Tattoo Brainfart

So I got some tattoo flash as a gift (yes its paid for and fully mine to use). And i am having one heck of a brainfart on this one. I have been making tattoos for quite awhile in SL now, but they have all been in black and white so to speak. Now I dive into color tattoos, my problem is, any color tattoos I see out there, with the exception of very few, all look like they were cut out and thrown on an AV. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Im using PS CS2.

It might be helpful to post an image.

Try making them slightly transparent.

This description is too vague to give a useful response to. pix plz

Im not at the comp withthe pics on them but I will post it when I get back on it. I did make it somewhat transparent Mha, still the same effect.

Ok now that I am awake, heres the image I was talking about. I took down the transparency some and fiddle with the saturation to get it looking like this.

Well, the first problem I see is that most tattoo artists won't use white ink! You may want to make the white parts of the tattoo cut out, so that the skin tone shows through where the white currently is. You might have to repaint the grey>white gradient areas, but it'll look better.

you made that picture (the tat) ?

I see nothing wrong with it. Tats aren't supposed to have transparency. They don't in reality. It looks good to me.

Yeah, the presence of white parts in the tattoo looks odd. To make those parts show skin color will take a little doing in Photoshop working with the alpha channel to grade out the transparencies. For a good start, I would copy the entire image to a new layer, desaturate the copy, invert the image, and then use that for the alpha channel. Then go back to the main image and repaint areas that have semi-transparency to be flat colors (eg. the metal plate on top should be flat black and the highlights and greying will come from the transparency information.)

Thanks guys I will take those t ips and fiddle with it a bit in ps. As far as tattooist not using white ink, I have a very good tattoo in RL that has white ink. But I understand why people in SL might not want to use the white "ink".

Well you're still going to have to clarify what you want it to look like. I mean, we can't read your mind. You just said "looks like it's cut out," but what does that mean? Now that you have the image to illustrate what you talk about, please describe the problems/effect you are trying to achieve.

Yeah, I have RL white ink but it's never been paper white like it is on that tattoo there. Good luck!

To Callie's point, paper white looks odd, but then again I think the overall color palette of tattoos in SL make them look different than real tattoos. With the exception of a brand new RL tattoos, most tattoos you see have aged, and the colors are not what they started out as.

What might help is to go through some pictures of several RL color tattoos and come up with a palette of colors that seem a bit more realistic. Do a color replacement on several of the brighter more prominent colors to match the palette you came up with.

No PS or tattoo guru myself, but definitely agree with your observation of color tats.

Yeah that looks kind of off.


A bit of transparency is the way to go. You need to add some shading to it and clean out the white trim.



I dont do much color but when I do its usually by hand..gives it the right effect.


But i would definitely say add some shading where theres already black and get the white outline off of that.



Would maybe be good to invest in a graphic tablet if you feel you`d make the money back.


Good luck stormy and of course feel free to IM me in game if you need further help.

Some people asked about them and here is my way if it help.
If I miss understood, Im sorry X)

After make the alpha channel, duplicate the color layer what you made alpha from, and put strong blurr filter, and gather it with background.

Happy holiday

Sorry to go off-topic, but I'd simply kill to have had a chance to name my avvie "Tattoo Brainfart"

Yeah this mis my first attempt at a color one so im going to try a few different ideas. As far as the graphic tablet goes, hopefully sometime early next year I will be getting one. I have a really crappy one from when they first came out years and years ago but thats it.