I’m making several designs to be screen-printed and I’m looking for advice on what would be the best way to go about this in Krita.

Each of the layers can be made of sketched marks; shapes and Print tone but each layer can only be one color.

I need to be able to go in at any time to adjust the color of a layer quickly to test out different looks. I also need to be able to adjust the opacity though this should be pretty simple.

I’ve just spent a day or so finding a workflow in Photoshop with solid color layers and clipping masks, which worked well, but I really missed working in Krita.
After some fiddling about this morning I’ve found a way to do the majority of my work back in Krita which I’m very pleased about but now I need to find a similar workflow there.

Any help and advice appreciated.

If you have a single color fill layer, you can add a transparency mask onto it, or just erase pixels from the fill layer itself. The fill layer will not be able to show anything but that one color.

Thanks Threa, I Think fill layers and transparency masks will do the job with a little fiddling about. My concern is that the only way I can find to adjust the color of a fill layer is to control click on it , then go into property's, then to the color picker. This takes too long and most importantly I cant adjust the color and see the change in real time on the image to try out different stuff.

Is there a way I can pull up some sliders or a color picker and adjust the color of the layer while I see it changing on the image in real time so I can find the color I think works best with the other two layers?

No, that is not possible, I'm afraid :/

I was trying the Hue/Saturation/Lightness Filter. I pull this up by highlighting the Fill layer then hitting Cmd U on my MacBook. It’s not the nicest way to find a color and I’m not sure it’ll be good enough but I have used something similar before in a pinch and would like to give it a try if it’s the only option.

But with Preview marked or unmarked and with Colorize marked or unmarked, non of the sliders seem to make any difference to the color of the fill layer, it stays the same flat blue.

Am I missing something?

Maybe there is another type of layer I can put under the transparency mask that can be adjusted more easily? I'm sure I've seen people on YouTube tutorials adjusting the color of things in real time in Krita.

So a Paint Layer will take the Hue/Saturation/Lightness Filter and do some adjustments in real time though it dose not seem to like it much. The window kept crashing out at first and it leaves some artifacts behind sometimes.

You could also try using a paint layer for the solid color and then use "Edit" -> "Fill with Foreground Color" (which has the hotkey Shift+Backspace by default). If your computer can handle it, you can hold the hotkey while changing the color to see it update in near real time.

Nice idea but one of my problems is this old laptop I'm stuck with on holiday, so I need to be gentle or she'll just give upon me completely.

neilhodgkinson wrote:I was trying the Hue/Saturation/Lightness Filter. I pull this up by highlighting the Fill layer then hitting Cmd U on my MacBook. It’s not the nicest way to find a color and I’m not sure it’ll be good enough but I have used something similar before in a pinch and would like to give it a try if it’s the only option.

But with Preview marked or unmarked and with Colorize marked or unmarked, non of the sliders seem to make any difference to the color of the fill layer, it stays the same flat blue.

Am I missing something?

You're almost there. Just click on 'create filter mask' once you've clicked CMD +U. This will create a layer called effect. It is non-destructive, as in, hiding this layer would remove the effect and making it visible would bring the effect back. By effect, I mean any color changes you might have done. Also, when you right click on this effect layer and choose properties. It opens a smaller version of the menu that appears on CMD+U. And any changes you make now to Hue Saturation or anything are rendered live, exactly as you wanted.

Instead of going for CMD+ U and then clicking 'create filter mask', you can also select 'create filter mask' from the list that appears if you click the arrow next to 'new layer' icon in layers palette. And this time you can see the changes live instead of having to right click and select properties first.