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Photoshop 4 Beginners - Brush Up Your Photoshop Skills - part 5 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

by Mike McNamee Published

Also David Nagel has provided 31 brush sets including specialised ones for recreating skin textures; Google for this one.

As a general policy the user is advised to use small palettes of brushes if only to make selection quicker. There is little point in having 100 brushes at 5 pixel size increments, better to have a few and scale them on the fly with the square brackets shortcut. For some jobs, complex brushes are desirable, if not essential; making catch lights for the eye of a portrait is a good example. A catch light may be made with a single soft-edged dab of white (often followed by a reduction or fade to the effect for realism). However, you can get ambitious and manufacture catch lights which mimic those that occur for real when a model is posed alongside, say, a mullioned window. This is a task for the more advanced users as it involves the creation of the shape from multiple shapes, gradients and the Spherise filter. Once a satisfactory base shape has been drawn it may be outlined with a rectangular marquee (with zero feather!) then saved as a brush preset (Edit>Define brush Preset, then give it a name). This basic brush may be changed in size, rotated and further distorted if the white mark is placed on its own layer and then transformed. Most users prefer to place the white mark at full strength and then bring up the layer opacity from zero until the desired effect is achieved. (Note that the brush appears as black and is indeed made in black but used to paint in white - this confuses beginners!)

Wacom Wireless Tablet PTK-540WL

One thing that all serious Photoshop users agree upon is that for retouch and montage work, a graphics tablet is essential. While we have all struggled with the wired USB connection for years it has been a source of weakness, the connection wire is vulnerable and, for the messy desk owner, the trailing wire can often snag or even tip the mug of tea onto the desk (yes we know it shouldn't be there and the desk should be tidy, but who's perfect?). A wire-free device is thus a real benefit and this latest Wacom utilises the ubiquitous Bluetooth connectivity. Ubiquitous? Well not in this office, the workstation this feature is being composed upon has not got Bluetooth! Undaunted we connected the Wacom to our Dell Latitude Z, loaded the drivers from the web and we were away. The solution is to buy a Bluetooth dongle which would cost well under £10 but you need one unless you are happy to operate through the very delicate USB cable - this is extremely vulnerable and would only do for short-term emergency use; it does, however, also charge the battery so you have to connect up for some of the time and it will also need a powered USB port.

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1st Published
last update 09/12/2022 14:57:48

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