Photoshop Help ... stupid question.

[Masked]

Okay ... been trying to retool my world map in photoshop. I've just hit a situation that makes me want to scream and the help function of the program was written by unhelpful people.

Really unhelpful people.

I took a scan of my map and added an opaque layer above it to outline on. We'll call that layer 1 (I did).

To check my progress, I made a blank, non-opaque, white layer, called layer 2.

Well ... somewhere in the middle I started drawing stuff that should be on layer 1 on layer 2 instead. Thirty minutes later I've become super-frustrated.

I know how to merge the layers. What I need to know is how to take the white color in layer 2 and change it to transparent.

Please help.

 

[Tsyr]

Not exactly sure what you mean, can you elaborate? Not that I would probably be much help anyhow, I prefer PSP to PS for most things, but a bit more detail is always good.

 

[Destil]

If there's no alising/fading whatever (you have only pure black or white in layer 2, no shades of greay) to worry about you can use the magic wand tool to select all the white and hit the delete key, that should kill it.

If there is alising then things are more difficult....

I'd recomend just making the background layer non-visible when checking your work rather than using a seperate white layer, though I suppose that's also a good solution if the checkerboard you'd get annoys you.

 

[Fast Learner]

If you have a layer that's filled with white and then has colors on it, and then a layer above it that is also filled with white and has colors on it, and your goal is to combine the two into one layer with all of the colors showing (which is what I think you're asking), just set the blending mode of the top layer (via the Layers palette drop-down menu) to "Multiply" and you should be set. Now just merge the layers together and you're done.

The only place you'll have problems is where you have color on the top layer directly above color on the lower layer -- the colors will mix and be dark, and may not be what you want. If this is the case, before merging the layers you can use the eraser tool to eliminate the overlaps.

If the top layer isn't filled with white, but is just transparent with some of the colors then you can simply merge them.

 

[Fast Learner]

Erm... but that will leave you with white everywhere. If you're trying to get rid of the white, then yeah, the magic wand is probably the way to go. Make certain that anti-alias is turned on for it and then explore various tolerance numbers, probably starting with around 8 levels, increasing as needed until it actually selects all of the white you want to get rid of. (Test it my clicking a white area and then hitting delete -- if it doesn't elminate enough white then just undo, deselect, increase the tolerance, and repeat.)

 

[Psionicist]

So, you have a layer X and you want to change the white color in this particular layer to transparant?

 

[Masked]

Yeah ...

But Chartam over at Monte's boards solved my problem. It did involve something similar to the magic wand tool. Basically all that was important to know is I had a two color layer and needed to set one color back to "transparent."

Yeah the checkerboard made checking things too difficult.

Thanks guys.