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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. |