Preserved Topic: Picking Your Brains...

Lately, I've been experiementing with "painting" in Photoshop. Trying to get effects of texture, color and light using just colors and brushes, the way one would if one used traditional media. I'm having some difficulty with making shadows and highlights blend properly (read: look real). It's one thing to know how to make it happen in traditional media, but knowing the effect I'm looking for doesn't seem to help me with the approach. I've scoured the internet for tutorials, how-tos, and hints, but no one seems to really discuss this part of it. For myself, I haven't got anything worth putting up for show or critique, but I'm not really looking for corrections anyway, just a discussion of technique...

What I'm curious about, is when you paint in Photoshop, what's your favorite method for blending in those shadows and highlights? Do you use multiple layers, or do you prefer to paint on one layer? Just a brief overview of what works for you, and maybe why you prefer that method. I've tried the smudge and blur tools, using soft brushes, different shades of color, multiple layers, blending modes and opacities... What works for you?

*I have no doubt that if this topic has been discussed in grave detail already, someone will point me to the appropriate link... I've looked in the FAQ, and this specific topic doesn't seem to exist there yet...

Bodhi - Cell 617

[This message has been edited by bodhi23 (edited 03-17-2003).]

Great subject Bodhi23 . i cant wait to read the possible discussions on this subject.

Well, I'll give it a go. I'm certainly not a painting expert, let alone a digital painting expert, but here's my basics -

1) the shadows always come first, including a 'midtone' fill in for the basic shapes where shadows may not be present

2) low highlights come next, very blocky...a lose sketch of the shapes the highlights will fill

3) basically work out the difference, using hard or textured brushes (never soft-rounds) at various opacities and blend modes...essentially overlapping the edges until they give the blend I want.

Obviously that is rather vague, but there is no clear cut answer to good blends...it depends on so many things.

The one thing I can say for sure is that the blur, dodge, and burn tools pretty much *never* do justice. I will occasionally use the smudge tool to push some color around, with a hard brush and 90 or so % opacity.

4) add the sharp highlights. These are the defining points for an image.

After the sharp highlights, the shadows will need to be adjusted.

...

YMMV

=)

Personally, I start with a base shape, and try and do everything at once. Shadows, highlights, texture, everything.

That`s why I do so many paintovers and why I`m so slow at it.

But that`s just me.

Didn't Weadah show how he does this in a tut? I'm sure it's around here somewhere...but that was mainly about highlights, I think...wasn't that in the thread '1500 pixels for Rick'? Ahhh...here it is.


WebShaman

Great link WS, can't figure why I didn't see it before... I'll go over it in more detail later. Though he still doesn't seem to address specific actions for blending in shadows and highlights... But it's better than some I've seen recently...

So, DL, your technique involves individual opacity and blending with your brushes? Or is it a mixture of layer opacity and blending that you use?

It is sort of a vague question, but everyone seems to have a personal method they use more often than not, I'm interested in hearing what's most comfortable for you. It looks I might have to go play and then come back with something to show probably in order to get the right feedback... I'll work on that.

In the meantime, I know there are some talented digital artists around here. You don't have to give away all your secrets, just some basic steps... I know others out there have opinions...
The more I think about it, the more digital painting seems like drawing with colored pencils than actual painting. Perhaps I need to break those out and refresh my memory somewhat...


Bodhi - Cell 617

[This message has been edited by bodhi23 (edited 03-18-2003).]

Opacity/blending for the brushes themselves.

I generally use a single layer, though there may be exceptions (a background/foreground layer sometimes).

This isn't right on topic but does deal with making brushes in PS... thought it might be helpful. From my own archives.
With thanx to WJ.

warjournal
Psychotic

Posts: 1999
From:
Registered: Aug 2000 posted 04-18-2002 06:51 AM
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This rant has been a long time in coming. There are some questions that I'm tired of hearing, so I finally knocked this out in a modest attempt at... something.

Bits and pieces from here and there plus lots of fiddling.


Brush Making for PS

For simple brushes, it's amazing how far a few black splotches and the Smudge tool will take you.

But the real fun doesn't start until you start using photographs. Any ol' photograph will do. I've got several sets of brushes that I've made from photographs of my favorite pr0n queens (seriously).

The easiest method for using a photograph is to run Image > Adjust > Threshold. Maybe clean it up with some airbrushing, smooth out some of the rough edges, and you're good to go.

But Threshold is so harsh, isn't it? I usually opt for Image > Adjust > Levels (ctrl + l). It offers a more control. It's also a good idea to convert a colour photo to greyscale before using Levels. Since brushes are greyscale, converting to grey first will give a better visual indication of how your custom brush will look.

That brings me to converting a colour photo to greyscale. Things are going to get a bit tricky here, and I'm going to start talking about Adjustment Layers. Ready?

This is a cool little trick passed down to me by a photographer buddy of mine. This is a great way of converting a colour photograph to greyscale. Open your photo in PS. Add an HSV Adjustment Layer and bring Saturation all the way down. Tada! Instant greyscale, but some of the contrast between colours can be lost. To fix it, use a Curves Adjustment Layer *between* the photo and the HSV Adjustment Layer. Not only does the Curves give you control over the contrast, but you can tweak the contrast in the seperate RGB (or CMYK) channels. Did you catch that?

Okay, start with a photo of some clouds. Nice white clouds and a nice blue sky. When such a photo is converted to greyscale, chances are pretty good that there isn't enough contrast. You could adjust the contrast after the fact, but a great deal of control is lost in doing so. Enter Curves. With Curves, you can tweak the contrast seperately in the Green and Red channels, thus pumping up the contrast for the greyscale. Woo!

Works great as a stand-alone technique. Can really work wonders when converting flesh tones to greyscale. And, because of using Adjustment Layers, you can paint areas out if your adjustments are too harsh for some areas of the canvas.

What does this have to do with making custom brushes from a photo? Well, brushes are greyscale, and having this kind of control over converting colour to greyscale is a *major* bonus.

Ah, but chances are you don't want to turn a whole photo into a brush -- just select bits and pieces of it. Right? Thought so. Enter Colour Dodge. Bah! Rather than explain this in it's entirety, I'll just run you through setting this up.

Grab a photo. Add your Curves Adjustment Layer and HSV Adjustment Layer in the proper order (don't forget to bring Saturation down all the way in the HSV Layer). On top of all this, add a new layer, fill with white, and set the Blending Mode to Colour Dodge.

At this point, everything should look white. Wah? Well, the Colour Dodge Layer is for painting on with black. I use Airbrush set to about 25%. If you want a part to show, paint with black. If you want to hide something that you don't like, paint with white. It's easy and pretty neat to be able to paint a new custom brush in this manner. It's kind of like sculpting.

I usually add a Levels Adjustment Layer to top off all of this. Woah, even more control (normally I would use another Curves, but Levels is enough control for me at this point). Sometimes I'll run a slight Gauss on the photo if the edges are too harsh.

In the end, it looks a little something like this:

5) Adjustment Layer > Levels. Tweak to taste.
4) Layer filled with white and set to Colour Dodge -- this is the layer that is painted on (Airbrush ~25%).
3) Adjustment Layer > HSV with Saturation all the way down.
2) Adjustment Layer > Curves. Tweak to taste, in seperate channels if necessary.
1) Photo, sometimes with a light Gauss.

I have an Action that I recorded that sets all this up for me for when I'm in the mood to play around. Pretty damn spiffy, and a quick way to make custom brushes. With all of the tweakability, quite a few brushes can be made from the same photo. The really cool thing is that Edit > Define Brush works on Merged -- gotta love that.

I'm sure that I've forgotten to mention a few things, but I think I've said enough for now.

play.fiddle.learn

Nojive - Not too far off topic. That's a great piece, and I'm interested in brushes too... I'll have to take some time this weekend and go through that one... These days I'm starting to wish that I didn't have to work a job that doesn't have anything to do with art. I could spend hours, ok, days playing with this stuff... Just not enough time. *sigh* (let this be a lesson to you young folks, stay in school, study what you want to do with your life. Don't waste time screwing around...)

Thanks for the clarification on your method, DL. That's what I thought you meant.

I'm working on a small piece to help with this stuff. If I can get it to look right, I'll drop it in here for critique... But you guys are certainly giving me plenty to work with.

Let's think about brushes for a second, since it came up. When you're working on a piece, do you prefer to create your own brushes as needed? What different textures do you prefer to create that help you with the different shapes in a piece?
Recently, I've been experimenting with round brushes, just because it's closest to the end of a pencil/pen. When I was painting in traditional media, I was never big on swapping out flat and round brushes, I managed to get my textures just using one or two different brushes on a given work. It's not quite the same with digital painting.

I haven't been at this for very long, and I'm trying to wrap my brain around a particular analogy that will let me get a handle on the process for myself. It's been harder than I thought to transfer my skills to this media. I'm starting to get the idea that I really need to play around with different brushes and brush settings. PS7's new brush palette has been very helpful with this. (I did have a pretty good time with the leaf shaped brush this past fall... made quite a nice little tree...)

Anyone have any good memories about when you first learned digital media over traditional? And perhaps when it was that the light finally came on and you knew what you were about, if that's happened for anyone...





Bodhi - Cell 617

When I was using PS 5.0, I always made my own brushes.

When I got 7.0 (about 2-3 months ago), I didn't really need to make many...they had a lot of presets that were pretty close to the ones I was making (basically just variations of grainy splotches).