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Photoshop 7's new Brushes palette is far more
than simply a place to pick a brush. You have incredible control
over the size, shape, and \behavior of the brush. The Brush Tip
Shape pane of the Brushes palette is one of the keys.
The Brush Tip Shape pane includes thumbnails of
the brushes currently loaded in the palette. Click on a
thumbnail to select the brush. You can then modify the diameter,
angle, roundness, hardness, and spacing values using sliders.
You can also modify the roundness (top) and
angle (middle) by dragging in the preview. The Hardness slider
determines feathering for the brush tip. It is only available
for round brushes. When a custom or square brush is selected,
the Use Sample Size button is visible. When not grayed out, you
can click it to reset the brush to the size at which it was
designed.
When experimenting with the various brush
capabilities, it's easiest to see what each does when you
disable all others. For example, when determining optimal
spacing for a brush tip, uncheck the dynamics options in the
Brushes palette.
The Spacing variable determines the distance
between instances of the brush tip. Rather than a continuous
flow of ink from a pen, think of Photoshop's brushes as a series
of imprints of the brush tip. When the brush tip instances are
very closely spaced, they overlap and you see what appears to be
a continuous line of color. When spacing is increased, the you
see the individual instances. (From the top, three identical
paths are stroked with a 55-pixel hard round brush with spacing
of 1%, 40%, and 83%.)
When the Spacing option is turned off in the
Brush Tip Shape pane of the Brushes palette, the spacing is
governed by the speed of your drag. the faster you drag, the
greater the spacing. (As indicated, the mouse was dragged at
increasing speed through the curves.)
CONTROLLING THE DYNAMIC OPTIONS
Before discussing the additional Brushes palette options, an
explanation of the Control pop-up menus is appropriate. Many of
the options explained in the following sections are "dynamic"
options - they produce variations in the brush as the brush is
used. The variety of brush instances adds a randomness to the
stroke that would be time-consuming to create manually. You can
use the Fade option to taper-off the effect on the brush.
Photoshop 7 enables you to exercise even more control over the
"randomness" of the variations when you use a drawing tablet.
OFF
When Control is set to Off, Photoshop applies the selected
jitter randomly and throughout the length of the brush stroke.
The stroke is unregulated.
FADE
Fade is available with or without a pressure-sensitive tablet.
When Fade is selected, the field immediately to the right of the
Control menu is active. You specify a value between 1 and 9999.
If you set a jitter slider to 0% and specify a value, the Fade
command specifies either the value to which the stroke fades or
when the specific jitter ends along the stroke.
All three examples use the same brush and Fade
set to 25. Only one jitter option is active for each sample. The
only difference among the three strokes shown is the one jitter
setting. The brush uses the same tip and a Spacing of 100% to
best illustrate the differences among the effects of the Fade
setting.
• The top sample shows Size Jitter set to 25%,
with a minimum diameter of 50%. Note that the fade option forces
the brush tip size to the 50% diameter after 25 instances of the
brush.
• The middle sample shows a stroke with the
Angle Jitter set to 0% and Control set to Fade, 25. The brush
tip "angles" 360 degrees over the first 25 instances. After
completing the selected jitter, the stroke returns to its
original appearance for the 26th instance and beyond.
• The bottom stroke has Roundness Jitter set to
0%, Fade at 25 as the Control, and a Minimum Roundness setting
of 20%. Like the top example, the stroke reaches the desired
Roundness (20%) after 25 instances.
For the first and third examples, the Fade
field's value represents the number of instances the stroke uses
to reach the value specified for the jitter. In the middle
example, the stroke uses the number entered in the Fade field as
the extent or duration of the jitter.
PEN PRESSURE
The Pen Pressure option is used with a pressure-sensitive
tablet, such as those from Wacom. Increasing the pressure of the
stylus on the tablet decreases the amount of jitter - the
greater the push of the pen, the less the variation of the
stroke. This image shows examples of Size, Angle, and Roundness
Jitter with Pen Pressure activated. (In all three examples, the
pen pressure is light on the ends and heavy in the middle.)
PEN TILT
Pen Tilt reads the angle of the stylus on the tablet rather than
the pressure to adjust the jitter. It is especially useful for
airbrush artists using the Brush tool with the Airbrush option.
STYLUS WHEEL
Some tablet accessories, such as Wacom's Intuous and Intuous2
Airbrushes, include a fingerwheel. When available, the wheel can
be used to regulate the amount of variation with Stylus Wheel
selected in the Control pop-up menu.
INITIAL DIRECTION
Available for the Angle Jitter option only, the Initial
Direction option determines the orientation of the brush
instances as you drag. In the next image, the settings are
identical for both samples. The Angle Jitter is set to 25%,
constraining the brush angles to -90 degrees to +90 degrees. The
top sample, created from left to right, varies the angle in
relation to the top of the page. The lower sample, dragged from
right to left, reverses the orientation.
The 25% setting for Angle Jitter restricts the
brush tip angle to one-quarter of a circle (90 degrees) in
either direction from the original brush orientation.
DIRECTION
Also available for the Angle Jitter option only, The Direction
control orients the brush tip to the path rather than to the
page. In these examples, the Angle Jitter is set to 0% to best
show the orientation of the brush to the paths.
The initial direction of drag when using
Direction determines which way the brush tip instances will be
pointed. The two examples in to the right illustrate the
difference.
TIP: Using Angle Jitter 0% and Control:
Direction keeps the brush tip oriented to the path. This is a
great way to use custom brushes to draw dashed lines, borders,
dividing lines, even such things as railroad tracks and roads. |