Making a Gold/blonde Texture

I am trying to make a light gold texture/blonde color, but when I apply any of the layer blending options to the layer to create highlights, the highlights come out too white or the color is too yellow.

I am self taught on Photoshop, so I am certain I am either missing something or doing something wrong.

Is anyone willing to share their technique for creating a light gold/blonde texture using Photoshop CS2?

Thanks in advance.

~Ari

I've never tried making hair textures, but it sounds like you are simply making your highlights too bright. Remember anything close to 100% white (or 100% black) will appear 'blown out' with no detail left. It's just like when you send something to a printer that is outside the printers 'gamut' and you get big blocks of pure white area. I've found that about 3-8% gray on the grayscale range (see it using the info palette), will give you a nice white that retains detail in SL. That may vary for others depending on their monitor callibration setups. So you may have to tinker with the ideal number.

But my guess is you need to tone down the highlights.

Hi Ari,

It's ambitious of you to start with blonde hair textures over the other colors. I and I think many of my colleagues who create hair find the blondes to be the trickiest to get right, in large part to some of what Blaze was saying (above). Lighter colors are more prone to the flickering that can happen in concert with the lighting/etc.

I find too that it's surprising to see which textures look good in the paint program but really terrible once placed on a 3d object in SecondLife. Best advice I can give is to just play a lot with different color combinations and levels of subtlety until you hit on a combination that achieves the desired result you want. I probably make 20 textures for every one that I decide to use, and it's always surprising (to me) which ones turn out to work and look the best.

Sorry I can't offer more specific advice, but it sounds like you have the techincal part under control, much of the rest is trial-and-error, so enjoy!

Best,
Mystikal

Thank you Blaze I was actually working on a metalic gold texture when I decided to post and I'm at my wits end with gold colors. I will try the lighter grays and see if that helps.




Thank you for your response Mystikal.

I'm quite experienced making other hair textures that turn out beautifully, but any yellow based texture seem destined for deletion. If only they were all as easy as black or brown!

Good to know that I'm not the only one running up against the evil blonde. I may have to give in and use the ubiquitous white/beige color instead...which is not my first choice, but if blonde won't cooperate, then at least I will save my sanity.

Thanks again,

~Ari

Arikinui, I'm not sure what tools you're using, but I have had a great deal of luck using the color burn/dodge tool in Photoshop to create high and lowlights in ALL of my hair textures and colors. You can go strand by strand with a tiny brush to create lighter and darker threads of hair, and then go across the grain using a wide, soft color dodge brush to create that "sheen" that looks so wonderful when applied to hairs in world. Oh and don't use them at 100%....try 30%, 40%, and so on till you find the level that gets you the effect you seek. 100% usually just looks weird and too, well, photoshoppy. Hope this helps, a little.

Hello RickiLake,

I've tried the dodge/dodge tools, albeit not over ever individual hair strand.

That must take hours!

I've also used them over my gold metallic textures, but I'll need to play around with them a bit more I think.

Thanks for the idea though.

Best,

~Ari