How To Paint In Photoshop

About Painting Tools Presets And Options

Adobe Photoshop provides several tools for painting and editing image color. The Brush tool and the Pencil tool work like traditional drawing tools applying color with brush strokes. Tools like the Eraser tool, Blur tool, and Smudge tool modify the existing colors in the image. In the options bar for each of these painting tools, you can set how color is applied to an image and choose from preset brush tips. See Painting tools gallery.

Brush and tool presets

You can save a set of brush options as a preset so you can quickly access brush characteristics you use frequently. Photoshop includes several sample brush presets. You can start with these presets and modify them to produce new effects. Many original brush presets are available for download on the web.

You can quickly choose presets from the Brush Preset picker in the options bar, which lets you temporarily modify the size and hardness of a brush preset.

Save tool presets when you want to store customized brush tip characteristics along with settings from the options bar such as opacity, flow, and color. To learn more about tool presets, see Create and use tool presets.

Brush tip options

If you work with a drawing tablet, you can control how color is applied using pen pressure, angle, rotation, or a stylus wheel. You set options for drawing tablets in the Brush Settings panel and options bar.

Paint With The Brush Tool Or Penciltool

The Brush tool and the Pencil tool paintthe current foreground color on an image. The Brush tool createssoft strokes of color. The Pencil tool creates hard-edged lines.

The Rotation tool rotates the canvas, which can facilitate easier painting. See Use the Rotate View tool.

• Todraw a straight line, click a starting point in the image. Thenhold down Shift, and click an ending point.

• When using the Brush tool as an airbrush, hold downthe mouse button without dragging to build up color.

Liquify The Features And Adjust The Final Color

In the final stages, Lois uses the Liquify filter to drag and pull parts of the eye, mouth, chin, nose, and hair to create subtle but realistic changes to those features.

She finishes the painting by using Selective Color adjustments to fine-tune the hair and skin color.

About the artist

Lois van Baarle has been drawing since before she can remember. She took some art classes along the way through elementary and high school, and a bit in college, but is mostly a self-taught artist who finds inspiration in artwork she finds while browsing the Internet, watching movies and animated films, and taking walks through nature.

Lois likes to keep it simple and doesnt add too many tools that could disrupt her progress. When choosing brushes for a project, she usually picks one and sticks with it, since switching brushes takes her out of her flow.

Lois practices sketching and speed painting to continue improving her skills as a digital painter. Sketching allows her to place more emphasis on flow and expression than on anatomical precision, and it reduces stiffness in her final drawings. Early on, she liked to use mechanical pencils , art markers, colored pencils, and brush pens for inking. More recently, shes been happy with her drawing tablet so she can create anywhere she happens to be. Lois focuses mostly on character design. But shes worked with animation, both personally and professionally, and is currently in the process of producing two animated shorts.

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How Do I Paint Skin

The single most important detail when it comes to painting portraits is the skin. Skin has this incredible ability to stretch and change colors depending on your subject’s mood and general characteristics.

To paint skin in Photoshop, you’ll need to know a variety of tools and settings. Although knowing the Brush Tool is a good place to start, we’ll also be taking a look at the Color Picker,Layer Blend Modes, and Adjustment Layers.

Create A Painting Effect In Photoshop

Lets work on creating the painting effect using the Filter Gallery. To get the best possible results, try using photos that share similar characteristics as the painting style youre going for. Since were making a landscape, we want a frame thats relatively simple that also has some interesting transitions between highlight and shadow. This will help us create a effect that stays true to the style of painting we want to emulate.

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Apply A Gradient For Blending And Transformation For Proportion

Lois uses the Gradient tool to create a blur between the different color tones of the cheeks for a smoother blend. She then selects and transforms the eye to resize and reposition it. Lois continues to refine features, colors, and textures of the face with more brushwork and adds cheek and eye highlights on a new layer.

At this point, Lois does a lot of brushwork to finesse the details. Rather than using shadows and highlights, she likes to use different colors to give dimension to the hair, skin, and eyes.

Painting Tools In Adobe Photoshop

The main painting tools in Adobe Photoshop are the Pencil and the Brush. The Pencil draws free form lines with a hard edge, and the Brush – draws lines with a softer edge. It is possibe to draw distinct or fuzzy lines with the Brush, but they will always be a little soft, because its edges are indistinguishable from the background. Lines drawn with the Pencil always have a sharp edge, because there is no interaction with the background.

Both of these tools occupy one cell in the Toolbar, and are always portrayed with a pictogram of the last tool used. To choose another tool, press the right mouse button on the arrow next to the tool and choose the required tool from the menu that appears. The menu will also appear if you press and hold the tool’s button.

To draw free lines with the Pencil or Brush, follow these steps:

• Step 1. Choose a tool from the Toolbar.
• Step 2. Set the color with which colors will be drawn.
• Step 3. Choose the parameters for the chosen tool in the Options Panel.
• Step 4. Bring the cursor over the image in the photo editor.
• Step 5. Press the left mouse button and, while keeping the button pressed, move the cursor across the image.

Most of the parameters used to define the Pencil and Brush tools in the Options panel are the same, but there are some small differences.

Brush. The Brush parameter shows the current shape and size of the brush. To change the shape and size of the brush:

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S To Use Paint Bucket Tool

Step 1: Go to the option to select the Paint bucket tool by left-clicking and holding down on the icon and then selecting the Paint bucket tool.

Using this tool, we then set the foreground color as Blue, and while simultaneously using the Paint Bucket Tool, we apply the color on to the transparent space of the background, which is to change or modify something in the image.

We can also use the shortcut key on the keyboard. This shortcut key activates the Paint Bucket Tool as well the set tools, i.e. the Gradient Tool and the 3D Material drop Tool.

Step 2: Selecting a color for the Foreground.

In order to start adding or selecting colors, we need to click on the Foreground Color swatch, which we see in the image. Using the Tool Options Bar, we select the options Fill type to be applied by this tool which we see on the top left-hand corner in the images. By default, the fill is selected to be used for the Foreground color, and after we apply the Blue color using the Paint Bucket Tool, we see the output in the image below.

Output Comparison

In case we wish to use some pattern instead of colors, we can then go to the select Pattern fill option. This tool is located in the same place, i.e. we see it on the top left-hand corner.

Output Comparison

In this manner, we then know how to apply the colors or patterns using the Paint Bucket Tool, which we see the outputs in the above images.

Paint Bucket Tool in Photoshop

How Lois Van Baarle Created Red

You might think Dutch artist Lois van Baarle has brushes where the rest of us have fingers. Influenced by her appreciation of anime, French comic art, and art nouveau, she has developed a style thats all her own. See how Lois uses brushes in Adobe Photoshop to sketch, color, blend, and refine her digital paintings.

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How To Paint With Light In Photoshop

Take a flat photograph. Add some shadows, highlights and color and transform it with Photoshop. Colin Shows you how.

In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn 2 ways of painting with light, as well as how to add sun flares. We will take a flat photo and flood it with sunlight, as well as adding depth and dimension.

Letâs begin with this aerial panorama I shot with a drone at Atlanta GA.

1.

Hold down the alt/option key and click the mew layer icon in th Layers penel.

2.

This will give us the options box for a new layer.

Change the layer blending mode to Overlay, set the name to light and click ok.

3.

Choose the brush tool

Choose a soft round brush

Select white as the foreground color.

Change the opacity to 15%

4. .

In the Brush Settings Panel select Transfer and set the Opacity Jitter control to Pen Pressure.

5.

Adjust the size of the brush by pressing the bracket keys.

6.

Begin to paint where the light will go. .

7.

Continue painting wherever you want to see light.

Pay close attention to the fronts of the trees and areas tht will be facing the light source behind the buildings.

8.

Change the foreground color to black.

Now, paint on the opposite sides of the objects, that would be facing the viewer. We are now painting in the shadows. This gives shape to the trees.

9.

This is a totally option step, and honestly, not one I would do that often myself, but Iâd like to demonstrate adding sun flare.

10.

11.

Paint Along The Left And Right Edges

Then with the brush rotated on its side, click or paint small strokes along the sides of the image to add more random paint splatters to the border.

Again, notice that only a small part of my brush cursor extends into the border as I paint:

Continue painting or clicking along each side to finish the effect:

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How Does The Digital Painting Course Work

The Laws of Color is an information packed and immersive video course. Students will get unlimited access to over 4 hours of video content. The video training begins with a lecture that introduces the core concepts and fundamentals of color. Then there are a series of step by step demonstrations to help you apply the information in the lectures.

The Laws of Color Photoshop Bundle includes Volume 1 and Volume 2 . Start with the Vol. 1 lecture and progress to the step by step demonstrations, and then complete the homework assignments to get the most out of the course.

How To Save The Photoshop Action And Crop An Image In Photoshop

In this section, we are going to save the action for future use and crop the image. Go to Window > Actions, and in the Actions panel, click on the rectangle icon in the bottom left-hand corner to stop recording the action. Then, in the same panel, click on the menu icon in the top right-hand corner and choose Save Actions to save the action.

Now choose the Crop Tool and transform the Crop Box as shown below:

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Add The Final Details

Hey, you’re almost at the finish line so don’t give up yet! Your painting can really transform in the final steps, so it’s important to pay attention to the reference to figure out what details you still need.

Paint the eyebrows with fine strokes, deepen smile lines, and clean up any edges with a Solid Round Brush. Soft brushes make your paintings look fuzzy and out of focus, so make sure the Hardness is set to 100% to add a sense of crispness to this portrait.

As you get more confident, incorporate other details like the hair and background. For the last step, blend the skin into the hairline.

You don’t have to copy every hair strokejust follow the general direction of the hair as it grows out of the skin. Finish the portrait by quickly adjusting the color harmony for bluer hues with Color Balance.

Here is the final painting.

How To Change The Color Of The Photo Border

And finally, if you want a different color than white for your photo border, double-click on the fill layer’s color swatch in the Layers panel:

This re-opens the Color Picker. Now you could choose a color from the Color Picker, but a better option is to sample a color directly from the image.

Simply move your mouse cursor over a color and then click to sample it. You can try different colors, and each time you click, Photoshop will set that color as the color of the border.

For example, I’ll click on one of the flower petals:

And that color instantly becomes the new color of my border.

Once you find a color you like, click OK to close the Color Picker:

And there we have it! That’s how to create a painted edges photo border in Photoshop!

Visit our section for more Photoshop tutorials. And don’t forget, all of our Photoshop tutorials are ready to download as !

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How To Pick Skin Colors

You can pick skin colors by using swatches, picking directly from the reference with the Eyedropper Tool , or picking colors as you go. But swatches can be very limiting and since photos are made up of so many pixels, you may pick unfit colors from the reference.

To get a better handle of color theory, learn to pick the colors yourself. Practice picking base tones for your painting using different references to guide you. Try to match them by sight without picking from the photo.

How To Paint Digitally In Photoshop

As an intermediate digital artist, you may be comfortable creating your sketches using an online paint program but perhaps still a little shaky in the ability to add color that stands out or looks realistic. So, whats the best way to improve your skills? And is digital art truly the way to go? Will it be respected in the art world? Lets look at some basic information.

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Various Tool Used To Paint In Photoshop

There are various options available in the options bar to adjust the image. There are various options available for each tool.

1. Mode

Blending Mode tells about the effect of pixels on changing the painting and editing tool. The following terms should be kept in mind while adjusting the blending mode. The base color is the color already present in the image. Blend Color is the color that is to be applied using a painting or editing tool. Result color is the resultant color obtained by blending the image. Blending mode tells how each layer interacts with each layer beneath it. We can link each layer by adjusting the opacity of each layer. Blending modes available are normal, darken, lighten, contrast, comparative, and color.

2. Opacity

This tells about the transparency of color in the image. When the user paints over any area, the opacity level does not increase the set level, no matter the number of times the user had moved the pointer on the specified area until you remove your hand from the mouse button. If you again apply, the color changes will be applied according to the set opacity.

3. Flow

This tale about the rate or speed at which the color is applied to the paint area. When users move over the paint area while holding down the mouse button, the quantity of color applied depends on the flow rate and also on opacity settings.

4. Air Brush

5. Auto Erase

Creating And Using Gradients

A gradient is defined as a blending of shades from light to dark or from one color to another instead of just a solid color. In that respect, a rainbow is a gradient.

To create a gradient, you first need to click on the Gradient tool in the toolbox. It is grouped with the Paint Bucket tool.

Now, go to the Options Bar .

If you want to base the new gradient on an existing one, select the existing gradient from the Presets section, then choose Solid from the Gradient Type drop down menu.

Now it’s time to define the colors of your new gradient. Click on the left color stop under the gradient bar. The gradient bar looks like this:

When you do this, the triangle above the stop turns black. This indicates that the starting point is being edited.

Select the color you want to use by choosing a color from the Stops section.

Next, define the ending color by clicking the right color stop under the gradient bar. Choose the color you want.

Here are some additional tips for creating gradients:

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