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pdf : Brushes photoshop studio with bert monroy : digital painting �

the brushes panel was introduced in photoshop 7. this feature

gave users the ability to create brush presets. it was one of the

most exciting features to come along in quite some time. they

were also not your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill brushes,

but instead were tools that would allow you to perform tricks

and create effects like never before. in previous versions of

photoshop, i created dense foliage by clicking—for what seemed

like an eternity—with a brush the shape of a single leaf or leaf

cluster. i devoted an entire chapter to this technique in my

book Photorealistic Techniques with Photoshop & Illustrator

(new riders, 2000) that covered version 6 of photoshop. with

the brush engine you now had the capability to create an entire

forest of trees with a single stroke.

you could always make new brushes, but with the brushes

panel you have an avalanche of ways to modify brush tips for

color, spacing, texture, and randomness. each brush can have

an infinite number of subtle variations, and all can be saved for

later use. in this document you will be studying the extraordi-

narily flexible brush attributes feature in the brushes panel and

learning some practical uses for all that power.

brushes

what brushes Are All About

PDF

Excerpted from Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy: Digital Painting by Bert Monroy. Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved, Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders.


Brush tips can still be selected from the options bar for any

of the tools that use a brush tip. Clicking the drop-down

menu displays the tips available for the tool (Figure 1).

Some controls can also be used in this menu. The

Master Diameter allows you to set a size for the brush

tip. Hardness is the other control available. Hardness

allows you to set how soft the edges of your brush

tip will be. This feature is not available for complex

brushes such as the maple leaf tip.

Once the menu is exposed, accessing the drop-down

menu on the upper right gives you viewing options

Figure 2 the drop-down menu gives you options for managing your brush tips as well as access to additional presets.

Figure 1 brush tips can still be accessed via the options bar below the menu.

Figure 3 the brushes panel can be accessed via the window menu.

Figure 4 the brushes panel in the docking pane.

for the panel as well as management tools (Figure 2).

At the bottom of the menu are additional sets that can

be opened to append the current list of brush tips.

The real power for controlling the brush tips and their

performance comes from the Brushes panel. The panel

can be accessed from the Window menu (Figure 3).

Once opened, it can be docked like any of the other

panels in the docking pane where it will appear, as

shown in Figure 4.

This panel is where you are able to create brush tips.



brush tips Before I explain the panel in detail, let’s look

at how to create a brush tip.

You first need to understand what constitutes

a brush. Anything that is selected can be

turned into a brush. It can be the eye on a

person’s face, a signature, a cloud—whatever.

One detail to consider is that the values of the

colors within the brush shape will determine

its opacity. Where the selected shape is black,

the brush will be 100% opaque. Anything

other than black will be transparent based

on the value of the color. Where the brush

is white, it will be completely transparent.

These situations hold true regardless of the

Opacity setting for the tool that is using

the brush tip. Let’s say you created a brush

with a 50% gray. If the Paintbrush Tool is

set to 100% Opacity, the stroke will have an

opacity of 50%. If the Opacity for the brush

is lowered to 50%, the resulting stroke will

have an opacity of 25%.

In Figure 5 I have created a shape that

consists of three bars. The first is black, the

second is a shade of red, and the third bar is

a level of gray. I selected the shape, leaving

some white area around it. When the brush

is created, it will consist of only the three

bars. The white area within the selection will

be disregarded.

Choosing the Paintbrush Tool and a bright

blue for the color, the Spacing was increased

to see distinct brush tips as I stroked the

canvas (Figure 6). Painting over a grid you

can see that the bar that was black produces

an opaque area, whereas the other two bars

are transparent, allowing the grid to show

through (Figure 7).

With the concept of brush tips covered, let’s

now look at the Brushes panel.

Figure 5 A brush shape is created with three bars of different color values.

Figure 6 A stroke is created with the brush tip.

Figure 7 the effect of the three bars of different color values.



brush presetsWhen the Brushes panel is opened, it defaults to the

Brush Presets section. The controls here are limited to

the selection of a particular tip and the diameter for

that tip.

One of the most valuable features in this window is the

preview area at the bottom. Any attributes assigned to

a brush are reflected in the preview box, making it very

easy to see how brushes you are creating will behave.

Figure 8 the brushes panel and the drop-down menu allows you to customize the way you view the available brushes. this is also where you save, delete, rename, and load brushes. A sec-tion at the bottom of the menu, starting with Assorted brushes, allows you to quickly load presets that perform specific functions.

The only drawback is that any color controls can’t

be viewed.

A drop-down menu in the panel (Figure 8) contains all

of the items that are also accessible through the drop-

down menu in the options bar with the addition of a

few extra controls that pertain exclusively to the fea-

tures of the Brush engine.



brush tip shapeBrush Tip Shape is the second section of con-

trols within the Brushes panel (Figure 9). This

section deals with the basic tip controls. These

controls were formerly found in the options bar.

You can choose a particular brush shape in this

section. I’ve chosen the maple leaf shaped brush

to demonstrate some of the next few features. I

can boast that this particular tip plus the two to

the left of it were designed by yours truly.

The first control in the Brush Tip Shape section

is the setting for the diameter of the brush.

This control plus Hardness are the only con-

trols available in the toolbar Brush drop-down

menu, as shown in Figure 1. The open and close

bracket keys on the keyboard also control the

diameter. Due to the limited space of the pre-

view box, very large brushes can’t be displayed.

The Use Sample Size button appears if you have

a Custom Brush shape selected. It becomes

active if you have modified the size of that

Custom Brush. Click the button to restore it to

the original brush size. At other times the but-

ton is grayed out. The original size of the brush

is indicated by the small number that appears

below the Brush icon in the panel. This number

represents the size in pixels.

The Spacing slider at the bottom of the panel

(Figure 10) controls the amount of space that

separates the brush tips as a tool is stroked

across the canvas. Setting the amount to 100%

produces a line where each tip is seen as a

distinct shape touching its neighbor on either

side. A higher percentage produces a dotted line

effect. The minimum percentage (1%) produces

a solid line.

Figure 9 the brush tip shape section of the brushes panel. here the diameter of the brush tip can be set.

Figure 10 spacing controls the amount of space between the tips as they are applied to a stroke.



You can adjust the Angle and Roundness of

the brush either numerically or visually. Note

that the adjustment I’ve made is reflected in

the preview box (Figure 11).

The Hardness is also controlled in this win-

dow. This is the control for the edge of the

brush tip. A setting of zero produces a soft-

edged or blurred brush. A setting of 100%

produces a hard-edged brush tip. The par-

ticular brush I’ve selected can’t be modified

in this way so the control is inactive.

The controls I’ve covered up to now affect

every tip of the entire stroke equally. As you

saw in the preview of each figure, all the

leaves were being modified in the exact same

fashion. The true beauty and power of the

Brushes panel lies in the following sets of

controls.

Notice that these controls, starting with

Shape Dynamics, all have check boxes to the

left of their titles. If you click the check box,

the default settings will be applied to your

brush tip. If you click the title, all the con-

trols appear.

Figure 11 Angle and roundness control the shape of the tip as they are applied to a stroke.



Figure 15 the roundness Jitter set to randomize the shape of the tip.

shape dynamicsShape Dynamics is where the Brushes panel starts to

take off. I use it quite often in the various chapters in

the book.

Size Jitter is the first control. This feature allows you

to make the brush randomize the diameter of the

brush tip as the tool is stroked across the canvas. I’ve

set it to 100% (Figure 12).

Figure 12 the size Jitter is adjusted.Figure 13 All settings can be controlled by a tablet stylus.

Figure 14 the Angle Jitter randomizes the angle for each tip.

Minimum Diameter allows you to set a limit to the

smallest size a brush tip can be. This is useful if you

don’t want some of the tips to become tiny dots.

Figure 13 shows the Control settings. It is important to

note that these settings can be set to respond to a stylus.

My Wacom Cintiq and other tablets take full advantage

of these settings.

Angle Jitter allows you to randomize the angle the brush

tip will have. In Figure 14 the Angle Jitter has been set to

100%, and you can see that each tip is a different angle

from the tips on either side.

Roundness is like the Roundness setting under the Brush

Tip Shape window (Figure 11) except in this case it is ran-

domly changed as a stroke is applied. Minimum Roundness

sets the limitations for the amount of the flattening effect.

The preview in Figure 15 shows the flattening of the tips

along the stroke.



scatteringScattering distributes the brush tips away

from the actual stroke being applied to the

canvas (Figure 16). The higher the percent-

age, the farther they will travel.

The scatter will be applied up and down from

where the stroke is drawn. The scatter can be

applied to both axes, which causes the tips to

be applied left and right as well as above and

below. Like all the other functions, scatter can

be controlled by the input device.

Count controls the number of brush tips

that are generated (Figure 17). A high num-

ber makes a dense brush stroke. If the Count

is left at “0,” the stroke will use the current

Spacing parameters set in the Brush Tip

Shape. Count can also be controlled by the

input device.

Count Jitter randomizes the Count amount

along the stroke as it is applied over the

canvas and can be controlled by the input

device (Figure 18).

Figure 18 Count Jitter randomizes the count over the length of the stroke.

Figure 16 scattering spreads the brush tips away from the stroke.

Figure 17 Count increases the number of tips applied by the tool.



Figure 20 the drop-down menu gives you options for the texture.

textureTexture applies a user-defined texture to the

stroke (Figure 19). This texture is any pattern

that has been created and saved. For this

example I’ve changed the brush tip from the

maple leaf to a large, soft-edged, circular-

shaped brush.

Scale controls the size of the texture within

the stroke. Depth controls the strength of

the pattern over the stroke. The higher the

percentage, the more the texture will be

seen. A low percentage allows the original

brush shape to show through.

As mentioned above, the texture choices are

the patterns currently available to the pro-

gram. You can open saved patterns the same

way you can within the Pattern controls.

Figure 20 shows the menu of the texture

chooser where you can customize the set-

tings. Notice that there are some groupings

available at the bottom of the menu for

quick access to often-used textures.

The Texture Each Tip option makes the

Minimum Depth and Depth Jitter controls

active. The Texture Each Tip control adds

the randomization to the application of the

texture over the stroke as it is applied to

the canvas.

Figure 19 texture applies a pattern to the brush tip.


pdf : Brushes photoshop studio with bert monroy : digital painting �0

dual brushDual Brush uses a second brush to create an

effect over the currently selected brush tip.

The second brush is randomly rotated over

the main brush. The effect is controlled by

the Mode that is applied to the Dual Brush.

In Figure 21 you can see a canvas where two

strokes have been applied. The first stroke is

not using a dual brush. The second stroke

is using a soft-edged brush tip as the Dual

Brush. In Figure 22 the third stroke is using

a Spatter brush as the Dual Brush.

The controls at the bottom of the Dual

Brush window are the same as the con-

trols found elsewhere for the main brush.

Modifying these settings will affect the Dual

Brush’s effect over the main brush as the

main brush is stroked over the canvas.

Figure 21 the dual brush is using a soft-edged brush tip.

Figure 22 the dual brush is using a spatter brush tip.


pdf : Brushes photoshop studio with bert monroy : digital painting ��

Color dynamicsColor Dynamics is a very useful section,

although it lacks a color preview for the

settings.

Foreground/Background Jitter switches

between the colors that are currently selected

for the Foreground and Background in the

Tools panel. In Figure 23 the tips are switch-

ing between two shades of green.

Hue Jitter introduces other colors to the

stroke, much like the Add Noise filter intro-

duces colors to the noise if Monochromatic

is not selected. In Figure 24 the Hue slider

has been pushed to 100%, and you can see

the result in the second stroke. Setting a low

value will introduce slight variations to the

currently selected colors.

Saturation Jitter randomizes the amount

of saturation the colors will have along

the stroke.

Brightness Jitter randomizes the amount

of brightness the colors will have along the

stroke. Some of the brush tips will be darker

or lighter than they would be if this option

was not selected.

Purity shifts the colors toward or away from

the neutral axis. Figure 25 shows the third

stroke where the Purity has been lowered to

–92%. Unlike Saturation, which deals with

individual brush tips being applied, Purity

affects the entire stroke.

Figure 23 the brush tips are randomly switching between the foreground and background colors as the stroke is applied.

Figure 24 the hue slider intro-duces additional colors to the brush tips.

Figure 25 purity controls the satu-ration for the entire brush stroke.


pdf : Brushes photoshop studio with bert monroy : digital painting ��

other dynamicsOther Dynamics sets a jitter for Opacity and

Flow. Opacity is the level of translucency of

the brush stroke, which allows layers beneath

it to show through. Flow is the amount of

paint being applied. Jittering randomizes

these effects as the stroke is applied across the

canvas. Figure 26 has the Opacity Jitter set to

0% but the Control is set to Fade. This causes

the stroke to lose opacity as it is applied to

the canvas.

The options in the bottom section of the

controls are not adjustable.

Noise applies noise to the stroke. Unfor-

tunately, the amount of noise can’t be

adjusted.

Wet Edges lightens the central portion

of the stroke, creating the effect of paint

buildup at the outer edges. You will find my

use for this feature in the book in Chapter 5,

“Old Chair.”

Airbrush simulates the airbrush-style

buildup to a stroke. If the brush is held in

one position, the paint will be applied slowly

as if building up the amount of paint.

Smoothing eliminates any hard edges or

bumps added to a free-hand stroke across

the canvas caused by a shaky hand.

Protect Texture preserves a chosen pattern or

texture for the overall image and ensures that

any brush chosen will conform to that pat-

tern or texture. If a particular Brush Preset is

chosen that has its own texture, that texture

will be overridden by the texture applied to

the image.

Figure 26 the opacity set to a fade makes the stroke become transparent as it is applied to the canvas.


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