, hold down Alt, and drag the mouse to this location. Then release the mouse and the Alt key and just continue the process. So this is the first approach. If we want to use the alt key. For now, let's right-click a few times to return to the previous point. Now, let's see how we can do this using the Shift method. Hold down the Shift key, then click drag to position the two Bezier handles. After both are in the positions that we want, release the mouse and also the Shift key. Now you can see that the locations of the two Bezier handles become locked. What we need to do now is to determine the location of the point, e.g. we can click here and we can continue the process again. Honestly, I hardly ever use this technique and prefer to use the alt key technique. But you may prefer this technique, especially when you need to create symmetrical pointed shapes like leaf tips, rocket heads, and so on. Now, let's focus on the Bezier curves selection tool. In general, you can apply all the techniques we discussed before to the Bezier curves selection tool also, except for one technique which is using the Shift key. So if we perform click releases, we create line points. If we click drag, we create curves symmetric points. If we use the Alt key, we create corner points either with one handle or with double handles. But if you try to use the shift technique, it won't work. At least that's how it is in the version of critter I'm currently using. I'm not sure whether this is considered a bug or not, but hopefully in the version of critter you're using, this problem has been fixed or at least becomes more consistent. This is also one of the reasons why I prefer to use the old technique over the shift technique. In both the Bezier curve selection tool and the Bezier curve tool, you can see an option called auto smooth. Basically, if this option is active, when we do a click release on the canvas, instead of making a line point, Criddle will make a curve smooth point type. So while this option is active, it's difficult to make sharp corners. This option can be useful if you're creating organic shapes that do not have any sharp surfaces. For now, let's turn this option off. The second option we want to discuss is angle snap. When this option is active, we can easily create a line that forms certain angles to set how many degrees the line will snap. We can use this field. Suppose we increase this value to 45 degrees when we click on the canvas and then try to create the next point, you will see the lines turned to red and the line also gets a bit sticky at every 45 degrees increment. With this snap feature, you can easily create straight lines vertically, e.g. or horizontally, or add a perfect diagonal. Remember, if you don't need the feature anymore, you should turn it off because it will get in the way if you are trying to draw a free form shapes. 28. Vector drawing exercises: In this lesson video, we are going to practice creating simple vector drawings using the Bezier curve tool along with other vector techniques we have already covered before. We will start with a heart symbol, then a scissor, and lastly a duck. As usual, we need to prepare a vector layer. We can press Shift insert for this. Then for the Bezier curve tool settings, we will use the same settings as in the previous lesson. That is, set the brush size to five pixels, set the fill option to not filled, and set the outline option to brush. We can start from the bottom point. Click release here. Click drag here. Click release at the top center area. And click drag again here. Then click again at the starting point to form a closed shape. If the shape still looks ugly, no problem. Since this is a vector object, we can still edit it. Activate the Edit Shapes tool. First, click once to select the shape. Then for the bottom point, we don't want it to have any Bezier handle. So makes sure we set the point type to line point, makes sure the point above is also aligned point. As for the points on the right and on the left side, we set them as smooth types. This is because we want the handle at the top to be shorter than the handle at the bottom. Then adjust the location of the points or the handles until you are satisfied with the shape. Next, activate the Select Shapes tool. Choose red for the fill area. As for the stroke, we set it to no color. The basic form is complete. Next, we want to add ellipses for the specular effect. For this, we can activate the Ellipse tool. Just use the same settings as the previous Bezier curve. Then create an ellipse like this. Use the Select Shapes tool. We can create a second ellipse by duplicating the existing one. Press Control C, then Control V. Or you can also just create a new one with the ellipse tool. If you want to make the second ellipse a bit smaller and slightly tilted, then position them so that they are close together. Hold down shift and select both of them. Move them so they are above the heart symbol. Remove the stroke color. For the fill area. Choose an off-white color slightly towards the red, and just make all the adjustments that you need. And here is the result. Next, we are going to draw a scissor, press Shift insert to create a new vector layer. Make sure we use the Bezier curve tool and set the foreground color back to black. Click here. We want to create a corner point with one handle. So hold down the Alt key and click drag downwards. Release. Then just continue the vector line to form a single blade for the scissor. Then use the Select Shapes tool. Select the object, remove the stroke color and change the fill color to gray. Then copy paste the object. Flip the new object vertically, make the color a bit brighter. We also make this one bigger. Adjust the position as needed so the two blades overlap at the pivot point. Then activate the Ellipse tool. Make sure the foreground color is black. Make a small circle for the bolt. Then make two more circles for the finger holes. We can position the small one at the pivot point where the two blades intersect. Remove the stroke color, then change the fill color to gray, but make it lighter than the color below it. Next, we want this small circle to form a hole within the big circle. For this, we can use the subtract command. Remember, you need to first select the big one, hold down Shift, then select the small one. Next right-click and select the subtract command. Now, the inner circle area becomes a whole, but we need to change the fill color so we can see it better. Let's just use blue. Alright, next, we can duplicate this object. Then do a vertical mirror. Make this one a bit smaller just to give the drawing some variation. Then adjust the position and also the rotation as needed. Basically, we want to make the finger holes look connected to the blades. It is okay if now the blade penetrates the circle, we can edit the points later. Alright. Now activate the Edit Shapes tool and select these two points. Drag them until they are behind the finger. Whole shape. Just do the same with the two points below. And the scissor drawing is done. For the next exercise, we are going to create a duck. As usual. We're going to create it on a new vector layer so that later it will be easier to manage. We can hide the scissor layer first, use the Bezier curve tool and use black color. We can start at the bottom of the neck. Click release here. Click release again. Then for the bottom part of the body, we can click drag to form a curve. Then for the tail, we can just click and release, then click release and so on until the back of the head. Click drag to make it curved. Click drag again. Finally, we click on the starting point to close the shape. It is okay if the shape still looks off, we can activate the Edit Shapes tool and drag the points as needed so that the vector shape looks more interesting. For this point, the type should be smooth or symmetric. Now, for the segment that is above the body, we can just click drag directly to make it slightly curved upwards. Alright. Next, we can focus on the beak. Click here, click drag, then click drag again, and so on. You can just follow what I'm doing here. As before. Don't worry too much if the initial shape doesn't quite fit because we can still edit it again. Use the Edit Shapes tool. Then just drag the points until the shape of the beak looks the way we expected. This point should be a smooth point type. Alright. Next, we can create the legs. Since I'm not using any new techniques. Speeding up the video to save time. To make the foot's web slightly curved, we can select these two points, then change it to symmetric point. Do the same for the leg on the left. Yes, they do look like frog legs. But that is okay. We're just making these drawings for practice. Alright? After you are satisfied with the shape, it's time to work on the colors. Select the body part, remove the stroke and change the fill color to yellow. Then select both the legs and the beak. Let's just give them a same orange color. Remove the stroke color also. Next, we want the legs to be behind the body. So select both objects and use the center back command. You can consider this done, but I think the shape of the head is still not quite right. Again, this is one of the advantages of working with vector. We can easily edit it whenever we want. We can move all the points on the head slightly to the right. And for this handle, we can move this a bit to the left to make the head shape more rounded. Next, we can use the Select Shapes tool again to reposition the beak. Alright, I think this is enough. So in total, we have created three vector drawings on three vector layers. To make them less clustered, we can move the layers. For this, we can use the Move tool or the transform tool. Move the heart symbol layer to the left and move the duck layer to the right. Lastly, move the scissor layer up. So here is the final result of our exercise. I hope that these simple drawings can inspire you to practice and create more complex drawings. 29. The basics of Filter: Starting from this lesson video, we are going to discuss filters. So what exactly is a filter? In short, a filter is a graphical operation that we can apply to an image to change its appearance. E.g. to make the image brighter or darker, or to make certain color elements stronger and so on. If you open the filter's menu, you can see that critic provides many types of filters. There are even more filters hidden in the GI QT window. Now, to apply filters, credit provides three different methods. You can apply it directly to an image. You can use a filter layer or you can use a filter mask. We will discuss each of these methods one by one. For this, we will need an image. You may use your own file or you can also use the file I have prepared for this lesson. This image is actually the illustration project from the older version of this course, which is still using crate aversion for the original file has a very complex layer composition. For this lesson, I've flattened the layers into just three layers. The first method is to apply a filter directly to the image. This is a destructive method as the original image will be changed permanently. I usually avoid using this method unless I'm absolutely sure that there won't be any further revisions. Or at least I've backed up the layer or the file. Using this method is quite easy. E.g. we can select this pineapple layer, then open the filter's menu, go to the adjust category. Now we will try a simple filter first called D saturate. Because this is a commonly used filter, credit provides a shortcut for it. That is Control Shift U. If you click this, critter will open a window to set the filter. Essentially, D saturate will convert a color image into a grayscale image. Here you can select the algorithm used by critter for the process. Now, because the Preview button below is active, the changes we make to the parameters will be immediately reflected in the image. But keep in mind that in complex filter types, this preview process may not be instant. Sometimes it can take a bit longer, 3-5 s, depending on the size of the image and also your computer performance. To confirm or apply the filter to the image, you can press the OK button. As you can see, the image on a pineapple layer has changed to gray scale. For now, let's undo this first. So that is the first method of applying filters directly on images. We will cover the nondestructive methods, which are the second and third methods in the upcoming lesson videos. 30. Filter layer: In this lesson video, we will continue discussing the method for applying filters. Previously, we discussed the first method. Now we will focus on the second method, which is using a filter layer. Essentially, a filter layer is a type of layer that can contain a filter. A filter layer only affects the layers below it that are at the same level or inside the same group. As I mentioned earlier, the filter layer method is non-destructive. We can easily show or hide the effect without permanently changing the image or the document. To create a filter layer, we can click on the small arrow button at the side of the big plus button, then choose filter layer. Credit will prompt us to choose the type of filter that we want to use. For. Now, let's use the D saturate filter just like before. Press Okay, to confirm, you can see the entire image turns to grayscale. This is because the filter layer is positioned at the very top. If we move this filter layer below the pineapple layer, now, everything looks great except for the pineapple layer. And if we move this below the toaster layer, only the bottom or the environment layer looks gray. So again, a filter layer affects all other layers below it and does not affect those above it. Next, since a filter layer is basically a type of layer, we can turn on or turn off the filter effect simply by showing or hiding the layer. We can also adjust the strength using the opacity parameter. And whenever you need to access the filter parameters, you can do so by accessing the layer properties. For this, you can right-click then select properties. Or you can also press F3 for the shortcut. So those are some of the advantages of using a filter layer compared to applying it directly on an image. At this point, you may be wondering, what if we only want the pineapple and toaster layers to be gray while the environment layer remains in color. For this case, we can make use of the group layer feature. We already covered group layers before in the basic level course. So we don't need to go into the details again in this lesson. Just e.g. we want to group these two layers. First, select the layers, then press Control G. Now, if we move this filter layer so that it is on top, but still inside the group layer. As you can see, only layers that are in the same hierarchy level can be affected by the filter layer. Furthermore, the stacking order also still works inside a group. It means if we move this filter layer to be below the pineapple layer, now only the toaster layer gets affected and becomes gray. Alright? At this point, you might be thinking, why is it so inconvenient to apply a filter to a single layer only. We have to create a group layer, then create a filter layer, then positioned a filter layer just above the target layer? Well, the answer is, if you only want to apply a filter to a single layer non-destructively, you should use the filter mask instead. We will discuss Filter masks in more detail in the next lesson. For now, let's finish up discussing the filter layer feature. Basically, the techniques for deleting a filter layer are the same as deleting regular layers. We can do this with the right-click method, then select Remove Layer, or with the shortcut Shift Delete, or simply by pressing this trash icon. Then to delete a group layer, the techniques are also similar. You can use one of the three methods I mentioned before for deleting layers. But when the leading group layers, you need to be extra careful. Why? Because if you delete a group layer, all the children layers inside it will get deleted. Also. If you still need the children layers, then you need to move them out first before deleting the group layer. Or a faster way to do this is by using the quick ungroup command. For this, you can right-click on the group layer. Select group, then select Quick ungroup. Critter also provides a shortcut for this command, which is Control Alt G. As you can see with this special command, the group layer is deleted, but all the children layers that were previously inside it are automatically secured or not deleted. 31. Filter mask: In this lesson video, we will cover the third method of applying filters, and that is using a filter mask. As I mentioned earlier, this method is suitable for you to use if you want to apply a filter to only a single layer non-destructively. We have discussed before that a mass cannot stand alone. It needs to attach to a parent layer. Just as an example, we want to apply the D saturate filter again, but only on the toaster layer. Select the layer, then click on this small arrow icon and choose filter mask. Remember not filter layer but filter mask. Make sure that we select the D saturate filter. Then click Okay to confirm. And here's the result. As you can see, the other layers are not affected because this filter mask only attaches and effects the toaster layer. Next, as with other types of masks, you can show or hide a filter mask as needed. You can also move a mask from one layer to another by click dragging it. Or you can also use the up and down arrow keys in the layers darker. Then you can also access the filter parameters by right-clicking and selecting properties or by pressing F3. One thing that filter mask lacks when compared to filter layer is that it doesn't have any opacity parameter. So we cannot control the strength of the effect gradually. At least, that's how it is in the version of critter I'm currently using. For now, let's delete this mask. Apart from using this small arrow icon, you can also apply a filter mask from the Filter menu. As an example, we want to apply the D saturate filter mask again to the pineapple layer, makes sure the layer is selected. Then open the filter menu, adjust, and then D saturate. We've done this in a previous lesson. But before we just hit the Okay button, which is a destructive method, what we want to press now is this create filter mask button. With this critter, we'll apply the corresponding filter as a mask to the pineapple layer instead of applying it directly. So far, we have agreed that there are many advantages to using nondestructive methods, be it through a filter layer, filter mask. However, there is one drawback of the nondestructive method that we need to be aware of. And that is, this method will burden your computer performance. Indeed, being a burden or not, is very subjective. It all depends on the computer you are using. But in general, the more filters you use in the layer composition, the more process needs to be done by your computer to display the final image on the screen. If your document already feels heavy, you might want to consider applying some of the filters that were previously non-destructive. To be destructive. It's not an ideal condition, but at least your computer will feel more responsive to use. To do this, you can use the flattened layer command. Just right-click on the layer that has the filter mask attached to it, then select flattened layer. The end result will be exactly the same as if we apply the filter directly. Let me undo this first. For now, let's create a filter layer and choose D saturate for the filter type. And make sure it's between the pineapple layer and the toaster layer. Now, if we use the flattened layer command on this filter layer, this is what happened. Flattening a filter layer will duplicate all the layers below it, merge all of them into one layer, and then apply the filter. The result is an ordinary paint layer. Since this single layer represents the appearance of all the layers below it, you can hide or even delete those layers. This will make your document less complicated. But again, this is a destructive method. Therefore, I recommend you to backup the file first before doing it. 32. Invert, HSV, Color balance, and Dodge: Starting from this video. And so for our videos ahead, we will cover some of the filters available in Krita. For this lesson, we will cover invert, HSV adjustments, color balance, and dodge. For us is the invert filter. The default shortcut for this filter is control eye. We can see that this filter does not have dots behind its name. Unlike the other filters, DAC is because this filter does not have any parameters at all. If we click on it, the filter will be applied to the image directly. As the name suggests, the function of this filter is to invert the colors in the image. The black color will become white. And what color will become black, while the other colors will change to their opposites? E.g. red becomes cyan, green becomes purple, and so on. Alright, I'll undo this first. Next is HSV adjustments. The shortcut for this filter is controlled you in a basic level. Of course, we have discussed in depth what HSV is. Other graphics software may call it HSL. Hsv. Basically, with this filter, we can change the color of the image using the hue, saturation, and lightness parameters. Before we continue. If you have limited screen space, you may want to hide the filtered list on the left by pressing this button. Alright, let's take a closer look at the parameters or the sliders in this filter. We can start from the very bottom called lightness. Essentially, we can use this slider to adjust the brightness of the image. Then we can use the saturation slider to adjust the saturation level. If we move this to the far left position, the image will become gray scale. In this condition, the result will be similar to the researcher at filter. To return all the sliders to their default positions, just press the reset button. The last slider is, he'll, we can use this to shift all the colors in the image as if we are turning the color wheel. Red color will become orange, yellow, green, and so on. Alright, one unique option is filter has, is the colorize option. If this option is active, DHS we just want to filter will walk like a monochrome filter. In this case, the two sliders below, which are saturation and lightness, more or less the same as before. What is different is the hue slider. Instead of shifting all colors into other colors, it will redirect it towards a specific color. The result will be a monochrome image. Or in other words, an image that has only one color tone. I don't need to apply this filter, so I'll just hit Cancel. The next filter is color balance. You can use the shortcut Control V to use this filter. Basically, this filter will group all pixels in an image into three main categories. Shadows for bright colors, mid-tones for mid colors, and highlights for bright colors. In each of these categories, colors are further divided into three spectrums with opposite colors. We can control each of these spectrums to make the color a shift to a certain direction. Just e.g. for the shadows area, we want the blue color to be stronger. We can move this slider towards blue. Now, because blue is the opposite of yellow, of course, making an image more blue will automatically make it less yellow. This also applies to the rest of the color spectrums, e.g. we can make the mid-tone colors more towards magenta. Then for the highlight colors, we can make them more red, etc. Suppose you change your mind and want to return all these sliders to their default positions. You don't need to enter the zero values individually into each of these fields. You can do this faster by just pressing the reset buttons on the right side. The last filter I want to cover in this video is dodge. This filter is not as popular as the three filters we discussed before. That is why Krita does not provide any default shortcut for this filter. The function of this filter is to make the image brighter. But we can wait more specifically, where the rebound effect, the shadow colors, mid-tone colors, or highlight colors. E.g. if we activate the highlights option, then increase the Exposure slider. You can see only the bright areas that get even brighter. 33. Levels and Curve: In this lesson video, we will discuss two filters that people often use to adjust the brightness and contrast levels of images. They are levels and color adjustment curve. Let's first discuss the Levels filter. As usual, we can access the filter to the filter menu, then adjusts, and then levels. Apart from the menu, you can also use the shortcut Control L. To fully understand this filter, we need to understand the graph that we can see in this area. This graph is called the color histogram. Basically, a color histogram is a statistical graph that shows how many pixels of a certain color appear in image. The far left point shows the number of pixels of the darker scholar or the black color. Further to the right, the graph shows lighter colors. The far right point shows the number of pixels of white. Now, for image on this pineapple layer, you can see that the bar on the left is a bit high. This is likely the number of black pixels in the pineapples eye area. The second spike seems to be the number of drug gray pixels are no hands and the feet area, and so on. From this color histogram, we can find out the color distribution that occurs in the image. If it is going uphill to the left, it means it tends to have more dark colors. Meanwhile, if the graph is going up hill to derive, it means that the image tends to have a lot more bright colors. Alright? To control the levels, we can rank the three control points on input line, or the two control points on the output line. The way it works is as follows. In input section, this leftmost control plane is the darkest color. This control point is sort of medium color. And the control point on the right is for the light of Scholar. If we move this dark point to the right, e.g. what happens is all pixels to the left of the control point will become black. If we move this right point to the left, then all pixels in this area will become white. Then we can use this middle control plane to shift the image brightness midpoint to be darker. That is, if we drag it to the right or to be brighter, if you drag it to the left. Sometimes we have to adjust the levels of lots of images, but our time is very limited. In such conditions. You can use the auto levels button. For now. We can just use the default settings and click the Okay button. Basically, with this feature, Krita will automatically detect the highest number of bright pixels and place the bright color point at that location. Like wise photo dot point. It will be placed in a position where the highest number of dark pixels exist. In addition to dragging the points, we can also control the input levels by tapping in new values in all fields below. For the dark point, the default is zero. For the light point, the default is 255 S for the middle point. It uses arrange of relative values from negative ten to positive ten. The default value is one. In this condition, the midpoint will always, automatically be at a central location between the dark point in the bright point, no matter where the two points are, where new enter values in these fields, be careful not to press Enter, because by default, Krita will awesome. We hit the Okay button of the filter window. At least that's how it is inversion I am currently using. Now, what about the output line? Basically, the image data that we have set in input line will be mapped to the output line, e.g. if we move this left point to the right, then the darkest color will be mapped to this area of brightness, causing the black color to become a light gray. The same concept applies to the point on the right. Suppose we'd read, write point to the left. Then the writer scholar in input line will be mapped to this brightness level. So that's how we use the Levels filter. Next, let's discuss the color of just one curve filter. In other graphics software, this filter is also known as the curve. The shortcut. You can press Control M. So how exactly does this filter work? Simply put, the horizontal axis is the current state of the image. This is the darkest color, and this is the lightest color. While this vertical axis shows the output are the colors that this filter will produce. This is the darkest color, and this is the lightest color. The line or the curve in the middle determines the color mapping. By default, the line is a perfect diagonal. So black will stay as black, gray will stay as gray and white. We will stay as wide. If I drag this left point up. Now, the black pixels in the image will turn gray. If I drag this point all the way to the top, then all the output colors will be white. And if you'd read dry point to the bottom, the result will be the same as if we are using the inverse filter. We can press the reset button to return the curve to its default condition. To really make use of this filter, you can add custom points on the curve and then adjust them as needed. You can click anywhere along this curve to create a new control plane. With this, you can adjust the brightness level in certain areas more precisely. If you need to erase a point and just drag it out of the graph area. Again, we're using this filter. We can be more specific about which part of the image gets brighter or darker. Although you will see that most people just placed one control point in middle and then move it up to make the image brighter, or move it down to make it darker. This is understandable as smooth images already have affix black point and what point? 34. G’Mic filters: In this lesson video, we will cover the Jimmy filters. We can access these filters by opening the filter's menu. Then select Jimmy QT. But before you do this, you need to understand that all Jimmy filters can only be applied directly to the image. Or in other words, it can only be destructive. So if you are doing an important project, you should save the file as tobacco. Or you can duplicate the layer you want to use just in case you change your mind later. To duplicate layer, you can press Control J. Alright, now let's open the filter menu again and select the genomic menu item. Jimmy filters has a special window that is different from ketose default filter window. If you open the above list item here, then select about Jimmy. You can see that Jimmy actually stands for graces, magic for image computing. Basically, it is an open source project that develops various types of graphic filters. Now, one drawback of Jimmy is that it is not available for Apple Mac computers. Jimmy filters are only available if you are using the Windows version or the Linux version of Greta. At least that's how it was when I recorded this video. Hopefully in the future. It will also be available for the Mac version of Greta. Next, because you make is constantly being developed. The version you are using now may not be the most recent version available. If you want to update all Jimmy filters on your computer to the latest version, you can activate these Internet check box. Then click this button, Cretan or pulls data from gimmick surfers to perform an update. You can access Jimmy filters through various lists, Deloria, both lists group. You can open and close the list by clicking on this small arrow icons. Or if you want to open everything right away, you can press the expand collapse all button below. As you can see, there are hundreds of filters available here that you can make use of. The filter that you select in these ways can be previewed in a left area while the parameters will appear in the right area. Just as an example, we can activate this filter called SQ3R. This filter is unique because it will make our image look like being constructed by a series of digital texts. If we change this drop-down list, two digits, e.g. as a result, we will only get numbers. If we just math symbols. Now, only mathematical symbols appear in image. We can scale the size of the characters here, etc. To return the parameters to the default settings, you can press the reset button above. Sometimes we want to see the effect of the filter on a certain area of our image. We can perform navigation inside the preview box. To do penning, we can click Gregg with the leftmost button or with the middle mouse button. Then use this button to zoom out. And use this button to zoom in. You can also type the zoom value directly here, or choose a value from this drop-down list to return the zoom value as well as the focus area to the defaults. You can press this button. Please keep in mind that because some gimmick filters are very heavy in terms of processing or computation, not all of them support navigation in a preview box. There are even some filters, cannot show any preview at all. E.g. if we select the hexagonal grid filter, this filter still shows a preview, but it does not support painting or resuming. After experimenting with different geometric filters, you may have some favorite filters that you want to use often in the future to make it easier to find our access them later. You can collect all your favorite filters in one place, and it is by pressing the add favorite button below. When you select a filter, then press this button. Krita will duplicate the filter item and place it above inside a new category called phase, which is sought for favorites. If you want to remove a filter from the favorites list, you can press this button, we move, pay for it. If there are no more filters that exists in a favorite category, creator will then automatically hide the fifth category. All right, Finally, to apply the filter to the image, you can press the OK button or you can also press the Play button. The difference is d Okay button. We'll close the window after applying the filter. While the Apply button will apply the filter to the image, but will not close the Jimmy Filters window. So the Apply button is more suitable one to apply. So for a gimmick filters to an image, and if you want to cancel, just press the cancel button. So there is, so we can apply filters in Krita. Indeed, there are still many filters that we haven't discussed yet. But until this point, I believe you should be able to explore them yourself. 35. Transparency mask: In this lesson video, we will discuss the transparency mask feature. So what is a transparency mask? In a basic level, of course, we have already covered RGB channels as well as alpha channels. In each pixel in an image or layer. There are four slots of information, commonly referred to as channels. Three of them are RGB channels used to determine the color output of the pixel. While the other one channel is the Alpha channel to determine level of transparency of the current pixel. Now, the transparency mask is basically an additional Alpha channel that we can attach to an image or layer. At this point, you might be wondering if the original image already has an Alpha channel. Why do we add a transparency mask? Again? The answer is to have more flexibility and a non-destructive workflow. Let's just look at the following examples. Suppose we want to add a transparency mask to this pineapple layer, make sure the layer is selected. Then to create a transparency mask, critter provides at least three different methods using the add method to the layers darker, using the Convert method. Finally, using the split method. Let's look at the first method, which is the add method. Basically, we click on a small arrow button either side of the plus button in layers Docker, you can see the transparency mask command here. If you click it. Now, the pineapple layer already has a transparency mask. The mask is selected. We can use the free hand brush tool or other tools to edit the transparency inside the transparency mask. If we use a solid black color, then the result will be fully transparent. If you swipe, then the result will be fully opaque. While the gray spectrum will produce semi-transparent colors, essentially the white or the color. The more opaque the pixels will be, while the black or the color, the more transparent pixels will be. If we isolate the mask. There is by holding down the Alt key and then clicking on the layer. Or you can also right-click and choose this isolated option. We can see the original appearance of the transparency mask. You can continue to grow in saturated mode if you want to. To exit this mode, simply right-click and select DI solid option again. Or it could be by holding down the Alt key and then clicking on those same mask or another layer. Because transparency mask is two type of mask or a mask behaviors are features that do have discussed also apply to the transparency mask. We can show or hide defects. We can move it to another layer. And if we delete the mask, it will not damage the original image or layer. The second method of creating a transparency mask is using the convert command. Basically, this method will convert a regular pen layer to transparency mask. So for us, we need to create the pin layer. In general, you want to put the pen layer just below the layer that will become the pattern. But for the layer at the top, it doesn't matter. If we put the pin layer above it. Then any span layer, you are free to draw anything using the brush tool or with other tools. What really matters in this process is the color that you use. Just as before, y will become opaque and black will become transparent. Now, you need to remember that all areas that are empty or transparent in its image will later be considered black. Therefore, you don't need to make any brushstrokes or fill the area if what you really want is adding black color. The second thing you need to remember is that when you use a color other than gray scale, e.g. red, green, blue, and so on. Corita will automatically convert these colors to gray scale. When we do conversion, after you are finished with the image to convert this layer to transparency mask, simply right-click on the layer, then choose Convert, then select Convert to transparency mask. And here is the result. Though pay layer that was originally at the top has now changed to transparency mask and it's attached to the pineapple layer. You don't have to worry. If the transparency mask attaches to the wrong layer. You can just move it to look like one, as we have discussed earlier. For now, let me delete this mask. The last method is using split command, e.g. if we use an eraser brush, then erase some areas of the image on his pineapple layer. What happens is we change the information in the alpha channel. Wild information on the RGB channels is actually still there inside each of the pixels. Krita provides a special command called split off into mask to transfer the alpha channel of an image into a transparency mask. The method is quite easy. We can just right-click on the layer, then select Split Alpha, and then just alpha into mask. And here is the result. To see the original appearance, we can use the isolated mode, hold Alt and click on this mask. To go back out, we can hold down Alt and click again. If you hide this mask, this is what the pineapple layer looks like. As you can see, Krita replaced the previous returns per an area with a solid black color. We can combine the selection technique with the transparency mask technique. For us, we can use the transparency mask to create a selection. E.g. we want to extract the selection from this transparency mask. The method is the same as we extract selection from a regular layer. And it is by holding down the control key and then clicking on the thumbnail. And this is the result. We have a selection area extracted from the mask. Alright, I am closing and reopening new file now. The second selection technique that deals with the transparency mask is to define the area of transparency before it is created. E.g. we can create a selection like this. Well, we have an active selection area and then we use the add transparency mask command. Krita will create a new transparency mask using the selection area as the reference. So the area inside the selection will be white or opaque, while the area that is outside the selection will be black or transparent. 36. Alpha channel on Filter: In this lesson video, we will discuss how the alpha channel works on a filter layer, as well as on the filter mask. In short, the alpha channel attached to the filter layer or filter mask has a unique feature that makes them behave like a transparency mask. Basically, you don't need to add transparency mask again on a filter layer or filter mask. And you can also use the Brush Tools directly to control their transparency. Just as an example, we can create a new filter layer using the D saturate filter type. Again, to control which areas are transparent or not. In this filter layer, you don't need to add a transparency mask. Although you can, it is not necessary. Just use the brush tool or other drawing tools, just like we edit a transparency mask, white color to make it opaque, and black color to make it transparent. Let me make the brush size bigger. This is an example of a black brush stroke. And this is an example of a white brush stroke. This is an example if we use gray color because the filter layer does not contain any images, the alpha channel of a filter layer is used to control the strength of the effect on the layers below it. Alright, let me first delete this filter layer. We can also edit the alpha channel attached to a filter mask, e.g. we can select this toaster layer. Then we add a filter mask. Just use the D saturate filter again as before. To adjust the transparency of a filter mask, you need to first select the mask. Then use the brush tool to further control the transparency or strength of the filter in terms of how the colors work, it is the same principle as the other alpha channels. Let me delete this mask. Furthermore, we can also combine selection techniques to define the Alpha area of a filter layer and a filter mask. E.g. if we create a selection like this, then we create a new filter layer. Choose the D saturate filter. Again. As you can see, the shape of the Alpha area follows the active selection when the filter layer is created. You can also use this technique on a filter mask if you want to. 37. Transform tool and Transform mask: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss Tromso mask. If you press the small arrow button on the side of this big plus button, you can see that we have covered most of the mask features and Krita, we already covered the colorized mask in a basic level, of course. We have also discussed logos selection in the earlier chapter. In this chapter, we have discussed filter mask and transparency mask. What we haven't discussed is the transform mask. So what exactly is a Tromso mask? Basically, a Tromso mask is the type of mask that can store transformation information. With the Tromso mask, we can perform nondestructive transformations on layers. If you are familiar with smart objects in Photoshop, you can use this transform mask to simulate the effect of it's non-destructive transformation. Although in greeter, there is actually a more advanced feature that resembles a smart object called the file a year. But we will cover this later in the advanced level course. For now, let's focus on the transform mask. Because basically a Tromso mask is a container for a transformation. In order to use the terms of mask to its full potential, we must use it in conjunction with the transform tool. If you activate the transform tool by pressing this icon or by pressing Control T on your keyboard. You can see that this tool provides lots of modes. We will cover off this in-depth in the advanced level course. For now, we will briefly discuss the first two modes called the free mode and a prospective mode. In the free mode, the Transform Tool works like this, select Shipped stole on vector objects. Essentially, we can move the image by clicking, dragging in the middle area. We can adjust the scale by click reading on the control points in a bounding box. We can hold down Shift while doing this to make those scale happen uniformly, we can move the mouse closer to the control points, but not touching them. Then click drag to rotate the image. And we can click Gregg on the outlines to perform a skill. Again, all of these are similar to vector transformations using the Select Shapes tool. What is not available in vector, at least for now. Our distortion features like the prospective mode. With this mode, we only get four control points. The function of these control points is not for scaling, but for distorting the image. With this mode, we can easily create a prospective distortion effect on the image. If two control points are close together, you will see an additional point. We can use these points to determine the vanishing point. Alright? Now, sometimes we don't want to turn some the entire image on the layer. We only want to transform a certain area of the image. For this, we need to create a selection for us, e.g. we can create a rectangular selection on part of this toaster image. Make sure the layer is active. If we press Control T to activate the transform tool, you can see that the bounding box area only covers the fraction area. All transformation or distortion effects will only affect the pixels that are inside the selection area. The disadvantage of applying transformation directly on an image is that they are destructive. If you need to do it non-destructively, then you have to use a transform mask. Let me close the file force and reopen it again, so we have a fresh start. Just as an example, I want to make this pineapple image as if it is a flat sticker that sticks to the surface of the floor or your kitchen table. Instead of directly using the transform tool on this layer, we need to first add a transform mask. After that, make sure this mask is active. Only then we use the transform tool. You can press Control T on your keyboard if you want to use the shortcut. So again, we're applying the transformation to the mask, not directly to the layer. For now, let's use the perspective mode. Regular control points to the bottom. Adjust them until the pineapple image looks flat on the floor. Alright, since all our transformations are stored in a mask whenever we want to re-edit D-major know pineapple layer, just hide the transform mask. Make the changes that we want. Let's say we want to add around red nose, moustache, as well as thick eyebrows. If we show the transfer of mass, again, all these changes will automatically get distorted along with the layer. Another advantage of new towns, so mask is that it is basically a mask. So it has all the common mask features that we already know. E.g. we can lubricate n or move it to another layer. You can see now the toaster layer is threatened. If you return this mask to the pineapple layer, the pineapple layer returns to being threatened. Now, there is one drawback of protons. So mosque, which makes it not suitable for all conditions. And that is, it can only work on a whole layer, cannot walk selectively only in certain area. E.g. we can delete this mask by pressing the brush icon. Then create a selection in this area, we can try to create a new transform mask. Again. While we have the Mask active, if we use the transform tool and make a transformation or a distortion, the whole area of the layer will be affected. And the selection area that we have created is ignored. 38. Strawberry house project preparation: From this video to the next shift in videos, we will be making an illustration of all house in the middle of a forest that looks like a strawberry. This is the final result of the project. When I started this project, I have no idea what the outcome will be like. I can show you this image at the beginning because of the video editing process. For this project, I have gathered five reference images. The force is an illustration of a tea pot house made by inactive ANOVA. This is perhaps domain inspiration for our current project. I like the shape of the chimney, the window bar, and also the word grains on a door. The second image is by David Lumera. This is one of your cancer power that he created for a game project titled super lucky it's tails. I let the stone formation around this door and aggressive style. For the third image, I cannot find the name of the artist, but I don't load the image from a software company website called loss marble. They use this image as the promotional image for their 2D animation software called Moho. What I like about this image is the style of the plans, both in the background and foreground. Then the last two images are made by Amanda Lee. These two are part of Dominicans reports she created for Disney animated series called tangled. What I like about these images is the design of the trees, as well as some of the small plants in the foreground. So those are the images that we will be using as the reference for this project. To speed up the workflow in this project, I am going to rely a lot on custom shortcuts. Later, I will try to always explain what I press or explain the name of the feature or commanded I use. But still in this video, I have to explain all the custom shortcuts so that later you can always come back to this video whenever you need to see the list of the shortcuts. The first custom shortcut is Shift G. I said this to do Show Global selection mask option. This is useful if we want to quickly exit the selection editing mode. This can save us time from having to open the Select menu all the time. The second is Shift C for Bezier curve tool. And the third is the letter C for basic of selection tool. You can see that they both use the letter C, which I chose from noaa curve. The difference is the one with the Shift key for growing. Well, the one without the shift key is for creating selection radians. I use the Bezier curve selection tool more often. That is why I chose the letter C only shortcut for restore. The next shortcut is W for contiguous selection tool. As I explained earlier, I use the letter W because it is similar to the magic one tool in Photoshop, which also uses the letter W from node one to the fifth shortcut is the letter a for the vector select Shapes tool. N6 is the letter S for a wetter and it shapes tool. I choose this letters because of their close position to the left hand. Then I also use the letter Z for the free hand selection tool. And last one is the shortcut that I always use, which is the letter Q for clearing out the selection. The official name for this command is dislike. During this project, you may often see the mouse position suddenly jump to another place. This is because I will often go back and forth between using the mouse and using the drawing pen. Sometimes I need to use the mouse because it is more convenient to use for vector editing. And also sometimes we now need to draw a thick brush stroke outside of this scenario where I'm sketching or painting and so on, I always use the drawing pen later in his project. I will also do yellow circle that you often see the mouse cursor location. This yellow circle is actually generated by a paid software called painter focus. The circle is useful when explaining lessons so that you can see the mouse cursor position more clearly. But when drawing or painting, this yellow circle becomes a bit annoying as it covers the area that I want to draw. That is why I have to turn it off during the project videos. 39. Reference images and sketching: Let's start our illustration project by creating a new file. I want to use the A4 300 ppi preset, make the orientation landscape. Then for the content options, we can set the number of layers to, to this is so we have a separate layer for sketching at the start. Next, we want to insert all the reference images into this document. We covered reference tools in depth in the basic level course. So in this video, we don't need to cover everything from scratch. Click the Plus button here, then select the first image. We can just double-click to quickly import it. Then we can position the image to the left side of the canvas. For the other reference images, it is basically the same process. So I'm skipping the video to save time. Alright, next, we enter the sketching phase, just like our previous project in the basic level course for the sketching process, we use the pencil brush preset. For the sketch in the midground area, I want to use a light brown color. You can just draw the sketch manually with the brush tool. But I want to show you how we can make the basic shape of the strawberry using a selection in vector editing technique, we can start with a circular selection. Remember, by default, the selection in credit is actually vector. We can make the most of this right-click and select Edit Selection. Use the Edit Shapes tool. This circle is still in primitive shape. We need to access the points, so we have to convert it first to a regular editable path. Select both the top and bottom points, then drag them while holding down the Shift key so that the direction is straight vertically. And we've got the basic strawberry shape. We can return to the Select Shapes tool to make the shape look more attractive. We don't want it to be perpendicular. If we look at the teapot house in the reference image. One of the things that makes this teapot interesting is it's tilted condition. It makes it look like it fell accidentally into a forest. Then it turned into a house by the tiny creatures that now live in it. We can copy this slanted condition for our strawberry house. Basically, we can just rotate the shape a bit. After you are done, we can exit the selection editing mode by disabling the global selection mask. I am using the custom shortcut Shift G for this command. Next, we want to make a stroke along the selection border. To do this via the right-click menu, we must use one of the selection tools. I can press the letter C on the keyboard to activate the Bezier curve selection tool. Then right-click select Transform and then choose Stroke selection for the type parameter, just use the current brush option. This option will use the settings from the currently active Brush Preset. For the color parameter, we can use the foreground color. Press Okay to create the stroke and press Q to de-select. Now we have the basic shape of the strawberry drawn. Next, we want to cut off the bottom so that it looks like it's sunk into the ground. We can use the same technique, but now with a square shape, makes sure the top-left and the top-right corners touched the strawberry outline. Right-click and edit the selection. Activate the Edit Shapes tool. Right-click and use the path Command. Click, drag this segment down and slightly to the right. Once we are done, we can return to normal mode by pressing Shift G, press C to use the Bezier selection tool and use the stroke selection command again. For the lines that we don't need. We can erase them using the Eraser Brush Preset. Alright, next, we can use regular drawing techniques using the pencil brush preset. For the chimney part, we basically want to copy the chimney in the reference image. But for the top part, I prefer a cone shape. You can imagine that this chimney is the branch or the stock of the strawberry. If you feel the chimney is too big, you can select the chimney area, then use the transform tool to make it smaller. You may also use other types of transformation if needed. Next, we can draw the green leaf area, which is usually above the strawberry. There's no new technique to cover here, so I'll just speed up the video to save time. Okay, now we need to draw the door. We can use the edit selection technique again, so that later we can use the transform tool. For now, we need to create it on a separate layer. Then make sure we use the pencil brush preset. Draw a rectangular selection as wide as the door that we want to create, but make it a bit higher, just in case. Avoid making the door exactly at the center. Make it more interesting. We can make it slightly to the left. Then use the edit selection command. Press S for the Edit Shapes tool. Now, while it is still a primitive shape, we can drag this control point to the left so that it turns into a capsule like shape. Press Shift G, then press C. Then use the Stroke command. Press Q to de-select to create a prospective effect on this door shape, we can use the transform tool, use the perspective mode, and make the left side smaller than the right side. Once it is done, we can use the eraser brush to erase the excess lines. Next, we can merge the two layers by selecting them first, then press Control E. After that, we can continue to draw the sketch manually. Since I don't have any new techniques to cover, I'll just speed up the video. This is the result of the sketching process. I did part of the drawing off the record. You can see that I created three separate layers. For the foreground. I use blue color. For the midground. I use the brown color as I showed earlier. And finally, for the background, I use green color. I also named each of these layers with a different letter. B is for background, M is for midground, and F is for foreground. To make these layers more organized, we can select them, then press Control G to merge them all in a layer group. We can rename the layer group to sketch. The last step we need to do is to revise the document size. As you can see, we're not really using the whole area of the document. We can activate the crop tool and then click on the image. I think we should reduce the left border just a bit. And reduce the right border quite a lot to about here. After we are done, we can press Enter to confirm. In the next video, we will start adding basic colors to our illustration using vector. 40. Midground base colors: After sketching, we now want to add base colors to our illustration. Unlike previous projects in the basic level course, in this project, we want to explore using vector for creating the base colors. So press Shift insert to create a new vector layer. Position it so that it is below the sketch layer. We can use the multiply blending mode on the sketch layer group and perhaps lower the opacity a little. So it's not too distracting. Alright? The approach that I like to use in drawing vector shapes to start from the one at the back and then gradually create the shapes at the front. We can start by drawing the Hill. Press Shift C to activate the Bezier curve tool. We don't need the outline and we can use the foreground color for the fill option. Choose a light green color. Click here, then click drag here, and so on. Make the shape close. Then for the road in front of the house, we can use a light brown color. Click, then click, drag, and so on. Make the shape close or loop back to its starting point. If you think the shape is still not right, just activate the Edit Shapes tool. You can change the points or Bezier handles, as we discussed earlier. For the tree stump, we can use the Ellipse tool. Use a slightly different brown color from the road area. Don't forget to set the fill and the outline parameters so they are similar to the previous settings. Click drag here. Then press a to activate the Select Shapes tool. Rotate this ellipse slightly, and also set the scale. For the trunk part, we can use the Bezier curve tool again, use a darker brown color and use the click release method to create the shape. We should have created this shape first before the ellipse, but no problem. Press a and select this shape. Right-click and select Bring to Front. For the tree stump on the right, we can just duplicate the shapes on the left with Control C and Control V. Then adjust the position, scale and rotation again so that it matches the sketch drawing. If it still doesn't fit, you can use the Edit Shapes tool again to move the points and the handles. Alright, next, we want to create some grass blades in circular forms. So use the Ellipse tool again. You can pick the color from the color history if it is still there. Or you can also hold down control and click on the Hill area to sample the green color. Then just click drag to make grass shapes. We can also add some grass circles in front of the tree trunk. So this is the base color for the Hill area. Now let's move on to creating the base color for the House. Press Shift insert to create a new vector layer. Let's first rename the previous layer to kill wild for this new layer, Let's name it house, unhide the sketch layer. And I think it is better to hide the hill layer for now. Alright, we can start with the basic shape. Use the Bezier curve tool. Choose a red color. Click here, then click drag here, click again, and so on. For the areas that will be covered by the other shapes, we don't need to draw any detail on them. And here is the result. Next, for the hat area or the leaves, we need to choose a green color. Click here, click drag, then hold down Alt and drag it to another direction to make it a corner type. You understand now why mastering the Bezier curve tool is very important. With this skill, we can create complex shapes quickly or in one go. Indeed, we can still edit it again later with the Edit Shapes tool. But in general, the better you can create shapes using the Bezier curve tool, the less extra work that you need to do afterward. Essentially, the faster you can finish your work. The top leaf shape is now complete. Next, we want to create the base for the chimney. I want this area to be made of wood. So choose a brown wood color. Use the Bezier curve tool again. Click, then click, then click, drag, click, and click, and close the shape. We need to push this shape to the back. Use the Select Shapes tool, right-click and use the center back command. At this point, I'm sure you already understand the workflow. Basically, we create a vector shape using the base color that we want to use. Then if needed, use a depth sorting command such as center back or bring to front to adjust the depth. Since there is no new technique for us to cover, I'll just speed up the video to save time. Once we created all of the shapes for the house base colors, we can select both the hill and the house layers. Then press Control G to contain both in a new group layer. Change the name to CB, which stands for color base. Then press Control G again to wrap the CB group layer into another group layer. Rename this new group layer to midground or just mg to keep it short. In the next video, we will add base colors for the background area and the foreground area. 41. Background and Foreground base colors: We will continue our strawberry house illustration project. Now, we want to create the background area. For us. We can unlock the background layer. Choose a light blue, sky blue color. Make sure we don't use an eraser brush or eraser mode. Then press Shift backspace to fill the background layer. Next, use the airbrush preset. Just lighter color. You can unhide the sketch layer. If you need reference, then make some brushstrokes. Basically, we want to make the lower part of the background look like it is covered in fog. Alright, Next, create a new vector layer to color between green and blue sky background color. So around with cyan color. Use the Bezier curve tool and start making the shape of the trees at the very back. We can create more than we need. Leader, we can list some of them if the background becomes too crowded. Alright, Next, create a new vector layer again. Now, we are going to create trees that are closer than the previous. Just a color that is greener and darker than before. Perhaps we can hide this layer force. Then create the three shape using the basic of dual. Create the 3D shape also on the left side of the image. For the leaves, we can use the Ellipse tool. Click dregs of rho times to create the authorship of the leaves. The technique is similar to how we create the grass shapes are no helium. Alright, I think this is enough. Next, we can press shift, Insert again to create a new vector layer for the threes on this layer. Because they are closer to the viewers, the original colors of the surfaces should be more dominant. So we can choose brown for the trunk color. We can hide the other layers for now, if you think they are interfering. Press Shift C for the Bezier curve tool. Click here, click drag, and so on. I speed up the video to save time. Once the trunk is done, we want to create the leaves, just a black green color. And create the shape of the leaves using the basic of dual. Tried to make it more detailed than the leaves at the back. Let me speed up the video again. And here is the results so far. For the small plans, we will add them nadir after we create the library first. For now, we can rename this layer to 01, then rename the middle layer 202. And of course there's 1203. You can use a different naming convention if you want to. Then select all these layers along with the background layer, then press Control G to group them. Rename this group layer to Vg, which stands for vagrant. Okay, next, we want to repeat the process for new trees in the foreground area. Press Shift, insert to create a vector layer. We can increase the sketch layer opacity to make it look clearer. Then choose a darker brown color. We can create the shapes by following the sketch using the Bezier curve tool. Again, basically, we are doing the same thing as we did with the background layer. I speed up the video for now. So it is not too boring for the leaves on this layer because in theory they are position is very close to our eyes. We need to make them even more detailed than the previous layer. Alright? To make layers more organized, we can rename this one to 01, then press Control G, and then rename this group to F, G for foreground. So this is what we have so far. I will probably make some minor changes or improvements here and there of record. But I won't be using any new technique that we haven't covered yet. 42. Creating the small plants: In this video, we will create a library of small plants. We will use these plants to populate the background and foreground areas. We can start by pressing insert to create a pin layer, then press backspace to fill it with white color. Function of this layer is just for blocking the layers beneath so they don't interfere. After that, we can press shift, Insert to create a vector layer. We will start by creating a fan shaped plant. We will create three variations for this plant. As a starting guide, we can force, use the Ellipse tool. We can choose a gray color, then make an oval shapes slightly vertical, and another that is slightly horizontal. And let's make a double type like so. Next, activate the Bezier curve tool. Choose a green color that is close to yellow. We can start from the middle point and just make the outer area by performing click releases. So all the points I'm making now, our corner points. For a second and third variations. The process is basically the same. We can use slightly different colors for each of the plans to have some variations and to avoid looking too generic. For the third plant, I make the color slightly towards blue. If you are still not satisfied with the shape, you can still edit the points using the Edit Shapes tool. If you are done, you can relate the gray circles. So the first type of small plants is done. Next, we can create another vector layer, hide the force plan layer. Now, we want to make this kind of plant use a different color. Activate the ellipse tool and make four circles with various shapes. Activate the select Shapes tool. We can move, rotate, and scale them so they form a clump or look like they belong to the same road. If you want the base of the leaf to appear shorter, you can use the edit shapes tool, change the shape to regular path, then drag the point at the base slightly forward. And we can also do the same with the lift, the point. Alright, Next, for the stems, we can use the basic of tool, but we need to change the outline option for us to brush and set the fill to not fill. Let's try to set the brush size to ten pixels. Then click here, click drag, then press enter. I think the brush size is not big enough. Let's increase this to 15 pixels and just draw some stems for the remaining lives. After you are done, we can move on to creating the second variation of this plant. We can just duplicate the variations you sue to Control C and Control V method. Move the duplicate results to another location. Then with those select Shapes tool, we can adjust the transformation of the leaves and the stems to make them look different from refers. To make the third variation. The process is basically the same. But I want to make it only have three lives. Alright? To make it easier to select and position the plants is a good idea to combine each of the variations as a group object. Next, we want to create the plan type with big leaves like this. It's a bit difficult to create the shape directly without any reference. So let's press insert to create a new layer, choose a light color. We use this layer to sketch the plans. First. I am drawing the bonds are the structures as a guide for creating leaves details. For the second variation, the curves only if details to be different from the first one. For the third and fourth variations, I want to make a plant consisting of only one larger leaf. After we are done sketching, we can start creating new vector shapes, press shift, Insert, then use the Bezier curve tool. We can choose a green color. There is more toward yellow. Returned to fill option to foreground color. And the offline option to note outline. Click right here, click drag again, then hold down Alt and drag to this direction, and so on. For now, I am splitting up the video. The process of making the second or the other variations is essentially the same. It's just that we use slightly different colors to make them look more natural. Since these are all vector objects, you can easily change the color later if you want to. Now, for the third and fourth plants, I want to use the subtract logical operation. So after the main leaf shape is done, we can create the shapes for the ribs and the holes. Maybe we should give this shapes or different color so that we can see them clearly. We can first join all these shapes with the Unite logical operation. Only then can we select the leaf shape, hold, shift, and click on red shape, then apply the subtract logical operation. Honestly, if I have a choice, I would avoid the logical operation in Krita because the results usually have a lot of points. It will be a nightmare to edit them again. Or in other words, only use the logical operation as the last step. After all the shapes are fixed. For the last small plant, the process is similar to the third plant, is just that I chose a color closer to yellow. We can use caught Dupain layer containing the sketch drawing as you don't need it anymore. Feel free to create more plants if you want to keep this project from becoming too long, I'll just stick with these three types of plans along with their variations. Before we end this video, we can tidy up the layers first. Let's rename this layer to 01 and this one to zero too. And this 1203. Then select all the layers along with the paint layer below them, and press Control G to group all of them. Maybe we can rename this white layer to Vg. And lastly, we can rename this layer group to library plants, or we can shorten it to L plants. As usual, I will probably make some minor changes or improvements of record using the Edit Shapes tool. 43. Background plants: In this video, we will put the small plants we created earlier into the background area. First, we can place the fan-shaped plants around the distant trees. Select the plant, then press control C, we can hide this plant library group for now and open the BG Group layer. Activate the last layer, which is called zero-one. Press Control V to paste, adjust its position, rotation, and scale using the Select Shapes tool. We can duplicate it again and repeat the process to cover the other parts of this background layer. Alright, now we can copy another plant. Let's say the third variant of the fan plant, hide the group layer again, reactivate the 01 layer and press Control V to paste the plant vector object into this layer. Adjust the position, scale, and rotation as you see fit. So basically, that is the process of placing the small plants into the illustration. Since vector objects are our resolution independent, we can scale the objects without any worries. For the bottom part that's still looks empty. We can cover it using the Bezier curve tool, hold down control, and click on the background tree to sample its color and just make a vector shape. Like so. Next, we want to adjust the color of this 01 layer further with the brush tool. For this, we can use the quick clipping group command. You can also press Control Shift G for this. Basically, the quick clipping group command will group the selected layer and additionally, a new paint layer that already has the inherit alpha option turned on, rename this new group layer to 01, and rename the paint layer to CV, which stands for color variation. The first step, we can press Shift backspace to fill this entire layer with only one color, which is the cyan color of the distant trees. Use the air brush presets, hold down control and sample the sky color above. Then draw some brush strokes in the area under the trees to make it seem like there is fog up here. I think the tree on the right is not visible enough. So I am selecting the 01 layer, press a to activate the Select Shapes tool. Select and drag this tree shape slightly to the right, just so it becomes more visible. Alright, we can return to the CV layer again. Next, we want to give a texture effect to this area on a 01 layer. Just like what we can see in the reference image, we can choose a brush preset that has a pronounced texture. E.g. we can use this crayon brush preset. Sample the sky color with a control-click, and then draw some brushstrokes. Essentially, we want to create the impression that this tree layer is made of crayons or dry brushes. Okay, next, we want to focus on the zero to layer from the background group layer. We can start by placing the second variant of the fan plans, press control C to copy, hide this layer first, select the zero to layer, and then press Control V to paste, adjust the transformation again. Then we can duplicate this shape. To add more variation, we can mirror this plant horizontally. Next, I want to use another plant. We can press control C to copy, select layer zero to again. Then press Control V to paste, mirror this plant horizontally and place it on the bottom right side. Next, we can choose another plant, e.g. this one, we can copy it and then paste it on a zero to layer. Apply a horizontal mirror. It seems that this plant is more suitable if we place it on a 03 layer. So press Control X to perform cut, select the 03 layer, then press Control V. Next, we can set the transformation again. We will work on a 03 layer again later. For now, let's focus on the zero to layer. Looks like we already have enough small plants on this layer. We can add a solid area with a color that is closer to the green color of the trees in this layer. But we move it slightly towards yellow to add some variations. Use the Bezier curve tool to create a solid area. Then use the Send to Back command so that it is at the very back. Alright, as before, we can press Control Shift G to create a group layer with the addition of a new paint layer. Rename this layer to Cv for color variation, makes sure the inherent alpha option is active. And we can rename the group layer to zero to re-select the CV layer. First, we want to make the color of the small plants closer to the green color of the big tree on the zero to layer. After we sample the colors, we can use the air brush preset to color the small plants. For the areas that are closer to the viewers, I think we need to darken the color again so we can see the difference better. Okay, Next, just like the 01 layer, I also want to add the impression that this layer was drawn with crayons or a dry brush. We can just use the crayon brush preset from before. Hold down control, and click on the area behind to sample the color. Then make some random strokes. Basically, we want to fade out the silhouettes border of the objects. Alright? Lastly, because there are no new techniques we need to discuss for the process of adding small plants to the 03 layer. I'll just skip the video. Again. You just need to copy and paste the plant shapes from the library, then apply some transformations with the Select Shapes tool. I'm sure in sharp hour, you can already do this yourself. And here is the final result of the illustration so far. 44. Foreground plants: In this video, we will continue our strawberry house illustration project. Now, we will focus on putting the small plants in the foreground area. After looking at the reference images, I changed my mind and decided to create three more plant types specific to the foreground layer. So let's open the library plants group layer. And for the new plants, I think I need to sketch them first. Create a new paint layer. Use the pencil brush preset, and then choose a color close to white for the rest of the process. Since I'm not using any new techniques, I'll just speed up the video. After the sketch is complete, we can start tracing the vector. Of course, we need a vector layer for this. Then we can use the Bezier curve tool to perform the tracing. For the first plant, we want to tear the leaves using the Subtract logical operation. So after the main leaf shape is complete, we need to create the shapes for the tearing areas. We should use a different color, such as red, so we can see the shapes clearly. After that, we can join all the tearing shapes with the Unite command. Then we use the resulting shape to subtract the leaf shape. We can repeat the same process for each of the leaves. After it is done, we can group all of the shapes and move the resulting group to another location to avoid interfering with the next tracing process. For the second plant, it is basically the same. The difference is that this plant exposes the back area of the leaf. We can use a darker color for that area. Then use the Send to Back command to push it back. Then we can group them just like before. For the last plant, we should use a slightly different color than before. In general, the tracing process is similar to other plants. But here I want to show you that we can create the tearing effects without any logical operations. We can create them directly using the Bezier curve tool. As with the second plant, this plant also exposes the backside of the leaf. We can use a darker color again to indicate the backside. I'm skipping the video now to save time. After all the plants are done, we can delete the paint layer we used for sketching. And we can rename this vector layer to zero for. Next, for the process of placing the plants into the foreground layer, the method is the same as how we place the plants on the background layer. We can select the plant group object, press control C, hide the library group layer first, then open the FG group layer, select the 01 layer, then press Control V, adjust the position, scale and rotation as needed. Repeat this process until all the plants that we want are on the foreground layer. I'm skipping the video again to save time. I'm sure by now, you already know how to do this. Alright? After all the plants are positioned correctly in the 01 layer, makes sure the layer is selected. Then press Control Shift G for quick clipping group. Rename this layer group to CB, which stands for color base. And for this paint layer, we don't need to give it a name because we are using this layer only temporarily just to make the whole foreground layer look darker. We will deal with this later. For now, just fill it with black color, but reduce the opacity so we can still see the colors of the plants or trees. And this is the condition of our illustration so far. 45. Main shadow: We will continue our strawberry house illustration project. In this video, we will add the main shadow, which is the shadow form directly from the sun's rays. But before that, I want to revise the image a bit and also set the contiguous selection tool to make the shading process easier. If you notice this chimney silhouette is overlapping with the tree branch at the left, it would be better if it bends to the right to an empty area. Also, these two tree stumps now overlap with the plants in the foreground. We can open the mg group layer and select the house layer. Then with the Select Shapes tool, create a selection box by clicking, dragging from left to right. Make sure only the chimney objects are selected. Use the mirror horizontally command. And just set the rotation and position until it looks fit. Alright, Next, for the tree stumps below, we have to select the hill layer, which is in the mid ground group. Then click drag from left to right. Sorry, in critter, we have to start click dragging from an empty area. If we want to make a selection box, then move it to a new location so there is a space from the plants in the foreground. We can do the same with the tree stump on the right. Click drag from left to right from an empty area. Hold shift, and click on the shapes that we don't want to include. Then move this up a bit. Before we continue to reduce the burden on the computer, I want to hide all the reference images first, open the view menu, then disable the show reference images option. And then this is very important. For the next global shading and ambient occlusion shading processes, we will rely a lot on the contiguous selection tool. For now, we want this tool to work only on the CB layer group. We have discussed this technique before. Essentially, we need to add a color label to the CB group layer, e.g. we can pick green. As you can see now, the CB group layer is colored green. Next, activate the contiguous selection tool and make sure this tool works in the color labeled layers mode. Also makes sure that the green label is active with this setting on whichever layer we are on. If we use the contiguous selection tool and click on the canvas critter, we'll only use the CB group layer as the reference for creating the selection region. Alright, for the main shadow or the global shadow, we need to create a new paint layer. Makes sure the inherent alpha option is active. Rename this layer to SG, which stands for shadow global. Since we are using this layer for the shadows, we need to change its blending mode to multiply. Alright? There are at least two approaches we can take in making the global shadow. The first is to directly use the brush, or the second by making a selection. First, either with the Bezier curve selection tool and, or with a contiguous selection tool. Let's first look at the direct method. Essentially, we are using a solid brush preset and black color to cover the shadow areas. I know it looks really thick right now. But don't worry, we can control the shadows strength by changing the opacity of the layer. Let's just set this to 35. We can change it later if needed. Let's continue first, defining the shadow areas. Assumed that the sun's rays are coming from the top-left direction. Due to that, the shadow of the object falls almost in a straight line to the right side. Just imagine where the borders of the shadows will be. Once they are defined, we can cover the rest of the shadow area with more brushstrokes. So this is the first approach. As you can guess, it's kind of hard to create neat shadow borders with this method. The second approach is with the help of selection. E.g. on the area of the stone frame around the door to define which part of it is covered by shadows. We can create a selection using the contiguous selection tool. As I mentioned before, I use the letter W for this tool. Just click on the area to create the selection. As you can see, this technique can save us a lot of time. Press Shift backspace to fill the selection region with black. Then for the shadow of the stone frame falling on the door leaf, I want to show you a combined method using the Bezier tool and the contiguous tool. First, create a selection with the Bezier selection tool to define the shadow shape on the door leaf. For the outer area. Just make it as simple as can be, as we are going to remove it. Then press W for contiguous tool. Hold down Alt to enable subtract mode and click here. After the selection region is fixed, we can press Shift backspace. Going forward, I'll be using the brush technique and selection technique back and forth until all of the global shadows in this illustration are done. Since there are no new techniques that we need to discuss, I'll just skip the video. And this is the final result of the global shading process. This is before, and this is after. 46. The leaves' shadows: In this video, we will add shadows that are emitted by the leaves. You can create a new layer for this shadow, but I want to use the existing SG layer we created earlier. For this process, we can use critters default brush preset that resembles leaves. If you notice this brush preset uses pen pressure to control the brush opacity. That is why sometimes the brush strokes become a bit transparent. Generally, we want this feature to be active. But for now, what we need is consistent thick brush strokes. As I mentioned before, we can just use the mouse to achieve the effect. But I want to show you how to do this while still using a drawing pen. Basically, we need to disable the pen pressure feature in the Opacity category of this brush. You can press F5 or click this icon to open the brush editor window, then open the opacity category. So this is what we have now. If we disable that enabled pen settings option, now the brush tip will always produce full opaque strokes. Press F5 to close the brush editor window, we don't need to adjust the transparency through the brush because we already controlled via the layer's opacity. Then make some random brush strokes at the top of the house that is around the chimney area, and also on the large green leaves area. Alright, then to add leaves shadows on flat surfaces such as grass or road. If we do it directly like this, the shadow looks too fake as it doesn't align with the surface, but it's more aligned with our point of view. Basically, we need to make the shadow appear flat so it follows the hill surface better. For this, we can first create a temporary paint layer. Then draw some brush strokes in this layer to define the shape of the shadow. Like so. Then press Control T to activate the transform tool. Use the perspective mode and drag the control points to make the shadows seem to flatten on the ground. Once you are done, you can hold down control and click on the layers thumbnail to extract the selection from it. Select the SG layer again, then fill it by pressing Shift backspace. So that is the process for the shadow at the grass area on the right. We can adjust the transformation of this temporary layer again until we get the shape that we really like. Then hold Control and click again to extract the selection. Go back to the SG layer and press Shift backspace to fill the selection area. Next, we can smoothen the shadow further with the brush tool or by making a selection first with the Bezier curve selection tool until we are satisfied with the shape of the shadow. For excess shadow areas, you can erase them using the brush eraser mode. Or you can also make a selection first and then press delete. I'm sure you can do this all yourself. So I'll just skip the video. After you are done, you can delete the temporary paint layer. The final step of creating the global shadow is to blur out some of the edges, especially on a smooth curved surface, e.g. around this area of the strawberry house. As with the previous projects in the basic level course, we can use the blender blurb brush preset to smooth out any sharp shading borders. After the walls. We can also refine the shadows at the tree stumps. So here is the results so far of our strawberry house illustration. 47. Ambient occlusion: In this video, we will add Local shadows, or commonly known as ambient occlusion. We already discussed what ambient occlusion is in the previous critic course. Essentially, they are subtle shadows that usually appear in corners, halls, or in areas where objects intersect with other objects. For this type of shadow, we can create a new paint layer, rename this layer to A0, set the blending mode to multiply. And finally, we need to enable the inherent alpha option. Then for the tools besides the Air Brush Preset, we are going to rely a lot on the contiguous selection tool. Make sure this tool is in color of labeled layers mode. And also that the green color option is active because before we set the CB group layer to green, then if you click on a point, but the selected area is too wide or exceeds the area you are targeting. You may want to reduce the fuzziness value, e.g. to five. You can see that I also set the grid parameter to one. As we discussed before, this will make the selection region a bit expanded for one pixel just to play safe. Once we have the selection area, we can use the air brush preset, adjust the size as needed. Since the chimney area is gray, we can just use black for the shadow color. Draw some brushstrokes on the areas where you think subtle shadows exist. Alright, next, press W for the contiguous selection tool. Click inside another area. Press B for the brush tool again, and make some brushstrokes. Press W again and click in this area. Press B. Then create a shadow for this screw circle. If you are bothered by the global shadow color, you can hide the layer for now. So basically, those are the techniques. We create a selection with the contiguous selection tool. And then we add the shading color with the brush tool for areas with different colors, e.g. this wouldn't brown color. You want to sample the color first using the Control Click method. Then press K to make the color one-step darker, and then use that color as the ambient occlusion color. If you need a custom selection shape, you can use the Bezier curve selection tool, e.g. we can create a selection in the area of the legs of this chimney hat. Then press D for the default color and use the air brush preset. Alright, for more complex areas, we can combine the Bezier curve selection tool with the contiguous selection tool. We have discussed and use this technique before when creating the global shadow, e.g. for the area to the left of the leaves. Press C for the Bezier curve selection tool. Then create a selection like this. To make the selection only exist inside the green area. We can press W and then hold Shift and Alt together to activate the intersect mode. Then clicking the green colored area. This is the selection result. Then we can press B and Control click to pick this green color. Then press K to make it darker, and just make some brushstrokes. Something like this. Let me give you another example. Press C. Then click here, click drag here, and close the selection. Press W, hold down Shift and Alt, then click in this green area. Use the air brush preset again and draw some brush strokes to add the shadow. Going forward, I will just be repeating the same techniques over and over again in the other areas. To save time, I'll speed up the video until this point. I'm sure you already understand all the techniques, so I am skipping the video. So this is the final result of the ambient occlusion process. This is before and this is after. 48. Finishing the background: In this video, we're going to finish up the background layer. Now that the shadows exist in the mid ground layer, the background condition looks too bright. To fix this, we can open the background layer. Then in the zero to group layer, create a new paint layer. We can name this layer SG, which stands for shadow global. And we change the blending mode to multiply. As the first step, we can just fill everything with a solid black color. But let's reduce the opacity to around 50 per cent. Previously, we created a layer called CV to unify the color tone, I want to reduce this layer effect to only 50%. The goal is that we want to see more color variations between the large trees and the small plants. Making this small plants seems to get more sunlight. Then we also want to add a bit of light that looks like it's coming from the upper area of the background sky. For this, we can use a light blue or cyan color. We can directly apply this color to the SG layer, which is now just a solid black. Basically, for every gap where we can see the sky, we add some brush strokes there to make the area brighter. Keep adding the lights until you are satisfied with how it looks. Alright. Next, we want to focus on the front background layer, which is 03. First, we need to wrap this layer into a group layer by pressing Control Shift G. Rename this new paint layer to CV, which stands for color variation, and rename this group layer 203. Later, we will use this layer as a reference for the contiguous selection tool. So we need to right-click on it and give it a color label, say blue. Just make sure that it is now colored blue. Next, don't forget to set the contiguous selection tool so that it uses blue as a reference. We can return to the CV layer. Again. In this layer, we want to add some color variations. We want to add line details on the tree barks and also on the small plants. If you need a reference, you can show the reference image again and try to copy the appearance of the lines on the trees and plants in this image. Now, let's focus on the small plant on the left. Use the contiguous selection tool and create a selection area. Press B, and use a solid brush preset, hold down control and click to sample this green color. Make the color darker. Sorry, I think for the Brush Preset, it would be better if we use this one instead. The brush tip has a real pen characteristic that I like. Then draw several leaf veins that are centered at the stem location. If you notice, I use the weighted brush smoothing mode for this process. The goal is to reduce hand vibration so that the resulting line can be smoother. Then for the center point, I chose a lighter green color, slightly toward yellow. I'm using the solid brush preset again. And make a circle at the center of the leaf. Press Q to de-select. Let's add the small circles also on the plants at the left. Let's move on to another plant. Press W and click on this planet area. Use the pen light brush preset. I think for now, we should assign this brush preset to the tag that we use for the pop-up palette. So later, we can quickly access the brush preset from the pop-up palette. Sample the color, but then shifted toward yellow and make it a bit brighter. Then draw the veins of the leaf. Something like this. For selecting the leaf at the back. After pressing W, We can hold Shift and keep clicking to select more areas for the color. I want to try something more red just to give some variations to the illustration. Lastly, for the small plants on the right, as well as the bark lines on the large trees. The process is basically the same. So to save time, I'll just speed up the video. Alright, next, we want to add local shadows or ambient occlusion colors to the trees and plants that are on a 03 layer. We can create a new paint layer above the CV layer. Rename this layer to A0, enabled the inherent alpha option, and make this layer have a multiply blending mode. First, we will focus on the large trees. Assume that no sunlight touches them directly. Most of the lights they receive are reflected from the grass area in front of them. So the shadows will be mostly at the top surface and ones that are emitted from the small plants. Press W and hold down shift to select multiple areas. Use the airbrush preset, sample the color of the tree bark, then press K to make it darker. Make some brush strokes at the top surface. And also in the areas covered by the small plants. Then for the base of the branch, we can use the Bezier curve selection tool. Press W, hold down Shift and Alt, then click in this area. Only then will we use the air brush preset again to darken this area? Since the next process is the same, I'll just speed up the video. This is the result of the ambient occlusion process. This is before and this is after. Going forward, I want this 03 sub layer to be slightly covered in fog that is similar to the blue sky color behind. For this, we can create a new paint layer, rename it to fog. And for the blending mode, just let it be normal. Next, we can pick the color of the sky at the back, but we need to make it darker. Then press Shift backspace to fill the color, reduce the opacity a little maybe about 25 per cent. We can see the difference. If we enable or disable the inherit alpha option, make sure we turn it on so it does not look too dark. Lastly, we want to make this front area a bit brighter as if they receive lights reflected off from the grass surface. For this, we can use the air brush preset again, but in eraser mode, we need to estimate where the reflected light will be. Then erase those areas to make them appear brighter. Alright? If you hold down Alt and click on this layer, this is what the original five layer looks like. Feel free to experiment further with the techniques we just discussed. I may also do some minor changes to the illustration off the record. 49. Finishing the foreground: In this video, we will finish up the foreground area. For now, we can hide the BG and the mg group layers. Then open the FG layer. Let's first tidy up the layer composition. Move this 01 layer up, rename the layer to cb. We don't need this black layer anymore. So let's just delete it along with the layer group. Alright? The first thing we need to do is reset the base colors. If you notice, the color of the large trees looks way too dark compared to the color of the small plants below them. We can change the color of the small plants, but it will be much faster and easier if we change the color of the trees. Later, we can make everything dark at the same time. Select all the tree objects, then change the color to a lighter brown. Then we also need to fix the leaves colors. First, select all the leaves objects, make sure no other objects are included. Then choose a lighter green color. Next, we want to add bark lines to the trees. We need to give this CB layer a color label. Let's just set this to red so it is different from the other color of labels that already exist. Don't forget to also set the contiguous selection tool to use the red label as the reference. Press. Insert and rename this layer to CV or color variation. Then turn on the inherent alpha option. Use the brush tool and use the pen brush preset just like before. Because these trees are theoretically closer than the trees in the background, the veins or the bark lines should be thicker. We can increase the brush size with the closing bracket key on the keyboard. I think ten pixels is enough. Hold down control and click to sample the color, make it brighter and slightly yellow. For this process, I also use the weighted brush smoothing mode going forward because the process is similar to how we add details on the background layer. I'll just speed up the video to save time. Alright, next, we want to add ambient occlusion to the foreground, create a new layer, change the name to A0, enable the inherent alpha option, and set the blending mode to Multiply. We can start from the branch on the top-left, press C and create a selection from the base of the branch. Then press W and then hold Shift and Alt together. Then click here, press B and use the air brush preset. Sample the brown color, then press K to make it darker. Then draw some brush strokes. As you can see, the technique is basically the same as how we create ambient occlusion on the other layers. I'm speeding up the video again to save time. For the small plants, the selection area is much more complicated. But basically, we have discussed all of the techniques before. We can combine the contiguous selection tool and the Bezier curves selection tool or with any other selection techniques. Once the ambient occlusion process is complete, we can unhide all layers. Now, we want to make the foreground area dark again. For this, we can create a new layer above the EO layer, rename the new layer to SG, foreshadow global. Set it to multiply and also enable the inherent alpha option. Previously, we only used solid black. For now, let's use another color, say dark purple. Press Shift backspace to fill the color. Lower the opacity value a bit. It seems like 80% is enough. I think the top area will look more interesting if we make a greener, choose a green that is close to cyan. Set the brush size. Sorry, I often forget to turn off this brush smoothing option. Then make some brush strokes like so. It looks like the green isn't dark enough. Alright, next, we want to make it as if there is light bouncing off the grasses onto the large trees. For this, we can use a yellow color that is not too dark. Press W and make a selection of the tree. Sorry, it shouldn't be in the Subtract mode. Set the brush size, and just make some brush strokes on the areas that are exposed to the light. For the right side tree, the process is exactly the same. We can create a selection first, then draw some brush strokes in the area where the surface is facing the light source. Don't forget to also add this bounce light effect to the leaves. Again, there is no new technique that I use. The point is we need to create a selection, then use the air brush preset. And here's the results. So far. As usual, I may revise or make minor changes to the image off the record. 50. Adding textures: In this video, we want to add textures and other details to the illustration, specifically to the midground area. But before we do that, I don t think we will need the reference images anymore. So from this point forward, I will remove all of the references. For this, we need to activate the reference tool. Then click on this trash can button. Then I also want to delete the group layer that we use as a library for the small plants. If you still need the reference images and, or the plant library, don't worry, you can still access them from the project files of the previous lesson videos. The first texture that we want to add is for the woods surfaces. As before, we will rely a lot on the contiguous selection tool. Make sure now it works on a green color label. Because if you remember, the CB, or color base layer in the mid ground is labeled with green color. Create a new layer above the CP layer and change the name to CV, which stands for color variation. Then we can sample the color of the wood. But let's make it a bit red and darker. Use the pen brush preset. Press W and make a selection on the word area above. Press B. And draw the wood grain. Press W and click here. Also add the word grains in this area. As you can see, we're just using the same technique as how we add bark lines to the trees on the background and foreground layers. I'm speeding up the video for now. Now, for the tree stump at the left, I want to add some kind of a crack or split. We will fix the shading in a moment. For now, let's first make a wooden circular stripe on the top surface. Now, we can fix the shading. First. For the global shading, we can use the smear brush preset to remove the sharp border. Then create a selection with the Bezier curves selection tool. Select DAO layer. Use the air brush preset. Choose the black color, adjust the brush size as needed, and draw some strokes on the left side to give the impression of depth. Next, we can select the CV layer. We want to remove the line that crosses the crack area, sample the dark brown color, and use it to cover the line. Alright. For the tree stump on the right, the process is exactly the same. So I'll just speed up the video. Next. We want to add white circles to the walls of the strawberry house. We can show the sketch layer as a guide and hide all the shading layers. First, we can sample the existing red color, but then we move it very close to white. Use the solid brush preset, press W and create a selection from the wall. Press B again, then draw some white circles. I intentionally avoid using the Ellipse tool as I want to give the impression of hand drawing style on the white circles. I know that the circles on the real strawberries are smaller and slightly indented inward. But I prefer this style. Apart from that, it is also easier to create. Alright, so here's the results so far. However, after adding the texture, I started to think that the global shadow is not dark enough. We can try increasing the opacity to 40%, or perhaps 45. I think this looks better. Next, we want to add texture to the stone surfaces. Press W, hold, shift and click on all areas of the stones are the rocks. Choose a brush preset that can produce a rock texture. E.g. this one. Let's try it first with dark colors to see the texture more clearly. I think the texture is too uniform or monotonous. I want something that has a more painterly style. To change the brush tip, you can press F5 or click on this icon. This is the currently active brush tip. Let's just use this one. We can see that this brush tip looks more stylized. This is just my opinion. You are free to experiment with other brush tips. If you want to press F5 to close the brush editor window, we can hide all the shading layers, sample the stone color, and let's make it a bit darker. Let's try again to draw some brushstrokes. Sorry, this is too thick. We can reduce the brush opacity to around 60 or 50%. Also, try not to press the pen too hard when applying the brushstrokes. Repeat the process until all of the stone surfaces are covered. We can show the shading layers again to see the overall result. If you think that the texture is still too strong, you can set the brush to eraser mode and delete or reduce the texture opacity. Again, you can repeat the process until you are satisfied with the result. Next, we want to vary the color of the ground and, or the grass areas. In general, the process is the same as before. Press W, then click on the ground area. Use the air brush preset, sample the ground or the dirt color. Then change the color to be redder and darker. Then apply some brush strokes in the border areas that are close to the grass. If you want more texture, you can try other brushes, e.g. this brush, you can also give it a different color if you want. Personally, I prefer not to add too many details in the ground area as it will compete with the rock surface. Alright, next, we want to add color variations to the grass area. Create a selection with the contiguous selection tool. Perhaps we should hide the foreground layer first, use the air brush preset, sample the color, then make it a bit darker. You can add the color at random places. Again, we're doing this to add color variations. In some areas, we can make the color more yellow. If you want the impression that there are small flowers in the grass area, you can choose a brush preset that looks like a flower. E.g. this one. Make the color more yellow again. Then just draw some brush strokes randomly. If you think the yellow spots are too strong, you can refine them again with the smear brush preset. Feel free to experiment with other colors or brushes until you are satisfied with the appearance of the grass area. This is the final look of our strawberry house illustration after the texture or color variation process. 51. Highlight colors: In this video, we will be adding highlight colors, as well as improving some of the shading areas for the highlight color, we need to create a new paint layer above the CV layer. Enable the inherent alpha option, and change the name to LH, which stands for light highlight. Since its function is to make the image brighter, we have to change its blending mode to screen. Before we continue, I want to revise the position of the EO layer so that it is below the SG layer. Visually, we won't see any difference. But I just wanted to make the layers below for localized effects and the upper layers for effects that are more global. Just like before, make sure that contiguous selection tool works on the green color label. This is because the CB layer in the mid ground is colored green. Alright, we can start with the chimney. Press C and create a selection of where the highlight color will be. Press W. Then hold Alt for the Subtract mode, and click here and also here to refine the selection area, press B and use the air brush preset. Make the brush size approximately as thick as the selection area. The color. I just use white. Try not to press the pen too hard when applying the brush strokes. Reduce the brush size and make the center area even brighter. Then use a blue brush preset to smooth out the color gradation. For the highlight color in the metal part of the Chimney. We can consider it done, but I think we can improve the shading colors. First, on the SG layer, we can cover this small bright area with a solid black color. Then in the AO layer, we can make a selection at the bottom or inside the comb. Use the air brush preset to make the top area darker. I also think that the right side of the chimney is still too bright. We can create a selection and draw some brushstrokes on the right side. Remember, we are doing this on the EO layer, not on the LH layer. Next, for the wood area, we can create a selection and add some brush strokes again so that the right side is a bit darker. After that, we go back to the highlight layer, sample the brown color, and make it a bit lighter. Then draw some brushstrokes at this center area, slightly to the left. Alright, for the green leaves area, I want to use the freehand selection tool. As I mentioned before, I use the letter Z as the custom shortcut for this tool. Hold down Shift and just click drag over the areas where the highlights should be visible. Press W, hold down Shift and Alt, then click here. Use the air brush preset. Sample the color and make it yellower and lighter. Draw some brushstrokes using a large brush size. Then reduce the size and make the center areas lighter. Then use the blur brush preset to make the color transition smoother. I'm sure by now, you already understand all these techniques. Just like before. We basically use selections to limit the editing area. And then we use the air brush preset to add the color. Sometimes we also use the blur brush preset to smooth out the color gradation. What makes the current process different from the previous shading process is how we select the color and also how we choose the area. We need to create the selection on the bright area of the surface. As for the color, we choose a lighter color than the base color. I'm speeding up the video because there's no new technique that we can discuss. Alright, so this is the result so far after the highlight process. 52. Reflected colors and sky color: In this video, we are going to add reflected colors as well as colors from the sky. First, we can create a new paint layer. Change the name to CR, which stands for color reflected. The function of this layer is to change the color produced by the layers below it. That is why we use a blending mode type called color. Don't forget to activate the inherent alpha option for this layer. And just as before, make sure that the contiguous selection tool uses the green color label as the reference. This is because the CB layer we want to refer to is colored green. Alright, let's focus on the chimney area above. Now, you can imagine that in the areas covered in shadows, the only source of light is the blue sky. And theoretically, the color of the sky can be seen most clearly on surfaces facing upwards. Indeed, the skylight also exists on surfaces exposed to direct sunlight. However, it is difficult to see the skylight effect because it is too weak compared to the intensity of the sunlight. So we're only going to add skylight effects on surfaces covered by the global shadow. Technically, the process is similar to how we add shadings or highlights. We can use the air brush preset. Then choose a blue color that resembles the sky. And just draw some brushstrokes on the surfaces that are facing up or facing slightly to the right to complement the sunlight. If we added too much of the sky color, we can reduce the effect using the brush or eraser mode. Now, for this area, the strongest color here is not blue that is coming from the sky, but it should be brown, which is reflected from the woods surface underneath. We can first create a selection region to constrain the brush strokes from affecting the other areas. Then choose a light brown color and make the brush strokes. Then for the woods surface at the bottom of the chimney, we can create a selection with the contiguous selection tool. Select the sky blue color again from the color history, and use the airbrush preset to draw some brush strokes on the right side. Next, we will focus on the top green leaves. Press W and click to select all of them. Then press C, activate the intersect mode, and create a selection area. Again, we only have the parts that are covered in shadows. Then use the subtract mode. We can remove this selection area. And also remove this selection area. Use the air brush preset again and draw some brush strokes inside the selection area that we have prepared. Alright, for the lower surface of this leaf, imagine that it receives a strong red reflection from the wall below it. Press see. Make sure this tool is in the default mode. Then create a selection following the shape of the bottom surface. Press W, hold Shift and Alt. Then click here. Press B again. Choose a red color and make some brushstrokes. Alright? I think we also need to add some blue sky color on the surface of this leaf. First, we can use the Bezier curve selection tool. Then press W and use the intersect mode to further refine the selection area. Take the blue color from the color history, and apply some brush strokes like so. To smooth out the color transition, we can use the blender blurb brush preset. As you can see in general, the techniques are similar to the shading or the highlight process. The difference is that in this process, we use a layer with a color blending mode. To save time. I'll speed up the video and we'll also skip some of it. And here is the result so far, after adding the reflected colors and the sky color. 53. Paint over and Filter: In this video, we will finish up our illustration by performing several paint overs and also adding some filters. First, we need to create a new layer at the top. Rename the layer to P0, which stands for paint over. Because the function of this layer is to overwrite the layers below it. Just let the blending mode at normal and you don't need to turn on the inherent alpha option. Alright? The first paint over process is to add the grass blades. For this, I only use the solid brush preset or one which is called basic A5 size. However, the default condition of this brush, not quite ideal for the grass style that I want to create. We need a more uniform brush size. In other words, the difference is not too big between the large version when we press the pen and the small version when we loosen the pen. For this, we can press F5 or by pressing this icon, go to the size category. Then click drag this point out of the box to remove it and move this left point up a bit. We will discuss brush settings in more depth in the advanced credit course. For now, we will cover only a few of them, just the ones needed to complete the illustration project. As you can see now, the difference in the brush size becomes less extreme. Press F5 to close this window. To draw grasses behind the house, we can press W and create a selection of the house area. Then press Control Shift I to invert the selection. Then Control click to sample the grass base color. Then draw some brush strokes to create the grass blades. Sorry, I think the brush size is still too big. Let's try 20 pixels instead. Okay, this looks better. Sample the color first, then draw some brush strokes to form the grass blades. Now, we want to add grass in front of the house. We can press Q to de-select, basically to create the grass blades, we first need to sample the color from the point where it will grow. Then make sure we draw the brush strokes from the point where we sample the color. You need to keep in mind that we don't need to draw the grass blades covering the entire Hill area. We only need to add them in some of the areas randomly. Basically, we're just trying to suggest that the heel area is filled with grass. Since I will be just repeating the same technique. I'm speeding up the video now to save time. Alright, here is the result so far after adding the grass blades, the next paint over process is to fix the color transitions in the stone area around the door. As you may notice, the difference between the light and dark colors in the stone area is still too sharp. For this, we can use the dry roller brush preset. We need to find the middle color by sampling the dark color first to see its position in the color picker. Then sample the light color. After knowing the positions of the two colors, we can choose the middle point. Then draw some brush strokes to overwrite the sharp areas. So that is basically the technique. We just need to apply this technique to the entire stone surface where we see sharp shadow borders. I'm speeding up the video for now. And this is the result after we paint over the stone surfaces. Lastly, we want to add filters to color correct the illustration. First, we want to adjust the contrast and brightness, create a new filter layer above all the composition Group Layers. Select the levels filter, then click Okay. After that, we can further adjust the filter by right-clicking, then choosing properties, or simply by pressing F3, we can see that the color histogram is going uphill to the left. This shows that our image has more dark colors. We can move this point to the left a little bit to make the upper threshold lighter and also add more contrast to the image. Then we also move the middle point to the left a bit so that the gray point of the image becomes brighter. I think this is enough. Next, we want to limit this Levels filter effect to only affecting the center of the image. We want to reduce the effect on the background area as well as the foreground area. For this, we can use the air brush preset and use black color. Zoom out, make the brush size bigger. Then just draw some brush strokes in the areas we want to reduce the effect. Alright, I think we are done. This is before and this is after adding the Levels filter. Next, we want to make the background and foreground colors to be more blue and also slightly red. For this, we can create a new filter layer. Select the color balance filter. In the shadows category, we want to move this third slider slightly towards the blue. You can see the preview of how the filter affects the illustration. Then for the mid tones, we can move this slider slightly toward the red color. I think this is enough. We can click the Okay button. So this is before and this is after. As a final touch, I want to reduce the color balance effect from the center area or the strawberry house. Just like before, we can use black color and using the airbrush preset, draw some brush strokes on the area where we want to reduce the effect. Alright, so here is the final result of the strawberry house project. You can add other filters or add more paint overs to this illustration if you want to. Since there are no new techniques we can cover, I consider this illustration done. 54. Gradient tool: Starting from this video and the next few videos, we will discuss various features and critter that relate to gradients. In critter, you can see the active gradient color from the appearance of this button. If you click on the button, you can choose a gradient color from this list. We will cover how to create and adjust gradient colors in more detail in future lessons. For now, let's just choose a gradient color, e.g. this one. You need to know that in critter, we can use a gradient color in several ways. We can use it to fill the color of vector objects. We can also use it as a color source for several types of brushes. But the most commonly used method to apply a gradient color to the canvas is with the gradient tool. You can access the tool by pressing this icon, or you may also press the letter G on the keyboard. Then to use it, just click drag on the canvas like so. We can see that the first point where we click will be used to position the first color or the one on the left. And the location where we release the mouse will be used to position the last color or the one on the right. For now, let's press Delete to clear all the pixels in this layer. If you want to make the gradient line straight vertically or horizontally, you can make use of the Shift key. You need to hold down the Shift key while dragging the mouse before. So e.g. we can click drag here. And then without releasing the mouse, hold down the Shift key, then release the mouse button to confirm the orientation of the gradient will be straight, vertical, or horizontal, depending on which one is closer to the click dragging direction. Next, we can also limit the area filled by the gradient tool using selection. As an example, say we create a circular selection like this. Press G for the gradient tool, then click drag like so. Here is the result. Only the selection area is filled with the gradient color. So that is the basics of using the gradient tool. Now, let's discuss in more detail the various parameters that this tool has. The first is the shape parameter. Basically, this parameter controls the color distribution. The linear option will create a straight, one-way gradient. While the bi-linear option will create a straight gradation as well, but in two opposing directions. One is aligned to the dragging direction, while the other is the opposite or the mirror of it. Then the radial option will distribute colors from a center point and spread out in the form of a circle. The square option, we'll also spread colors from a center point, but in the form of a square. Feel free to try the other options here. One option that I think is unique is the shaped option. To see the effect, we need to create a selection first, let's use the Bezier curves selection tool and just make a random shape. Now, we can activate the gradient tool again, then click drag on any location. And here is the result. So for the shaped mode critter, we'll only care about the shape of the selection. The location where you perform click drag does not matter. Okay, For now, let's return this to the linear option. The next parameter is repeat. Its function is to repeat the gradient colors when the gradient length is shorter than the area that needs to be filled in the default condition, which is none. If we make a short click drag like this, the area before and after we click drag will be filled by the first color and the last color. But if we set this to the forwards option and then try making another short gradient will fill the area after and before by repeating the gradient colors. We choose the alternating option. Basically, critter will also fill in the before and after areas with gradient colors, but alternately using the mirror version of them. So with this option, the boundary line between one gradient to another gradient becomes a noticeable. For now, let's set this parameter to the forwards option. The anti-alias threshold parameter is used to determine the transition smoothness between the repeating gradations. We can only see the effect when the repeat option is active and also when the gradient orientation is slightly tilted, you won't see the difference if the direction is perfectly vertical or horizontal. If this is set at zero, we create a slightly tilted gradient. Then we zoom in to the boundary area between the gradations. You will notice that the border is very rough or pixelated. If we set this to the maximum value, which is one, and try to make a slightly tilted gradient again, zoom in. As you can see, now, the border line is smoother. The pixelated effect is reduced because critter mix the pixels from one gradient to the gradient next to it. Then this reverse option is used to reverse or flip the color order. And lastly, the dessert option is useful for smoothing color changes that occur inside the gradation using a technique called dithering. It might be hard to see the difference, especially because you are looking at a video that has gone through a compression process. But if you zoom in close enough on your own monitor, a gradient without dithering will only form straight lines. But if you activate the dinner option and zoom in very close, you may notice scattered pixels instead of just straight lines from far away. This can help smooth out the color gradation. 55. Special gradient: From the previous lesson video, we already know that to access the gradient color, we can press this button. You can see that by default, critter already provides various types of gradient colors or gradient presets. We can tag these gradient colors. We can perform filtering using the tag and also searched the gradient colors by their names. The way this gradient management works is similar to how we manage the brush presets that we discussed in the basic level course. So we don't need to go over it again. In this video. At a glance, it seems that each of these gradient colors works the same way. They are not. Credit provides three types of gradient colors, each of which works differently. The first is the special or dynamic gradient color. The second is the stop gradient type. And the last one is the segment gradient type. In this lesson video, we will focus on the first type of gradient color, namely the special or the dynamic type. In this list, there are two special gradient presets. This one and this one. Both are considered special because the colors inside these gradients automatically change based on the active foreground color and background color. If we click on the first one, we can see that the name of this gradient preset is foreground to background. Essentially, this gradient preset always sets the first color or the color on the left side to follow the active foreground color. While the last color or color on the right side follows the active background color. Currently, the foreground color is black and the background color is white. If we use the gradient tool and click drag like this on the canvas, we have a gradation from black to white. Now, let's say we pick a green color for the foreground and red for the background. Remember, you need to press the right mouse button to pick the background color. You can see that the gradient color above changes from green to red. And if we use the gradient tool again and click drag on the canvas, the resulting color gradation is green to red. Now, there is one drawback of the gradient feature, at least in the version I used when recording this video, which is that there is no color update in the gradient preset list. As you can see, this gradient presets still looks black to white, although the active colors are now green and red. You can force credit to update the color preview by clicking the Edit button first, then clicking the OK button only then can you see the latest colors in this list. Hopefully, this flaw has been fixed in a version of critter you are using. If not, for the time being, you don't want to use the color previews in this list as your reference, but use the colors shown on this button instead. Alright. The second special gradient preset is called foreground to transparent. As the name suggests, this gradient creates a color transition from the foreground color to a transparent black color. We can try this preset using the gradient tool and then click drag on the canvas. Maybe we can hide the background layer first so that we can see the transparency effect much clearer. If we press Delete and then replace the foreground color with blue, e.g. then click drag again using the gradient tool. The resulting color gradation is now from blue to transparent. Okay? Now let's discuss the inner workings of the dynamic gradient presets. If you activate the foreground to background gradient preset, then press the edit button. Click on this point to select it. You can see that this point is using the foreground color option. Meanwhile, if you select the point on the right, you can see that the active option is background color. These are the reasons why this gradient preset always follows the foreground and background colors. Essentially, you can also create your own dynamic gradient preset using these two options, we will cover more about how to edit or create gradient colors in the upcoming lessons. For now, let's just press cancel. The last reason why these two gradient presets are considered special is because if we edit and change the gradient colors, the changes will not be permanent. Both will return to their original state when you close and reopen critter. While the other gradient presets on this list are not like that, changes that you make through the edit window will be permanent. This is not always the case in cruder version four and below, the changes you make to all of these gradient colors will only be temporary. Every time you close and reopen critter, everything will be reset back to its default state. Since cruder version five, all the editing changes will be permanent except the changes on these two special gradients above. Because of this condition, when later we practice gradient editing, we will not be using any of critters default gradients. Instead, we will create a new gradient preset just to play safe. 56. Stop gradient: In this video, we will start discussing how to create and edit gradients. Previously, I mentioned that there are three types of gradients in critter. We have already discussed the first one, which is the special or dynamic gradient. And now we will focus on the second type of gradient called the stop gradient. To create a new stop type gradient, you can directly press the Add button or you can press the small arrow button. Then select Stop gradient. You can resize this window if you want to. In this field, you can provide a name for the gradient preset, Let's say blue to green. Then the most important elements of a stock type gradient, or these colored points, which are officially called stops. Each star represents a color. To select a stop, you can click directly on it. Or you can also do that by pressing the right and left arrow buttons. The selected stop will be highlighted by a light colored outline. The selected stop will display its parameters. At the bottom. You can see that this top is yellow and this stop is red. To create a new stop, just click inside this gradient box area. Or you can also click on the area below it where the start points are. If you want to remove a stop, just click drag it away from the gradient box area or from the area where the stops are located. You can also remove a stop by selecting it first, then clicking on the trash can icon. If you only have two stops left, you can no longer delete any of them. Why? This is because a gradient requires two colors at minimum. We won't be calling it a gradient if it is only a single color. Now, suppose we want to change the color of this gradient from blue to green. For this, we can select this top on the left. Make sure this will icon is active. As we have discussed before, these two icons are for the dynamic colors. This will make the stop always follow the active foreground color. And this will make it always follow the active background color. If you want to use a custom color that doesn't change, then you have to activate this third icon. You can pick the color you want to use by clicking on this box. E.g. we pick a blue color. Click Okay to confirm. Then you can also adjust the transparency level of the stop using the opacity slider. And finally, you can set the position of the stamp on the gradient line. So besides dragging the stop directly using the mouse, you can determine the position by using a percentage value in this field. Indeed, this is more troublesome, but sometimes it is needed if we want to have more precise control over its location, e.g. we can type 50 and Enter. Now, this stop is exactly at the center of the gradient line. Let's return this value to zero. For now, let's select the stamp on the right, then change the color to green. Alright, before we click the Okay button, I want to discuss some of the buttons on the top right. This button is used to mirror or reverse the stop sequence. Then, to discuss these three buttons, we need a few more stops to see the effect more clearly. And we can try to randomize the order a bit. Okay? This button will sort the stops automatically according to their brightness level. Then this button is for sorting the stops too, but based on the hue. While the last button is for distributing the stops positions by making the distance between them uniform. Now, we can remove the two stops in the middle and then also mirror the order. So blue is on the left and green is on the right. Alright, after that, we can click the Okay button. Now, if we click this button again, we can see that the gradient we just created called blue to green, is now listed here. 57. Segmented gradient: In this lesson video, we will discuss the last type of gradient called the segmented gradient. For your information previously in version three and below, credit only had one type of gradient, which was that segmented gradient type. Originally, this gradient method was used by an open-source graphics software called GIMP. So if you're a gimp user, you are probably already familiar with this gradient type. To create a segmented gradient, you need to press this small arrow button, then select segmented gradient. Unlike the stop gradient, the segmented type has three elements. The first is stop, similar to the stop gradient type. The second is the midpoint that exists between two stops. And the third is segment, which we can select by clicking on the bar area between the stops. Besides clicking on the bottom area, you can also use the left and right arrows to select the existing elements. So again, this is a stop. This is a mid point, and this is a segment. Now, creating a new step in this type of gradient is not as straightforward as clicking in the gradient box area. Because in the segmented type, what we can create or delete is the segment, not the staff. To create a new segment, you must first select a segment. Then you can cut this segment or duplicate it. Let's try the cutting technique first. Click on this scissors icon. The previously selected segment is now split into two segments. This is the first and this is the second. Let's try the next method, which is the duplicate method. You can do that by pressing this icon. As you can see, this third segment is a duplicate of the second segment. Now, if you have more than two segments, you can drag to move the segment in the middle. You cannot move the segment on the left edge or the segment on the right edge. For these segments, we can only move the stops and the mid points. Even then, you cannot move the stops on the far left or on the far-right. Alright, next, let's discuss the parameters belonging to the elements. When you select a midpoint, you can see this element only has one parameter, which is the position relative to the points on its left and its right. Zero means it will be at the position of the left stop. 100% means it will be in the position of the right Stop. And as you may have guessed, 50% means it will be exactly in the middle. Next, if we select a stop, you will see two-color parameters below. You might be wondering, why are there two colors here? Well, this is because in the segmented gradient or stop is basically a meeting point between two segments. So what we see as a single-step actually consists of two stops, except for the stops on the far left and the far right. I stopped can form a sharp color border like this. When we set the first color differently from the second color. If you want to match these two colors, automatically just press this chain icon. In this condition, if we change the first color to red, e.g. the second color will automatically change to red also. Alright? The last one is the segment parameters. Here, you will also see two colors because basically a segment is formed by two stops. So this is the color of the left side stop, and this is the color for the right-side stop. What makes a segment unique by these two parameters? Essentially, we can use this parameter to set the color transition method. While this parameter is for setting the transition curve. To see this more clearly, I can change the second color to purple. In the RGB mode, the color will directly change from one star to another, because each of the channels R, G, and B changes simultaneously. While in the HSV mode, the color will traverse around the color wheel. If we set this to clockwise, the red color will rotate around as far as 270 degrees until it reaches purple. That's why we can see the rainbow spectrum in this segment. In contrast, if we set this to the counterclockwise mode, traversing from red to purple will only take about 90 degrees. Alright? Next, for the interpolation parameter, generally, you don't need to bother with this parameter because the default option, which is linear, will suffice most of the time. But if you are still curious about the details, I will try to explain this as briefly as possible. Imagine if the color transition is described as a graph. The horizontal axis is the length of the gradient line, while the vertical axis is the color distribution. The one at the bottom is the first stop, and the one above is the second stop. The linear option will form a straight line, while the curved option will slope horizontally in the middle, then the sine option is similar to a sine curve. Essentially, it is rather straight vertically in the middle. Then for both sphere options, that curve is similar to a quarter circle shape. The difference is that the sphere increasing mode is more inclined to the color of the second stop. While the sphere decreasing mode is more inclined to the color of the first stop. All these options are great, but in practice, the differences in the resulting colors are barely noticeable. So I usually just use the linear option. And if I need further control for the transition curve, I just slide the midpoint around. 58. Gradient Map filter: In this video, we will discuss a filter called Gradient Map. For this lesson, I have prepared a file that you can download. These are just images from the projects in a basic level, of course, I flattened each of them and place them on separate layers. Alright, so what is a gradient map filter? Basically, this filter will list all of the colors in the image from dark to light and then map them to a gradient color. The reason why we are discussing this filter now before, when we discuss filters, is because in order to be able to use this filter, we first need to know how to work with gradients. Just like any other filter, you can apply this filter in three methods via the filter menu, using a filter mask or using a filter layer. Let's see how we can apply this filter menu. Select the sub menu, and then just gradient map. As you can see, the skull image has now turned into a grayscale. This is because the darkest color of this skull is mapped to the color on the left, which is black. And the lightest color is mapped to wipe. If we mirror or the gradient, the color on the image looks like a negative film. For now, we can press the cancel button. By default, the gradient map filter will use the active gradient color. Indeed, you can still change to gradient color leader when applying the filter. But just to give you an example, we can achieve with the gradient preset that we made earlier called blue to green. Now, we want to use this gradient inside a gradient map filter, but as a filter mask, make sure the active filter is the gradient map. You can see how the blue-green gradient colors of the image, loader color in the image is now blue. Wildlife color is now green. We can create a new stop in the central area, then change the color to a bright yellow, e.g. etc. Essentially, you can use all the techniques for controlling the gradient we discussed before. If you prefer to use a segment type gradient, you can convert this gradient to a segment type by pressing this button. You need to be careful with this save button because any changes you make to the gradient will be saved permanently to the gradient preset, currently active, in our case is the blue-green gradient preset. Then you can also use other gradient presets by pressing this button, just use the gradient color that you want to use. E.g. this one or this one, etc. After you are done, you can click the Okay button to confirm and create the filter mask. One of the many Gradient Map applications is to remove the background or to make it transparent. Imagine a scenario where you sketch on paper and a new drew, a line art with a pen on it. After that, you scan the paper, you then open the image in Krita, more or less, you will have an image like this. The line naught is fine, but the area around it is not transparent. Basically, the challenge is to make the light gray color in this image become transparent while keeping the black line art stay opaque. There are many ways that we can do this in Krita, but for now we will focus on using the gradient map filter. For us, we can apply a filter mask just Gradient Map as the filter type. Then we want to stop on the left to be black. Then we also want the stock on the right to be black, but perfectly transparent. In other words, we set the opacity value to zero. Now because the background color that we want to remove is not a perfect white, but rather light gray color. We need to move this transparent stop to the left until we see the background area becomes completely clear. And if the color of the line art is not a perfect black, you may also need to move this Blackstock slightly to the right. Just play around with this top positions until you like the result. If you are done, press the OK button. And here is the result. If you prefer to work with a regular layer without any filter mask, or if you want to reduce the burden on computer performance, you can flatten layer. You can do that by right-clicking and then choose flattened layer. 59. Robot warrior project preparation: Starting from this video, we will be working on a final project, which is an illustration of a robot warrior domain. Inspiration for this illustration is the robot design in a video game called string. Meanwhile, in terms of close sword and gun, I was inspired by the character inside another video game called bio mutant. For lighting effects. I was again inspired by this tray video games, specifically this screenshot image. What is unique about this image is that if you notice, it doesn't have any key light. There is only about MEN light or the environment life. Then there are two very strong backlight coming from two opposite directions, each with a very different color. So it is a unique challenge to create this illustration. Alright, next, from the technical standpoint, there are a few different things that we're going to do on this project. For us, we will create the line art or outline for the illustration, the basic level, of course, we have also created illustrations that use outlines. In fact, we discussed various methods to create them, but they are all raster techniques. What makes this project different is that the outlines will be created using vector graphics. The second technique that we are going to explore is in the current process. In this project, we will not create by scholars like we usually do. Instead, we will start by creating shading and highlights in a grayscale color. Then after that, we add colors to the image using the gradient map filter. Personally, I rarely use this technique, but you may like this technique as there are many artists who prefer to work with value or the brightness of the image. First, only then they will think about the colors. Apart from these two things, there are still many new techniques that we will discuss in this project. But in general, we will be using a lot of selection, filter and gradient techniques in this illustration project. To get started, we can create a new A4 sized document. Let's make the orientation landscape. And for content, we can create two layers from the start. Next, we can import the reference images active with the reference images tool. Then click on this plus button to select the file and then set the position and size of the image. Just repeat this process until all the images are inside the document. Alright, next, we can start drawing the sketch. Use the free hand and brush tool. Activate the pencil brush preset to solid color, e.g. a, light brown color. We should avoid black as leader. We will use black for the outline or the line art. We're going to start with the head. Basically, the robot's head is just a simple box with a screen in front of it. Similar to all computer monitors. This is his bag or a shoulder and this is the stomach. I want to add a large round joint on his shoulder. Then these lines will be the legs. You can press T for the move tool. If you want to move the layer, then this will be the arm in his left hand or our right side. I want to add a hand gun. While on the right arm or hand, I want to add a very large and heavy sword. So heavy that it makes the robot slightly bent forward to be able to hold it. As usual, you already see the end result of the illustration. We're watching this video, but we're not record this video. I honestly don't know what the illustration will look like. I just have a picture in my mind. I will skip the video because there is no new technique that I am using in the sketching process. Also, because the sketching process turned out to be taking longer than I anticipated. This is mostly because I will sketching while experimenting with different design ideas at the same time. And here is the result of the sketching process. 60. Creating vector line art: In this video, we will create the line art or the outline using vector techniques. Currently, I don't think I will be needing the reference images anymore. To delete all of them. We can activate the reference images tool. Then press the trash can icon that says all. Next, we can crop the document to make it more suitable with the sketch size. Use the Crop Tool. Click on Canvas and just drag the boundaries to fit the sketch area. Then press Enter to confirm. Next, we can rename this layer to sketch. We want to be able to see the outline more clearly. So we need to reduce the opacity of the sketch layer to about 20 per cent. Then we can create a new vector layer by pressing shift, Insert, move the layer soil is below the sketch layer. Before we start tracing. Press B for the brush tool, make sure the race or mode is off. Then use a solid brush preset. My strategy for Luther, meaning the thickness of the vector lines is as follows. For the outer border or the line that forms the silhouette of the object, we can give it a thickness of seven pixels for lines that separate objects from one another, but do not belong to the silhouette lines, we give them a thickness of five pixels. Then for the detail lines are the rest of the lines. We can give them a thickness of three pixels. So that is basically the strategy we will be using. Of course, this is not a dead end rule. Sometimes we need to tweak or bend the role of bit here and there to make the drawing looks more interesting. For the first stage, we will focus on the outline of the objects you have. Therefore, we need to set the brush size to seven pixels. Then press Shift C to activate the Bezier curve tool. And then set the fill option to not fill and set the offline option to brush. Again because of this brush option, the Bezier curve tool now uses the brush size value to control the line thickness. Finally, make sure our foreground color is set to black. After all the preparations are done, we can stop the tracing process. Let's start with the point at the tip of the swarm and just continue to draw modal vector lines to form the silhouette of this robot character. Ion speeding up the video, as all I am doing now is just repetition. Alright? After the silhouette, outline is complete, we can now focus on the lines between objects or between different colored areas. Remember, for this, we need to change the brush size to five pixels. If you want to use a shortcut, you need to press B for the brush tool. Then press the open bracket key on your keyboard. After that, reactivate the Bezier curve tool by pressing Shift C. Then start making the outlines. I am skipping the video because again, I'm just repeating the same technique. Alright? The last type of vector line that we want to create is the detailed one. So don't forget to change the brush size to three pixels. We can start from the top, which is the central line of the blade. Then on the area of the head. You may notice that the lines on your head aren't exactly accurate. This is not the problem. Since all of these lines are vectors, we can correct them leader using Edit Shape stole. I may have to do that off the record to save time. Sv40. I am skipping the video because there are no new techniques that we can discuss. So this is the final result of the vector tracing process. We will refine these lines further in the next video. 61. Refining the line art: Previously, we created the outline or the line art using vector. In this video, we will refine the line art even further. Basically, we are going to sharpen the edges of the lines, thicken some of the corners, and also remove any excess lines. We have done something similar in the basic level course, but using raster techniques. In this project, we will try to keep all the line art processes in vectors. But before that, let's first name this layer OB, which stands for outline base. Then press Shift insert to create a new vector layer above the OB layer. Rename this layer to OR which stands for outline revision or outline refinement. Just as before, the main tool for this process is the Bezier curve tool. But now we only need the fill area and do not need the stroke. So let's set the fill option to foreground color or background color, and then change the outline option to no outline. Essentially, what we are going to do now is create a weight vector area to cover the black outline that we don't want. E.g. we can create a white area here. And also here. Indeed, the resulting areas are not transparent. If we hide the background layer, we can see the shapes that we created are actually solid or opaque white. For now, you don't need to worry about this. Later, we can easily convert all of the white colors to transparent using the gradient map filter. Just continue with the process of patching the line art with white shapes with the same technique. We also want to make the loose ends look sharper. Just create a white vector shape around a line end to form a sharp shape. That is basically the technique for refining the outline. For now, I will skip the video because there are no new techniques that we need to discuss. Alright? After we make all the line ends become sharp, we can add curves, shapes on the area where two lines are intersecting or forming junctions. For this process, what we need is black color. Just press X to swap the foreground and background colors. E.g. we can start with the intersection at the base of the blade. Then we can fix the one at the bottom. If you want to remove the black area, don't forget to press X to swap the foreground and background colors again. So again, just use the shortcut to switch between adding or removing the outline. Use this method to refine the whole line art. I'm speeding up the video because for the rest, I'm just repeating the same technique. One final touch before we move on to the next process is to fix the lines in front of his head. We want the lines to look like speaker holes. Select the OB layer first because the lines are inside this layer. Then press a to activate the Select Shapes tool and just select the lines. Now, if you can't select them, this is because they are blocked by a larger vector shape in front of them. If you remember, we have discussed this before. To be able to select a vector object that is behind another object, we need to hold control and click at the same place multiple times until the shape gets selected. Then we lift up the shape to the very front using the Bring to Front command. Just do this method for all of the lines. Control click to select it, right-click, then bring to front. After they are all at the front, we can easily select them by holding down the Shift key. Then in the Tool Options darker in the strokes tab, we can increase the thickness value to around eight pixels. Then click here, sorry, it should be this button. Then change the tip type to a rounded model. Now, these lines look like holes with a capsule shape. So this is the final result of the refining process. There are still many areas that need refinement, but I will do it off the record to keep the video duration from becoming too long. 62. Adding background and shading preparation: In this video, we will add colors to the background and then we will prepare the document for the next shading and highlighting processes. But before that, let's tidy up our document first. I don t think we will need the sketch layer anymore, so let's just delete it. If you need the sketch image, you can still access it from the previous lessons files. Then we can select these two outline layers, then press Control G to contain them inside a group layer. Rename the group layer to Ohio, which stands for original outline. As usual, before giving any color to an illustration, it is a good idea to add some colors to the background and avoid a perfect white color. At least something that can represent the final background image. If you plan to create a more detailed background later, unlock and select the background layer, then we can start with a gradient color. Remember, when editing a gradient from this window, the changes will become permanent unless that is what you want to do, it is better to use our custom gradient preset that we created earlier just to be safe. So select our gradient preset called blue to green. Click the Edit button. We want to create a gradient color similar to the environmental condition that we saw in the reference image. We can set the color at the top to purple, or a bright pink color. As for the color at the bottom, we want to have a dark red color. Create a new stop around this position. Perhaps we need to move this color slightly to the left so that the center area becomes darker. Alright, press G for the gradient tool. Click drag from top to bottom while holding down shift so that the orientation is vertically straight. Then press B. Select the Air Brush Preset, control and click to sample the color above. Then make some brush strokes to add some randomness to the background. Then I also add orange or yellow. We want to create the impression that there is a bright yellow light source on the left side. After you are done, you can lock the layer again. If you notice the outline that we have now still has a lot of white patches. To make all these white color areas become transparent, we can use the gradient map filter. We covered this technique before in the last lesson in the gradient chapter. Since the image is a group layer, you can apply the filter either as a filter layer inside the group above the ORM layer. Or you may also apply the filter as a filter mask that attaches directly to the group layer. For now, let's just use the filter mask. Make sure we are using the gradient map filter. We only need two stops. Change the color of the left stop to solid black, and change the color of the right stuff to black also. But we set the opacity to zero, slide the start to the left a bit just to be safe. So again, this is before and this is after, later. During the shading, highlighting, and coloring processes, we will rely a lot on the contiguous selection tool. For the tool's reference, we should use the OH, group layer. Basically, we need to give this layer a color label, e.g. green, then activate the contiguous selection tool. Now, since cruder version 5.1 and above, the tools reference mode moved to the bottom. The features are exactly the same with version 5.0 or below, Only the UI is a bit different. So this is the current layer mode. This is the multiple layers mode, and this is the color labeled layers mode. Just make sure we are in this mode. And then the green color is active. If we create a new paint layer. Now, even though we are on another layer, if we click on the canvas while using the contiguous selection tool, the selection area is created based on the row group layer. But we still have a problem. If you look closely, it turns out that there are still areas not being selected. These incorrect selection areas are the white patches we created earlier. Why is this happening? Well, this is something that you need to remember. You see, if you give a color label to a group layer by default, all of its children layers will also be labeled with the same color. For our case, we want the contiguous selection tool to only detect the final result of the group layer. In other words, the condition where the white patches area is already considered transparent. To fix this, simply select these three layers and masks, right-click and then clear the color label assignment. So now only the main group layer is colored green. The other layers inside it or not, we can try to activate this layer again and use the contiguous selection tool. Then click here. As you can see, now, the selection area is accurate because it respects the transparent area produced by the gradient map filter. Next, we can hold down shift and click on this middle area. Now we can invert the selection. But sorry, I forgot to mention before that I set the parameter of this tool to one pixel so that the selection result is one pixel wider than the original. Alright, let's invert the selection by pressing Control Shift I. Then we want to fill the selection area with a gray color whose value is exactly 50%. It's a bit difficult to choose a color with specific values in this color picker. For this purpose, it is better to use the foreground color box. Then you can input 128 for each of the RGB channels, but it will be faster if we just use the HSV color model. And then input 50 per cent in the value column. Click Okay. And now we have exactly 50% gray. Next, press Shift backspace to fill in the color. Then move this paint layer that it is below the outline group layer. Now we are ready to move on to the next stage, which is shading and highlighting. 63. Shading and Highlight: We will continue our robot warrior illustration project. In this video, we will add shading as well as highlight. In the previous lesson, we created a gray silhouette on a paint layer. Let's first rename this layer to GB, which stands for gray base. Press insert to create a new paint layer above the GB layer. On this layer, we want to create the shading. So we can name this layer G, S, which stands for gray shading. Change the blending mode to multiply. Then select these two layers and press Control G. Rename the new group layer to TSH, which stands for gray shading and highlights. You are free to name your layers with anything that you like. As long as you use a consistent naming convention that you can understand. As your file becomes more complicated, naming your layers becomes increasingly important. Make sure the Alpha inheritance option of this shading layer is active. Alright? Now we can start the shading process. For the initial stage, I want to define the dark areas globally using the airbrush preset. For the whole shading process, we will be using only black color. Later for the highlighting process, we will be using only white color. To make things simple, we can just set the foreground and background colors to their defaults by pressing this small icon or by pressing the letter D on the keyboard. As we discussed earlier, apart from the ambient light, on the left side, there will be a yellow light. From the right side, there will be a pink or magenta light. From this information, we can imagine where approximately dark shadows will form. I think this area should be dark. Then this middle one should also be darker. Then this area of the body will be covered by the shadow from the cloth above it. Alright, after that, we can move on to the more detailed shading stage. We can use the contiguous selection tool. Click here, hold down Shift and click here. Press B again, reduce the brush size and make a stroke at the base of this sword. Likewise, for the area below, press W again. Click here, then Shift and click here, and here. Then use the air brush preset and make some brush strokes where roughly the shadows will accumulate. Press W again, click in this circle area and make some brushstrokes on the right side and a bit below it. This is because there will be a strong light from the left up until now. You can see for yourself that the shading process is technically similar to how we add ambient occlusion or shading in our previous projects. The only difference is that in this project we are only focusing on gray scale colors. Since we don't have any new techniques to discuss, I'll just speed up the video. I'm skipping the video here because the total time required for this shading process is quite long. Alright? So this is the result of the shading process. This is before and this is after. Next, we can move on to the highlighting process, create a new paint layer and rename this layer to GH, which stands for gray highlight, enable Alpha inheritance and use the screen blending mode. Again, for the highlights, we will only be using white color. So press X to swap the colors. So we have white for the foreground color. We can start from the top area first, which is the sword or the blade. Press C for the Bezier curves Selection Tool, create a selection on the top end of the blade. Press W, then hold Shift and Alt and click in this area to refine the selection region. Use the air brush preset again and draw some brushstrokes, something like this. Next, we want to create the impression of depth in the center line of the sword. We can simply repeat the process. Press W, then Shift Alt and click, and then use the brush tool again. Then we can press W again, click and shift, click, press B, and make the top part lighter. Press W again. Select this circle area. Use the air brush again and make some strokes with different brush sizes. Try to make the light colors concentrated in the middle and so on. I'm sure in Shao law, by now, you already understand all the techniques that I showed here. I'm speeding up the video now and later. I will skip it to save time. Alright, so this is the result of the highlight stage. This is before, and this is after. In the next video, we will turn this gray scale illustration into color using the gradient map filter. 64. Coloring with Gradient Map: In this video, we will add color to the robot warrior illustration using the gradient map filter. As you already know, we can apply filters using nondestructive methods, namely using layers and masks. Or you can also use the destructive method, namely by applying it directly to the image. We will try to explore these two methods. For now, we will try to apply a gradient map non-destructively using a filter layer. First, we need to create a selection to define the area we want to colorize. We can use the contiguous selection tool for this, e.g. we want to give a red color to the cloth that covers the neck, then also to the cloth at the belt. If there are still areas not included, you can use the Bezier curves selection tool. Just an example. First set this tool to add mode and make a selection as needed. Essentially, you can take advantage of all the selection techniques we discussed before in this process. After the selection is complete, we can create a new filter layer. Make sure the gradient map filter is active. Then for the color previously we chose exactly 50% gray as the base color. So drag or create a new star exactly at 50 per cent position. Then choose red as the base color. Next, use the stop on the left as the darker shading color. So we make this a dark red, close to black. You may want to move this slightly to the right because the darkest shading inside the selection area is a dark gray, not a perfect black. And finally, to quickly duplicate that color in the middle step to the right stop, we can just remove the right stop, then click drag to create a new stop. With this, we can choose the lighter version more easily for the highlight color. The advantage of using a gradient map is that you have more freedom to experiment by adjusting the stops locations and also changing their colors. You can see the preview of the result on the Canvas. Let me close this filter list first. Feel free to play around with the gradient until you like the result. After you are done, you can save this gradient as a new preset to make it easier. If later you want to use it again. To do this, you need to give it a name first, say robot read. Then click this Plus button. Now, the gradient robot red has been saved as a preset. To confirm the gradient map, we can click Okay, and then press Q to clear the selection. Alright? Because we are using a layer filter, the selection we made earlier actually defines the Alpha condition of the filter layer. You can still edit the alpha channel if you want to, using the free hand brush tool or other drawing tools using a grayscale color spectrum. We have talked about this before. As an example, we want the grip of this sort to be read as well. We can use the Brush tool, or in this case, the fill command will be faster. Create a selection first using the contiguous selection tool. Then press Shift backspace to fill the area with white. Remember, white in the alpha channel means 100% opacity. This causes the red color or the filter effect to be maximized. With the same concept. We can also do the opposite. E.g. we want to reduce the color effect on the belt area. Create the selection first to make the color on the belt slightly different from the cloth on the neck, we choose a color other than white or more towards Grey. Then we can just use the Brush tool. But as before, for now, the fill command will be faster. So that is basically the technique. If you prefer to use this technique, it's a good idea to name the filter layer with a name that's easier to understand. E.g. we can name the layer GM read. Gm stands for gradient map. Let's look at another example. Let's say we want to color the main area of the shirt green. We can use the contiguous selection tool and select all the areas. Then create a new filter layer. Make sure we use the Gradient Map. First, we can use the preset from the previous one called the robot read. Let me hide the filter list again. Then we want to change the color in the middle to a dark green color. For the stop on the left, we want the color to be green also, but slightly towards blue and darker than the stop in the middle. Lastly, for the stop on the right, we can change this to a dark green also, but slightly yellow and lighter than the middle stop. You can immediately see the changes in the canvas. If you want to, you can rename this gradient to robot green, e.g. then press this Plus button to save it as a preset. For now, I just press Okay. Rename this filter layer to GM green. You can just repeat the process for the other colors in the illustration. Alright? The advantage of this approach is that it is non-destructive. Whenever you want, you can change the area or edit the color, e.g. for the green color, it turns out that there is an area that I missed. Previously. We use the Fill command. Now, I will try to give an example using a brush. Choose a solid brush preset. Makes sure the active color is white and just draw some brush strokes to cover the area. Another example, suppose we want to change this green color to another color. We can do that by selecting the filter layer. Then open the properties window, or you can directly press F3 on the keyboard. We can change the basic green color to red, or yellow, or purple and so on. Again, the point is this approach provides the most flexibility when you need to do multiple color revisions to the illustration. However, the drawback of this method is its high demands on computer performance. Imagine if you have 100 different colors in your image, then you will need 100 filter layers stacking up inside your document. If you have a very powerful computer and you need this maximum flexibility, then feel free to use this approach. However, for those of you who need less flexibility and are more concerned with computer performance, you may prefer to use the next approach. Basically, we will apply the gradient map filter directly to the image and not through a layer or mask. Because this method is destructive, just to be safe, we should duplicate the G SH layer first by pressing Control J. Once we have the duplicate, we can move the original layer down, then hide and also lock the layer. Again. This will be our backup. In case something goes wrong with the coloring process, we can restore the greyscale color from this layer. Then for the three layers above, we can merge them into one using the merge command. But remember, the nature of the filter layer is that it affects all the layers below it. This includes the background layer as well. So if we merge everything by pressing control, as you can see, this process will also include the background layer. We don't want this to happen. Let me undo this first. In conclusion, if we want to merge the filter layers, make sure all the layers that we don't want to be included are hidden. Only then do we press Control E or perform the merge layers command. With this, the background and the robot character remains separated, each in their own layers. Okay, Next, we will use a gradient map directly on the image in this layer, e.g. we want to color the edges of the shirt, Yellow. Press W, then select all of the areas. Then we can apply the gradient map via the filter menu. Change the base color to yellow. E.g. this one. Then choose a darker yellow for the shading color. Make it close to black. And finally, choose brighter yellow for the highlight version. Make it close to white. Click. Okay. And here is the result. Another example, Let's say we want to give this area or leather brown color. After we create the selection, we can apply the gradient map filter again. For the stop in the middle, we can set it to dark brown. For the stop on the left, we can find a darker brown color that is close to black. And for the right stop, make it lighter, closer to white. To give the color or more glossy effect, you can experiment with the location of the stops. Maybe this is too extreme, but this is okay for now. Another example. We want to add a yellowish metallic color, something that looks like gold. Just create a selection area on the surfaces we want to add the color. Then open the gradient map filter. Change the color of the middle, stop to a golden yellow. Then for the highlight color, choose a very light color that is close to white. As for the shading color, we can choose a dark yellow color, close to black. Click Okay, to confirm. Up until this point, I'm sure in Shao law, you have understood all the techniques. One more thing I want to mention is that you can also apply a solid color directly on this layer. Let's say we want to change the color of the monitor screen in front of the head to a light cyan color. After we select the area and then select the color, we press Shift backspace to fill in the color. I am skipping the video here to save time. After the coloring process is complete, you can change the name of this layer to COSH, which stands for color shading highlight. This is one of the things that makes the current project unique. That is, if you choose the destructive approach, we have color, shading and highlight all in a single layer. 65. Lighting effect: In this video, we will add lighting effects from the right and left sides of the image. We can start by pressing insert to create a new paint layer. Rename this layer to VFX, which stands for visual effect. For this layer, I want to use a blending mode which is stronger than screen called Color Dodge. Usually, we activate the inherent alpha option and put all the layers inside a group layer. But in this project, I want to show you a different method and that is using a transparency mask. First, hold down control and click on the thumbnail of the COSH layer to extract the selection from its alpha channel. Then, while the VFX layer is selected, create a new transparency mask. The active selection is automatically converted into a transparency mask and it is attached to the VFX layer. With this transparency mask, we no longer need to use the inherit Alpha feature. Just to prove this. If we use the Brush tool and draw some random strokes on this layer, the resulting brushstrokes are constrained inside the area defined by the transparency mask. Alright. Next, you can just add the lighting color directly to the image as we did the shading. But for now, I want to make some kind of rough sketch to help determine where the light will fall. We will start with the right side first, which uses a pink magenta color. Then we will work on the left side, which uses an orange or yellow color. For this process, we can use a solid brush preset. Pick a color that has a strong saturation. Then draw some brush strokes on the right side of the robot's body. There's no new technique in this process. So I'm speeding up the video to save time. Again, the function of these brush strokes is only for the initial sketch. And so at this stage, we are free to experiment with various possible appearances of the light. If you make a mistake or you change your mind, just use the eraser mode or use the eraser brush preset to erase the mistake. After the pink color light is finished, we can continue with the orange color. Just do this process until you are satisfied with the lighting condition. Alright? So this is the result of the sketching stage for the lighting condition. Before we go to the next step with the lighting on the right and the left. I think that the image of our robot now looks too dark. Basically, I want to make everything brighter except the monitor screen area. First, select the monitor screen, then invert the selection by pressing Control Shift I. Then select the COSH layer and add a filter mask on this layer. Use the Levels filter. Then we can move the white point to the left until we are satisfied with the brightness of the image. I think the value of 200 is bright enough. Click Okay to confirm. So this is before, and this is after. Alright. Now we can close this layer and go back to the VFX layer again to tidy up or finalize the light sketch on the right and the left, we're going to use various shading techniques we already know. Plus we will also make use of the gradient technique, e.g. we can start from the bottom right side first or the handgun part. Press W, click in this area and press Delete. Create a selection for the area that will be filled with light. Make sure the eraser mode is off. And also make sure the pink color of the right light is active. Then press Shift backspace to fill in the entire area. Now, let's focus on the bottom area. Use a regular solid brush to erase these areas. To make color gradations from right-to-left, we can start with the Bezier curve selection tool. Make sure the active gradient color is the second special gradient called the foreground to transparent. We can see the preview on this button. Also, make sure the eraser mode is off. Then press this icon or press G for the gradient tool. Click drag from this point to the left. Here is the result. It's the same for the bottom one. Let's create the selection first. Press G, then click drag from this point to the left. Next, we can focus on the wrist area. Make a selection like this. Then press Delete. Create a more detailed selection following the contour of the object. To smooth out the color, we can use the gradient technique again. Create the selection. Press G, and click drag to the left. And here is the result. If you look closely enough, our image contains a lot of white dots. This happens because when we create a selection with the contiguous selection tool, the selection area is too narrow, also due to the anti-aliasing effect. To fix this, we need to go back to the COSH layer first, use the brush tool with a solid brush preset. Hold down control, and sample a color here. The point, then just draw some brush strokes to cover it. I will be doing all of these minor fixes off the record to save time. For now, let's focus on smoothing out the light colors for the forearm area. We can create a selection with the Bezier curves selection tool. Then press Delete. Then if there is a hole in the light area, we can just cover it using the brush tool. Sorry, we should use the pink color. Then create another selection area. Press G and click drag from the color border to the left. I'm speeding up the video for now. Of course, in addition to the gradient tool, we can also use the blur brush preset to smooth out the color transition. This technique is more suitable for us to use in narrow areas. We can also use the air brush preset to erase the color in the curved areas. We've used these techniques before in the previous project and in the basic level course. Basically, you can use all the techniques you have learned to complete this process. For smoothing the light color on the left, the process is basically the same. The only difference is that now we use orange instead of pink because there is no new technique that we can discuss. I just skipped the video. And here is the state of our illustration so far. 66. Reflection and glow effect: In this video, we will add a reflection effect to the sword, as well as a glow effect around the money, their area. But before that, I want to change the color of this button and also the area inside the neck. We can use the gradient map filter again for this. But I think it will be faster to just do it directly using the brush tool. Select the COSH layer, press W, and create the selection. Press V, and use the solid brush preset. Then pick a red color. Since there is already a color in the area, we need to enable the brush multiply blending mode. You may also use the shortcut Shift M. Then make some strokes to cavalry area. It is the same for the neck area. Create a selection for us, then cover the area with the brush tool. I think this is not dark enough. While edit, we can also patch some of the white dots in this area. Use a smaller brush size. Sample the color from a nearby area, then make some brush strokes to cover it. And here is the result. We can reactivate the VFX layer. Now, I think this is light in color, is a bit too strong. Maybe we can reduce the opacity to around 65 per cent. Alright? Then we can return the brush blending mode to normal by pressing the shortcut Alt Shift N. So up until now, we have briefly discussed two shortcuts for changing new brush blending mode. We have already covered what the blending mode is in basic level course, but we have never used a shortcut to access the brush blending mode. If you tend to use this feature a lot. You may also want to use the shortcut photo screen blending mode, which is Alt Shift S. I may use the shortcut leader you, so you know in advance, there are other brush blending mode shortcuts, but these three modes are the most commonly used. Alright. Now we move on to the next phase, which is adding additional effects. Force. We want to add a light reflection effect to the shop area of the blade. You can directly apply it to the VFX layer. I prefer to use a separate layer for this. For the layer blending mode, we can use Color Dodge as well, similar to the VFX layer, press C and create a wave-like selection area. Something like this. Press W. Then Shift Alt and click in this area. Then press V and use the air brush preset tools light blue color that is close to y. Then draw some brush strokes are no bottom and left borders of the selection. I think we also need to add a reflection effect in this section. N here is the result. Next, create a new layer. For this layer, we can set the blending mode to screen. Essentially, in each layer, we want to create a glow effect that seems to come out of the screen in front of the robot's head. Control. Click to sample the color, but make it a bit brighter. Then just add some brush strokes in a circular form around the screen area. Now, if you pay attention, the outline or the line art is currently in front of the glow effect layer. I prefer the glow effect to be above the outline. So we can move this layer to the topmost position, rename this layer to glow. And it seems it would be better if you reduce d of x to 50%, or perhaps 60 per cent. Okay, we haven't named the reflection layer. Let's just name this layer REF L, which stands for reflection. And here is the current state of our illustration so far. 67. Line art coloring: In this video, we will complete the robot Warrior Project by varying the color of the outline. Currently, the outline is inside a group layer. We are going to use a destructive approach, sort of burden on the computer, women's flow to play safe, Let's duplicate the layer and then the flap and lubricate result with the Merge Group command. Then for this new layer, we don't need any color labels. Renamed layer two or C, which stands for outline colored for the original earlier. We can just hide it like this. Or you can also direct layer down. We are going to add different colors to this oscillator to limit the editing area to a preexisting pixel areas only, we need to enable the Alpha Lock option. Alright? Basically, the strategy we are going to use for this offline coloring is that we want to strengthen the surface color, the outline initiating area, or the dark area. We will follow the dark color of the surrounding surface, but it's slightly darker. The same concept applies to the highlight areas. We will make the outline color are similar to the surface, bright color. What do you make it even brighter or closer to white? Activate the brush tool. We can start with this hand area. For us. Sample the surface color, make it lighter, closer to white. Then make some brushstrokes on the outline. Sorry, the brush blending mode should be normal. You can also press Alt Shift N for this. Since the outlines original color is solid black, the multiply mode will make the brush strokes seem to have no effect. Okay? So again, we need to sample the lighter color. Then we make it even brighter. And then we draw some brush strokes to colorize the outline. For now, I'm speeding up the video. You can see at a glance this outline colors look like the rim light effect we discussed earlier in a basic level, of course, for this coloring process, use the airbrush preset most of the time. This is because I want the color to transition to be smooth. Although indeed, for some areas, we need to make the color transitions look sharp. E.g. in areas with many branches. In this case, we can use the solid brush preset. Or you can still use the airbrush preset, but create a selection area first. Now let's look at an example of coloring the outline initiating area, hold down control and click to sample the dark color on the surface. Make it even darker. Then throw some brush strokes. For assault grip area. We can sample this dark red color, make it even darker. Then make some brush strokes to cover the outline. Basically, we want to replace as much of the black as possible in the outline with the color that is closer to the color of the surface. At this point, I am sure in the shower you have understood the process, so I am skipping the video. And here is the result of the outline coloring process. As I mentioned earlier, if we hide the VFX layer, you can see how the colors in the outline create a kind of rim light effect on our illustration. I think this looks more interesting than just having a plain black colored outline. I'll have medulla with the outline coloring done, we can assume our robot worry or illustration has been completed. Here is the end result. You may notice they don't meet some minor revisions here and there of record, but I can confirm that all these revisions only use techniques we already discussed. I hope that this course can be useful. And I also hope you can join me again. Foreign excreta, advanced level course.