Hi guys. What is the best way to change the color of a kit? Example, I am using the shingles from the GD engine house on the Rural Depot kit. The shingle printout is a bit too grey/green for my tastes and I would like it to be more brownish. another example would be suppose I wanted the depot to be red and ivory instead of green and ivory? I have PDF Architect and GIMP available to work with. Doable?
Great question Wayne, not many people realize how easy it is to change colors. Programs such as give is great it's available to everyone and it's a very powerful almost as powerful as Photoshop. There are a couple of methods for changing colors most importantly is the ability to select which areas of color you want to change. First you'll have to get comfortable with your selection tool. This can be as simple as drawing a box using the magic wand or if you have to using the line command to draw out the area you want to change. Once the area is selected make a new layer of it copy paste. Under image controls you'll find a command called Hue and saturation it should have a slide. Buy sliding this back-and-forth it will go through the entire color cycle you may also want to adjust the saturation. Sometimes the new colors are too bright and unrealistic the saturation slider will give you control of this. Once you have the new color the way you want it you can merge the layer down into the image that should do it. Another method is to set the rush setting to color this will change the color but not the gray scale information you can just paint the colors you want to use and they will be transparent and fully shaded. These are the two easiest method and the ones that I use I hope this helped keep the good questions coming.
Thanks, Thom. In the process of trying this out I discovered that GIMP does a much better job of sending the colors to the printer than Adobe Acrobat. Will give the process a try, though the shingles now print with the color I wanted, just using GIMP.
Id love to get more questions on modifying kits. When ever I meet with our modelers Im always talking about how our kits are like infinate part boxs. Just a few kits and you have enough parts to build almost anything.
There are a couple of methods for changing colors most importantly is the ability to select which areas of color you want to change.
First you'll have to get comfortable with your selection tool.
This can be as simple as drawing a box using the magic wand or if you have to using the line command to draw out the area you want to change. Once the area is selected make a new layer of it copy paste. Under image controls you'll find a command called Hue and saturation it should have a slide. Buy sliding this back-and-forth it will go through the entire color cycle you may also want to adjust the saturation. Sometimes the new colors are too bright and unrealistic the saturation slider will give you control of this. Once you have the new color the way you want it you can merge the layer down into the image that should do it. Another method is to set the rush setting to color this will change the color but not the gray scale information you can just paint the colors you want to use and they will be transparent and fully shaded.
These are the two easiest method and the ones that I use I hope this helped keep the good questions coming.
Wayne - Rather use Gimp than Adobe Acrobat - a much better solution for what you want to do.