Last week we started to look setting up the painting environment within Photoshop CC for working with the Stratasys Creative Colours, see the post here. In the post, we introduced the concept of a new colour gamut for some of the colour combinations that can be loaded into the Connex 3. This post will show how to move to the next step to start the painting on a 3D model using just Photoshop CC’s 2D tools, by making sure that the environmental lights are turned off and the correct colours are being shown on the model (during the painting process).
Let us take the simple moustache once again,
In this document, you can see that the colour gamut/profile is set to Pure White / Magenta and Yellow. These are the colours that will need to be loaded into the Connex 3 to ensure that the correct colours are used during the printing process. Photoshop’s Color picker will show the continuous colour combinations that will make sure that the printer is able to process and print the colours correctly.
At the current time, and by default, Photoshop has lights turned on. This is great when rendering and making a scene for a 2D print. But in 3D print world, the lights are going to get in the way and provide you with incorrect colours on the model/screen. Turning the lights off is particularly useful when you needed to sample a colour that was previously used on the model, even more important to pick up a blended colour.
To turn off the lights, make sure the 3D panel is open (it can be opened from the Photoshop’s toolbar menu and navigating to Window / 3D). Selecting this will show the 3D panel.
Once the 3D panel is open, select the “Scene” (marked in red below). Once the scene has been selected, the properties for this will be shown in the properties panel. To turn the lights off, make sure that the “Surface” check box is turned on and the style is set to “Unlit Texture” and Texture is set to “Diffuse”.
At this point Photoshop’s lighting mechanism will be turned off, and the RAW colours will be shown. Having the lights turned off will allow sampling colours from anywhere on the model, without picking up colours that have their hue values changed by any lights or shadows, which can/will result in an incorrect colour being selected.
That’s all for this week, but hopefully this demystifies how to correctly set up your colour environment in Photoshop CC for painting on a 3D object going to the Connex 3 for printing.