Continuous Tone has a wide range of uses and is an excellent tool for separating large areas of tone. This function is great for separating scanned images of textures or fabrics into tonal layers. It can also be used to combine multiple tonal layers to a single layer. 

Continuous Tone

Continuous Tone has a wide range of uses and is an excellent tool for separating large areas of tone. This function is great for separating scanned images of textures or fabrics into tonal layers. It can also be used to combine multiple tonal layers to a single layer.

1. Scan in some artwork or create a design.
2. Select the Pipette Tool from the Tools Palette and pick up the most saturated colour from the design.
3. Add an 8 bit Layer and make it active.
4. Select areas in the design to separate.
5. Choose Separate Menu > Continuous Tone. The selected areas will be separated to the layer.

6. Repeat Steps 2 to 5 for other selected areas of the design or for separating other layers of different colours from the design. 

Adding Continuous Tone to a Palette

Save valuable time in your day to day tasks by adding Continuous Tone to your Palette, sparing you from tedious manual steps and thus streamlining your workflow.

1. Go to AVA Menu > Settings > Menus.
2. Click on the disclosure triangle for the Separate Menu to access the drop down list of functions.
3. Drag the handler located next to the Continuous Tone option into your Palette.

4. To use Continuous Tone on any file, simply click on the newly created button in your Palette.
5. To add this function to an existing button, just drag the handler onto the button in the Palette.

Continuous Tone Spot

Continuous Tone Spot separates the colour as if it was the most saturated colour in the design, while Continuous Tone assume that black is always the most saturated colour possible and tone down from there, effectively ignoring the colour of the active layer.

The picture above compares the original image (left) with a layer created with Continuous Tone (in the middle) and a layer created with Continuous Tone Spot (on the right). The same layer colour was used in each case but the tonal values of the two results are different, particularly in the lower tone areas in this example.

Hold down ⌥ (option key) and choose Separate Menu > Continuous Tone Spot to separate any selected areas to the active layer using the chosen layer colour as the starting point for the separated tones.