Brushes in 7
page threeScatter causes the trail of your brush tip’s imprints to deviate from your stroke path according to the percentage in the Scatter slider. Note that this slider goes up to 1000 % so the application of color or effect by your brush can greatly exceed the Diameter setting from Brush Presets tab’s Master Diameter setting (same width as the Diameter setting under Brush Tip Shape).
The Both Axis checkbox allows you to cause scattering to occur radially all around your stroke. When it is not selected, scattering occurs perpendicular to the direction of the stroke.
The Count setting allows you to increase the number of times the brush tip is applied. It’s a lot like decreasing your Spacing setting under the Brush Tip Shape tab, but increasing Count does not decrease Spacing. If you increase Count when Scatter is set to zero, the tip is applied repeatedly to the same footprints rather than in slightly overlapping locations (to see this, set your Spacing in Brush Tip Shape to 200 % and then set Count to 3 with Scatter at 0).
Note that the User Manual warns that this is not a good idea. Anyway, the point of increasing Count is to fill in all the empty space that gets created when you have a high Scatter setting and your tip imprints are all over the map.
Here are some examples of various scatter/count/both axis combinations. First, a four pixel brush, scatter of 1000 %, Both Axis not selected.
Next, the same thing but with Both Axis checked.
Here is the same 4 pixel brush with Count set to 8. Both Axis is turned off.
And here is that 4 pixel, 8 Count brush with Both Axis turned on.
Not to leave out Count Jitter, here is the 4 pixel, 8 Count brush with Count Jitter set to the max of 100, Both Axis turned off.
And, finally, same brush with Both Axis turned on.
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To choose a pattern for your texture click on either the pattern thumb or the little down arrow next to it. The pattern pop-up palette will appear. From that palette, either click on one of the thumbs or click on the little arrow in the upper right corner (of the pop-up palette) and choose a different palette from the bottom of the menu that appears. Artist Surfaces is especially nice.
I can’t find any use for either the New Pattern command in the pop-up palette or the New button next to the pattern thumb. Maybe you can figure out how to use it. Patterns can still be defined via Edit > Define Pattern.
The Texture Each Tip does what it says. I’ll show you examples in a moment. What it does is cause the pattern to overlap itself according to your Spacing setting. When Texture Each Tip is not selected, the texture is applied as if it is a pattern overlay with the brush creating visibility.
The Mode setting is important. I can’t get much use out of any of the modes other than Multiply and Linear Burn. Those two will really show the pattern through the stroke color. The others seem to only allow the texture to show at the edges of the stroke.
The Depth setting is confusing. Those of you who have Painter will recognize the backwardness of the terms. A higher setting causes your paint or color to stay on the top of the texture (which would seem to be a lesser not greater depth), thus allowing the pattern to be more visible (the “cracks” or deeper parts of the texture are not painted, thus leaving them the color of your base image or canvas).
A Depth setting of zero will not allow the pattern to be visible at all since paint will cover both high and low areas of your texture.
When Texture Each Tip is not selected, the Depth Jitter and accompanying Minimum Depth settings are grayed out. This is because you are essentially applying one texture and thus can’t vary it. When applying the texture to each tip separately, you are applying multiple placements of the texture and thus can vary the depth of each.
As promised, here are some illustrations of how Texture Each Tip works. Below, you can see how the overlapping tip imprints cause the pattern to darken. This is with the default brush spacing of 25 %. Compare it to the sample shown in the full palette illustration at the bottom of this section which was made with Texture Each Tip turned off.
Next, with Texture Each Tip still turned on, I’ve changed the brush spacing to 100 %. You can see that this prevents any overlap and the pattern looks just like it does with Texture Each Tip turned off.
To show the other extreme, here is the same brush with spacing changed to 1 %. Here you can see a ton of overlap in the individually applied patterns.
When Texture Each Tip is turned off, the pattern is applied evenly (the same) no matter what the brush spacing is set to.
If you go to the Brushes palette menu by clicking the little down arrow in the upper right corner of the palette (not the pattern pop-up palette; yes, this is confusing...) you’ll see a menu choice, Copy Texture to Other Tools. As mentioned in the first section of this tutorial, this seems to cause all tools to use the currently selected texture for brushes that use textures. The Protect Textures checkbox, on the other hand, seems to cause the same texture to be used for all brushes used by the current tool only.
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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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