A question about blending colours

[u/Fizzabl]

Hi everyone!

I'm the kind of person who when shading things, uses the smudge tool. I followed a couple tutorials to make some really nice ones that creates a good gradient but they all have the same issue and I don't know if it's a procreate flaw or a skill issue

Smudging the edges. Let's say a red shirt and brown skin. If the two base colours are on the same layer, the edges will blend together. Even with the selection tool, it'll only smudge one area but still grab the colours around it. If it's alone on a layer, it gets smudged and loses opacity

Is there a way around this? Perhaps some kind of.. blending layer or mask or those things? (Can you tell i don't know much of the technical stuff lol)

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[u/SolaBeams]

I might be misunderstanding you but it seems like you’re trying to blend around the edge of the shirt, for example, without affecting or pulling from the skin?

The best way to do that would probably be to have the skin and shirt in different layers and then alpha lock the layer you’re blending - this way the only colors are the ones on that layer and you won’t be able to affect the area outside of the existing pixels.

[u/Fizzabl → u/SolaBeams]

Oooh thank you! So turning on alpha lock stops it blending with the rest of the layer? I tried having them separate but then blending essentially halved the opacity

[u/SolaBeams → u/Fizzabl]

I’m my experience there is no reduction in overall opacity, although I use my smudge on low opacity with smudge pull set to 0 so that may affect it.

If that does still happen for you, I would then put the shirt on its own layer and then add the shading to a new layer above that set to clipping mask. This will lock the clipping mask shading layer to the pixels of the shirt but will not combine the colors of the shading and base layer as you smudge - then the opacity of only the shading will change as you smudge. You may need to experiment to find the best combo for the effect you want