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Why does everyone drop the background layer before exporting? Just ran into this again
I was reviewing a portfolio piece from a local artist in Austin last week and the showcase file had this washed out, flat look. Turns out they deleted their background layer thinking it would clean up the canvas, but it killed all their ambient lighting and shadows. I see this mistake a lot in the gallery section here, probably because people think the background is just a placeholder. In my own work, I keep the background layer masked instead of deleted, that way I can tweak the atmosphere without redoing everything. Earlier this month I spent 2 days re-rendering a scene because I made that exact error on a client piece. Does anyone else keep a hidden backup layer for their lighting setups, or am I the only one obsessed with this?
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the_nancy6d ago
Honestly the problem is usually not the background layer itself but what got painted onto it, since those shadows and lights can live on a separate layer that never gets the mask. Deleting the background only flattens things if the art was merged down into it, which is where the washed out look really comes from. Keeping a hidden backup copy is smart, just make sure you're also checking what's actually sitting on that layer before you decide to kill it.
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