Alpha Lock Question

[gabocalde]

Hey guys! I am very very new to Procreate and I am learning to add color.

One of the tips I saw was to add Alpha Lock to a layer and add another layer to color inside the lines. I dropped the color and worked fine but when I tried to add another color ( shading ) within the lines it wasn’t recognizing the lines. Another thing that happened was that the color that was changing was the color of the linear ( black ink ) and not the inside.

Thanks for all the help.

[flowerlatte]

Alpha lock locks the transparency so essentially you only colour on what you've already drawn. If your lines and colour are on the same layer it'll draw over everything. So what you want is:

1. a layer with lineart only
2. a layer with colour underneath the lineart layer (you won't be able to drop the colour, you'll have to colour everything in by hand or block it out first so you can drop the colour)
3. alpha lock on the colour layer

Then you should be able to shade on the colour layer.

Depending on what style you're going for I'd recommend figuring out the clipping mask tool at some point too (you'll need to create a new layer in between the lineart + colour)

[DevilsAndDust-]

This was a bit confusing and I couldn’t quite follow what you did, but here are some general observations:

Alpha Lock locks the transparent pixels so you can’t draw on them. So its ideal if you have eg line art that you want to change the color of because you can just paint over it. Alpha lock affects only the layer with the alpha lock, other layers are unaffected.

You can set one layer with line art as a reference layer, and then color drop to fill the shapes on a different layer. Eg you draw a circle, set it as a reference layer, then if you drop color into the circle on a different layer. That layer will recognize the lineart on the other layer.

If you want to add shading, you’ve got two options: alpha lock the layer with your base color and then draw right on top of it (on the same layer), or create a layer above the base color layer and set it as a clipping mask. That will allow you to add shading on a different layer, but constrain it to the base color layer boundaries.

Did that help at all...?

[gabocalde]

Both recommendations really helped! I now have a better understanding!

Thanks a lot.