Natural Brushes
I finally upgraded to Photoshop
7 at work and home. I was pleasantly surprised with the ease
of the upgrade for the mac. I didn't even have to restart my
system after installation. That is really nice. Along with a
bunch of new features, which we will be discussing over the
next few weeks, Photoshop 7 has created a more powerful
brushes system.
I have given you a couple of examples to
look at that are just stock brushes that Photoshop packaged
with Photoshop 7. One of the things that is so cool, is that
Photoshop can now "spray" brushes in different sizes,
rotations and color variations creating much more realistic
natural techniques. The leaves shown here, especially the
first on are so realistic and amazing, it blows my mind. The
detail is really great, and the fact that Photoshop will
sort of randomly spit out a few with each brush stroke
really is a nice, convenient feature.
To use some of these new brushes, simply
select you brush tool in the tools palette. Once you have
selected the tool, you can change the shape of the brush in
the upper options palette. There are plenty of stock brushes
that Photoshop ships with.
You can add more by downloading them from
the web (there are a few really good brush makers out
there), or you can use the remaining stock brushes with
photoshop. In you options palette, click on the symbol for
the brush shape you are currently using. This will create a
dialog box with a scroll box full of different brush shapes.
To add brushes, click the arrow in the upper right corner of
the dialog box. Select "Load Brushes", browse until you find
the brushes you want and append them to your set.
Below is a look at the brushes dialog box
within Mac OS X. Play around with it and see what you come
up with. The brushes palette even allows you the option of
changing the size of custom brushes. This feature is really
a time-saver. Simply create one brush in any size, and then
resize it to fit whatever you are working on.
To find free brushes out on the net, you can
do a search for "Photoshop Brushes" in your favorite search
engine (Google is the best for my money). Once you download
them, simply load them into your brushes palette (as in the
last paragraph), and voila, instant brushes.
To learn more about making custom brushes,
check out my article from a few months back. I think you'll
find a few useful techniques. As I experiment with the new
features of Photoshop 7 brushes, I will keep you informed.
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