How To: Grid Overlay on an Existing Painting using Photoshop

Introduction

It's helpful to have your transparent grids in a folder on your computer that is easily accessible.

Construction

1.Select an existing painting to be overlaid with a grid and drag it to Photoshop (or open it with Photoshop).



2. Find the desired "PNG" grid for the overlay on your painting. (See other posts for instructions on the creation of this particular hand-made grid),

3. Drag it over your painting image in Photoshop. 



Sometimes the painting image itself has a color profile that doesn't allow an overlay. In this case do a Screen shot of the painting jpeg image (see below for instructions) to convert it to a png without the color profile and start over.

4. Stretch the overlay to fit the painting by grabbing the corners and dragging to the image corners.





5. Convert it to transparent by changing the setting in the layer from "normal" to 'multiply'.  If the overlay is black with white or light lines, use the setting "screen" or "lighten".  





6. Click outside the image in photoshop to prepare it for saving. The highlight needs to be removed form the image. 
7. Select File followed by "Save a copy"  renaming it appropriately. It automatically is saved in the same folder as the original painting image.  The new overlaid image should look something like this.


Sunflowers Everywhere 10x16.18 with DS Grid Plus Spiral


Conversion to a 'png'

A photo may need to be converted to a 'png' for photoshop, taking a screen shot of the image:

  1. CMD/Shift/4 and 
  2. use your mouse to drag a rectangle around the image
  3. then click with your mouse
  4. a 'png' screen shot will appear on your desktop. 
There are other ways to do a screenshot; this is the way I do it.






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