Using PS7 Brushes
page twoUndo or delete the layer to return to the original filled green shape. Make a new, empty layer and set its blend mode to Multiply (blend mode menu is in the upper left corner of the Layers palette). Be sure and set the blend mode.
Go to the Paths palette and Ctrl-click the path once again to load it as a selection.
In the toolbox, choose any one of the selection tools (it doesn’t matter which, use the marquee tool in the upper left corner if you can’t decide). Then press the right arrow key to move the selection outline to the right so that its left outer edge crosses more or less over the center of the larger leaves. (The reason you needed to select a selection tool in the toolbox is because some of the tools, such as the move tool, slice tool and crop tool won’t let the arrow keys work properly.)
It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t cross exactly over the middle of any given leaf.
Choose the paintbrush tool in the toolbox and then go to the Brushes palette and click on the top Brush Presets tab. Pick a soft brush such as ‘Soft Round 21.’ Press the Alt key to temporarily access the eyedropper and click on your green shape to make its color your current foreground color. Release the Alt key. Zoom in close so you have a good view of your selection edges.
With the paintbrush selected in the toolbox, place your cursor outside the selection boundary as shown below. The selected area is to the right of the marching ants. The cursor outline should overlap the selection outline, but its center should be outside of the selection.
In the screen capture, I have already applied color (with the Multiply blend mode, it is darkening the green of the layer below it).
If you look at the finished result below, you may get a better idea of where you want to stroke. Don’t worry if you paint outside of the green shape. That can be easily fixed. For an even smoother result, after you’ve stroked all of the selection outlines with the soft brush, go to the paintbrush’s options bar and lower the Opacity setting to about 50 %. Pick a larger soft brush and stroke again to extend the shading a little bit. Just remember to put the center of the cursor outside the selection outline at all times.
If you got color outside the green shape, and you probably did, press Ctrl-D or choose Select > Deselect to deselect. Then go to the Paths palette and Ctrl-click the path to load it as a selection. Press Ctrl-Shift-I or choose Select > Inverse, then press the Delete key. When you’re finished, deselect again.
In the second example shown below, I added a cast shadow just to show off.
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The last technique I’ll show you is for using multiple strokes,
one on top of the other. As always, get rid of what we just did by using
Undo or deleting the layer (or if you want to keep it, turn off its visibility
by clicking its eyeball). This time, I also want you to get rid of the
green shape layer. You want to have nothing showing except your white
background layer.
Add a new layer. Choose the paintbrush tool
in the toolbox. In the Brushes palette, click on the little arrow in the
upper right corner and, from the menu, choose Assorted. In the Assorted
palette that appears, click on the thumb called ‘Ornament 6.’
In the Swatches palette, click on the swatch
called Dark Green Cyan to make that your foreground color.
Go to the Paths palette and click once on
your path (don’t press Ctrl this time). Then press the Enter key.
This is a shortcut for stroking a path. As with the Stroke Path button,
you need to make sure you have the proper tool and color selected before
stroking.
Here’s what you get. Plain, but not
ugly.
Make a new layer. Make sure it is above the one you just stroked. Set
this new layer blending mode to Linear
Light. Don’t forget to do this.
In the Brushes palette, go to the palette
menu and choose the Dry Media Brushes. When that palette has loaded, click
on the ‘New Charcoal Scraping Paper’ preset to select it.
Go to the Swatches palette and click on
the swatch called Pure Yellow Green.
Click on your path in the Paths palette
if it’s not still selected (showing dark blue) and then press the
Enter key to stroke the path again. Results of the combined strokes are
shown below.
Add a new layer above all the rest. Set its blend mode to Color
Burn. Go to the Brush Presets tab of the Brushes palette. From the
palette menu, choose the Wet Media Brushes to load them. From that palette,
choose the brush preset called &3145;Drippy Water.’
In the Swatches palette, choose the color
called Dark Green, go to the Paths palette and click on your path if it’s
not still selected and then press Enter to stroke the path for a third
time. Results are shown below. The .jpg compression has not been kind
to these last two examples. They looked a lot better before being crunched.
If you would like to download a zipped pdf file of this tutorial, please
click on the link below, and save it to your hard drive.
Using PS7 Brushes pdf
190 KB
If you don’t know how to expand a zipped file or use Acrobat Reader,
download the file, above, and then go here
to find instructions.
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Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com
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