Brushes in 7
page oneThe good news is, the new brushes palette in Photoshop 7 lets you make thousands of different types of brushes. The bad news is, once you’ve figured out how to make them (and it is complicated) you still have to learn how to use them. If you can’t paint, it’s sort of like being given a grand piano when you don’t know how to play.
I can teach you how the Brushes palette works. I can’t teach you how to paint. However, the tutorial that accompanies this one, ‘Using PS7 Brushes,’ will show you a few things you can do even if you aren’t an artist.
To see the brushes palette, either choose Window > Brushes, or click on the brush palette icon at the right end of the options bar of any tool that uses brushes.
When the palette first appears, you’ll see the Brush Presets tab. As with the Effects dialog, clicking on one of the tabs on the left side of the palette will show you the options for that feature. When the main Brush Presets tab (at the top of the palette) is selected (showing dark blue) you’ll see the presets that you have currently loaded.
A preset includes all the saved settings that make up a particular brush. The settings are generated from the tabs below the Brush Presets tab. The thumbnail that you see next to each preset is the brush tip for that preset. The stroke preview that you see at the bottom of the Brushes palette shows the combined effect of that particular brush tip and all of the settings from the other tabs such as scatter, texture, and shape dynamics that were saved in that preset.
To cause the stroke preview to display whatever preset you hover your cursor over (without clicking it) you need to hold your cursor still for a few seconds on the preset thumbs in the Brush Presets tab. Takes a moment, but eventually you should be able to see the stroke preview change as you drag over the thumbs.
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If you choose a preset and then tinker with any of its settings, it becomes a custom brush and is no longer highlighted in the Brush Presets tab. You can save your own presets at any time by clicking the New button at the bottom of the Brushes palette.
Your preset will include all of the current settings that you have chosen. It will show up at the very bottom of the palette that displays when you click on the Brush Presets tab.
Please note, and this is very important, that your custom saved presets are not truly saved until you go into the Preset Manager and save them to a set. To find the Preset Manager, use the Brushes palette menu, or choose Edit > Preset Manager.
If you have not done this, your saved presets will be lost the minute you switch to another brush palette (unless you choose Append when you load a new palette) or delete your preferences file.
So, before you switch brush palettes, be sure and go to the Preset Manager, choose Brushes from the menu, click and Shift-click on the brush thumbs to select all of your new custom presets, and then choose Save Set. Your set will then appear in the Brushes palette menu, accessed by clicking the little arrow in the upper right corner of the palette. Note that a newly created set will not appear in the Brushes palette menu until you have closed and reopened Photoshop.
If you want to add to the set later, be sure and either load your set before creating new presets, or use the Append button when loading your set, then go to the Preset Manager and select all of the your presets, old and new and save over the old set (use the same name).
If you’ve made all the brushes that you need, and don’t want the huge brushes palette cluttering up your screen, go to the Brushes palette menu and click the Expanded View to toggle it off. Your palette will shrink to show only the contents of the Brush Presets tab.
Dock to Palette Well is not sticky. You have to choose it each time you want to dock to the well. Otherwise, clicking the close box on the palette will close the palette without docking.
Clear Brush Controls unchecks all the settings tabs below the Brush Preset tab and zeroes settings within those tabs.
Copy Texture to Other Tools will cause all tools that can use a textured brush to do so with the currently selected texture. This allows you to simulate a consistent “canvas” for your image. Tools that respond to this, in addition to the paintbrush, are the history brushes, the eraser, the pencil, both stamps, the dodge tool, the burn tool and the sponge tool.
The group of options that include the checked Large List are display choices for your Brush Presets tab. In my illustrations, I am using Large List. The default setting that you are familiar with is Small Thumbnail.
The Load and Replace commands are generally used for accessing brush palettes that you have saved at locations outside of the Photoshop 7 folder. For example, you may have downloaded brushes from the Web and want to load them. You don’t need to use these methods to load palettes that are already showing at the bottom of the menu.
At the bottom of the Brushes palette there are five options that are turned on or off by checkboxes. They have no additional settings.
Add Noise creates “grittiness” in the gray areas of softer brushes. On hard brushes it adds a little bit of roughness to the edges.
Wet Edges causes color to build up at the edges of your strokes while leaving the center partially transparent. This simulates watercolor painting.
Airbrush allows your brush to continue to add color even when you are not moving the cursor. To use this to full advantage, you should use a stylus with control set to Pen Pressure or Stylus Wheel, and have Flow (under the Other Dynamics tab) set to less than 100 %.
Smoothing is for making your brush strokes less squiggly. If you have an unsteady hand, this should help smooth your strokes. Note that the User Manual says this may cause your stroke to lag behind your cursor (it’s stressing your system).
Protect Texture applies the same texture for the tool you are currently using to all of the presets that include a texture setting. This allows you to simulate painting on a rough canvas.
The Brushes palette menu command, Copy Texture to Other Tools will cause the texture to be copied to the brushes being used by all other tools. (I hope I have that right. The manual is very confusing on this, but experiments seem to show that Protect Texture causes the current tool to use the same texture for all brushes used by the current tool while Copy Texture makes all tools use the same texture for all brushes.)
Note that some of the tabs and checkboxes in the Brushes palette may be grayed out if you are using a tool other than the paintbrush. For example, if you select the Blur tool, all but three of the tabs and one of the checkboxes are grayed out.
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Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich.
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