How To Blend Colors In Krita

leroyjenkins
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How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Wed Apr 13, 2016 8:29 pm

I've been searching for a couple of hours and I can't find a decent way to blend shadows or highlights in Krita.
In programs like Photoshop or Paint Tool Sai all you'd have to do to get a nice shadow or highlight is make a couple blotches of lighter/darker color and blur them to smooth the area. Is there any way to do this or something similar with Krita?
I've checked out a couple of brush packs with blur presets but none of them quite work how I'd like.
A couple of people said to choose the "filter" brush setting and select Gaussian Blur but I can't find that anywhere

Any tips?

Billy W.
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Thu Apr 14, 2016 6:01 pm

Krita offers several ways to blend.. This first being the most common to photoshop users the good old fashion round brush with the eye dropper tool.. another method make a blur layer mask using blur filter on mask and painting that in... the other krita has a smudge brush that can be used as a blending brush. simply find a blending brush you like in the brush docker and changing out the brush tip with a soft round brush tip.. if your using 3.0 alpha this brush had some changes to it I believe and works beautifully...

leroyjenkins
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Thu Apr 14, 2016 10:12 pm

Billy W. wrote:Krita offers several ways to blend.. This first being the most common to photoshop users the good old fashion round brush with the eye dropper tool.. another method make a blur layer mask using blur filter on mask and painting that in... the other krita has a smudge brush that can be used as a blending brush. simply find a blending brush you like in the brush docker and changing out the brush tip with a soft round brush tip.. if your using 3.0 alpha this brush had some changes to it I believe and works beautifully...

On the version I'm on at least, the eye dropper is the color selection tool.

A blur mask does this for some reason...?

http://prntscr.com/ascfkt

http://prntscr.com/ascg5m

And when I paint on it it just sort of pushes the static around .

While the Smudge tool does work, it's incredibly difficult to get a good result using it to blend
Krita with default Smudge tool:

http://prntscr.com/ascjoi

Krita with Deevad's "D4 Blender Soft" Brush preset:

http://prntscr.com/asckx4

Sai with default Blur tool:

http://prntscr.com/ascjw3

I'm on Version 2.9.11

Billy W.
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Fri Apr 15, 2016 7:10 am

It looks like its the brush tips that are making things difficult combined with opacity. cuz i can get that sai blend in your picture. Use the auto brush tip set fade to 0 use the gaussian blur. Adjust opacity as low before there is no effect.. and increase it until you get something you like. The secret to soft gradients/blends with any program is making sure your brush doesn't make any type of sharp edges and how much color the brush is dropping so you don't get subtle streaks so the softer the better. The eye dropper is the same thing as the color selector.. using it frequently for shading or blending is a staple practice in digital painting.. the way to proper practice this is place two colors overlapping side by side and use the dropper where the two meet it should be a value between the two.. use a soft brush to feather out this new color than repeat it again where the fade meets the solid color ect. This is a technique youll want to master if your shooting for high end polished looking art this is where that photo realistic blending comes from.. you can also use a hard brush but that will require a juggling act between the opacity and flow sliders.

Quiralta
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Fri Apr 15, 2016 3:57 pm

Base on your sai picture, I would also recommend the "air brushes". Unless you need a non-destructive blend, then there is many options on the filter layers.

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leroyjenkins
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Sat Apr 16, 2016 1:58 am

Billy W. wrote:It looks like its the brush tips that are making things difficult combined with opacity. cuz i can get that sai blend in your picture. Use the auto brush tip set fade to 0 use the gaussian blur. Adjust opacity as low before there is no effect.. and increase it until you get something you like. The secret to soft gradients/blends with any program is making sure your brush doesn't make any type of sharp edges and how much color the brush is dropping so you don't get subtle streaks so the softer the better. The eye dropper is the same thing as the color selector.. using it frequently for shading or blending is a staple practice in digital painting.. the way to proper practice this is place two colors overlapping side by side and use the dropper where the two meet it should be a value between the two.. use a soft brush to feather out this new color than repeat it again where the fade meets the solid color ect. This is a technique youll want to master if your shooting for high end polished looking art this is where that photo realistic blending comes from.. you can also use a hard brush but that will require a juggling act between the opacity and flow sliders.

Thanks for the reply!
By following your instructions I was able to get a nice blend easily

http://prntscr.com/astdmo

Quiralta wrote:Base on your sai picture, I would also recommend the "air brushes". Unless you need a non-destructive blend, then there is many options on the filter layers.

Air brushes are also a nice way to get some soft shading, thanks!

Drayldan
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Mon Apr 25, 2016 8:24 am

Billy W. wrote:Krita offers several ways to blend..(...) another method make a blur layer mask using blur filter on mask and painting that in...

Excuse me Sir, how one can do it? Any further explanation / video example please?

Billy W.
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Posts: 15
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Thu Apr 28, 2016 8:31 am

I believe there is a way to make a layer filter mask and paint on the effects of that mask undestructably...
I haven't really tried this yet since I haven't had to yet.. so you might need to do some research into the layer filter masking techniques.

Quiralta
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Thu Apr 28, 2016 4:21 pm

Drayldan wrote:

Billy W. wrote:Krita offers several ways to blend..(...) another method make a blur layer mask using blur filter on mask and painting that in...

Excuse me Sir, how one can do it? Any further explanation / video example please?

Select the desired layer, then right-click on it, in the menu choose "filter mask", this will add a sublayer, a window with the possible settings will pop up, there on the left you can select the blur effect, you can also rename this filter layer (mask) to any desired name, once its done you can use any brush to "paint" on the mask, by "paint" it means Erase, and you can use any preset, thus you want to "paint" the parts/area where you don't want the blur to take effect. Depending on the size of your file and the amount of blur you apply, the speed of the effect would show either right-away (small files+little blur) or a few seconds (big file+lots of blur) hope it helps a little.

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TheraHedwig
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Re: How can I blur/blend in Krita?

Sat Apr 30, 2016 5:15 pm

I added a page to the manual on the concept:

https://docs.krita.org/Mixing_Colors

Blur with the filter/filter brushes is still missing, because I was getting tired of making gifs.

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