Making a Skirt Template

I have made progress in many ways with making clothes since I started just a short time ago. However, I have come across a problem (at least for me, LOL) in making a design for skirts. I have no problems saving different designs for shirts and pants and changing the texture on them later. However, with the skirt template, I seem to not be able to do that. Oh, and by the way I am using PSE4.

Here is how I make my skirts:

I create a new layer.
I either put in a solid colour or texture on that layer.
I then create my design, on the layer that has the solid solour or pattern (texture).
Select and save as Alpha 1.
I unselect all other layers and save as TGA 32 bits.

This works fine but I am not able to change colour or texture. In other words, I don't have a blank layer to use for my designs like I do with the upper and lower body templates.

I am sure that there must be an easier way to do this, and I have searched the forums for what I looking. I didn't find what I was looking for but I did find a lot of good information .

Thanks for anyone that can either point me to the right thread to read or any other advise that might be offered.

Kat

I'm not sure what you're asking for. What do you mean by "blank layer to create my designs"? If all you need is an additional empty layer, why not just add one (or two or a hundred)?

Hi Chosen, I will try better to express what I mean. With the upper and lower templates there are Alpha channels. With those I can go in and change the design to whatever I want and then delete the Alpha that is there, select my new design and save as a new Alpha. Once that is done I then make new layers with whatever I want to have. I can save that file with a different name and can go back and change colour or textures without having to recreate my design. With the skirt template I am not able to do that since there is no preset Alpha channel. At present I make a new layer and fill it with colour or pattern, make my design on it and select and make Alpha channel. If I want to add anything else I just make a new layer above it and apply whatever I want. What I can not do is remove the colour or pattern and replace it with something different. Sometimes I like the design I make but want to have different colour or pattern with it. At present, without trying to receate my design from start to finish, I have found no way for me to do that.

I know what to do, it's just sometimes the words in my mind lose their way to either my mouth or (as is the case here) my fingertips.

Once again, thanks for your reply. Oh yes, I have a 5 inch binder at home that is almsot full of the different threads on this forum. So much information from so many great people.

Kat

Could you possibly make a Print Screen of your skirt *in your graphic editor*, with the list of layers and so on? I'm not sure of what you mean, either; I think a pic would help.

I am at work right now, but when I get home later I will do that, unless we have the major storms that has been forcasted for this evening.

Kat

Sounds like you failed to save a native PSE4 doc of the working file. When you make a TGA, you just get one layer and the alpha data. You flatten everything else.

Save it as a PSD file first, then save a TGA for what you export.

I made 2 jpg pictures but don't know how to get them to show here.

Now that I am at home maybe I can make what I am trying to say somewhat clearer. When one opens the upper template there is a tee shirt alpha, victoria alpha, jeans jacket alpha and glove alpha. Opening the lower body template there is blue jeans alpha, hawaiian shorts alpha, leather pants alpha, lower jacket alpha and socks & shoes alpha. With all the different alpha channels, I can play around with them and make most any design I want. However, with the skirt template there is no such thing. I can make my skirt by making a new layer but in order to get the design I want, I either have to fill it with a colour or texture. I then make my design, using the other layers as guides, turn them off, create my alpha channel, save as 32 bit tga and upload into SL. That is not my problem. I get in SL what I want. It is when I want to apply a different texture to my orginial psd file that I find that I must start all over again, unlike if I use one of the alpha channels with the upper or lower templates. I like using scottish tartan's on my skirts, but I don't want to have to create another skirt if I just want to change from one tartan to another. By the way, scottish tartan's are the colours and patterns of different scottish clans.

Hope this makes some sense.
Thanks again,
Kat

It is really easy to apply textures to your design in Photoshop. Hopefully I will be able to explain it well enough.

First - create an adjustment layer on top of your design. Pick Hue/Saturation and set the saturation to "zero". *Note - I usually make my initial designs in red, grey or medium green so that desaturating the layer doesn't require reworking all of the shadows.

Create another layer on top of the adjustment layer and fill with any color. Now - on your layer palette - set the fill to zero. This will make the layer appear transparent.

Next apply a layer style by clicking the layer style button at the bottom of the layer palette then selecting pattern overlay. Make sure to use the "overlay" mode or "hardlight" mode, as this will apply the pattern to your underlying layers and keep the shading and highlights.

Now to make sure that only the design is affected by this - ctrl click your alpha channel for this design. Go back to the layer and click on layer mask at the bottom of the layers palette.

You can also use Color overlay or gradient overay in combination with or instead of the pattern overlay.

Another great tip is to use layer comps to save each state so that when you go back to update or if you make a small change you can update each state easily.

I think that I might have to post a tutorial on my blog about this. If I can get that done I will post a link.

I just realized that you may not know how to define or create a pattern in Photoshop. Try www.pixel2life.com - they have some great tutorials on texture and tiling pattern creations.

After reading all that I could and listening to what others said, I took a break from what I was trying to do and played around doing other things. When I woke up this morning I went DUH, it had just come to me what I was needing to do. As soon as I could this morning, I opened PSE4 and went to work trying out what came to me and it is what I was wanting. My mistake before was I did everything backwards. In short, this what I am doing now. I open a new layer. Using the new layer I paint the outside of my design, using the templates as a guide. Once everything on the outside of my design area is painted black I click select on that layer, inverse it, save as Alpha and deselect. Now I can change my colour and texture anytime I want to without being forced to redesign my skirt. Wow what a mouth full. I know that I most likely didn't explain this very well but at least now I know what I am doing (somewhat at least). Believe it or not, the fun is in just the playing around and seeing what each button in the program can and cannot do. Have a great day everyone.
Kat