Photoshop-Viz: Painting and Drawing Tools

Painting and Drawing Tools

Photoshop has a very rich set of painting and drawing tools. These tools have been in Photoshop since its ﬁrst release, yet they have

evolved greatly over time. The painting and drawing tools have

many uses. To name a few:

•

Fine artists can paint entire works into Photoshop with its

realistic painting system. Using software can be an affordable

alternative to traditional methods, which require more space

and supplies.

•

Comic book colorists can use Photoshop to paint the color into

the inked drawings.

•

FX designers can create background paintings for movie

special effects work. In fact, the co-creator of Photoshop, John

Knoll, is a lead visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and

Magic, the group behind the Star Wars franchise and many

other well-known ﬁlms.

•

Commercial photographers can touch up and enhance photos

using digital tools instead of a traditional airbrush. Nearly

every photo you see in a fashion or entertainment magazine

has undergone some digital touch-up in Photoshop to paint out

imperfections.

These tools appear simple at ﬁrst, and in fact they are. After all,

the technology behind a paintbrush is pretty straightforward.

It’s the skill of the user holding the tool that determines results.

A thorough understanding of the painting and drawing tools

can come in handy while working in many areas of Photoshop.

Whether you use Photoshop for image touch-up or to create origi-

nal images from scratch, be certain to master these tools.

80 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

Working with Color

Working with painting and drawing tools requires you to use

color. Photoshop offers several ﬂexible ways to choose colors. You

can sample a color from an open image, choose a color from a

library, or mix a new color by entering numerical values. Which

method you use depends on a mixture of personal choice and the

job at hand. Let’s explore the different options.

Adobe Color Picker

The Adobe Color Picker is a consistent way to

choose colors while using any Adobe software

program. Both Macintosh and Windows systems

have their own color pickers, but its best to stick

with the standardized Adobe Color Picker be-

cause it is more full-featured and cross-platform.

You can choose a color from a spectrum or

numerically. Use the Adobe Color Picker to set

the Foreground color, Background color, and text

color. Additionally, you can use the colors for

gradients, ﬁlters, or layer styles.

Double-click a color swatch (such as in the toolbox) to open the

Color Picker. In the Adobe Color Picker, you can select colors

based on:

•

Hue, Saturation, Brightness (HSB) color values

Red, Green, Blue (RGB) color values

Lab color values

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key (or Black) (CMYK) color values

Hexadecimal color value

Color Libraries

In some cases, designers need to access speciﬁc colors—those that

come from a particular color and brand of ink. This is most often

to match colors used by a speciﬁc company. For example, McDon-

ald’s always uses the same red on all its printed materials (PMS

485). This helps create a speciﬁc look or identity by branding

based on color.

Working with Color 81

A designer can keep color consistent by speci-

fying Pantone colors. The Pantone Matching

System (PMS) is the most widely accepted color

standard in the printing industry (www.pantone.

com). Each color is assigned a PMS number,

which corresponds to speciﬁc ink or mixing

standard, thus ensuring that a client will get con-

sistent printing results. Accessing Pantone colors

within Photoshop is easy:

1. Activate the Adobe Color Picker by clicking

the Foreground or Background color swatch.

2. Click the Color Libraries button. The Color

Libraries window opens.

3. From the Book menu you must choose

among several options. Always ask your

clients for speciﬁc color information. You can

quickly jump to a speciﬁc color by typing in

its number.

4. When you have a color selected, click OK.

Color Libraries can also be loaded as

color swatches. Just click the submenu

5. Photoshop loads the closest equivalent color

(triangle) in the upper-right corner of

into your color picker. Essentially, the Pan-

tone color will be simulated as accurately as

the Swatches panel. Choose the library

you need from the pop-up menu.

possible by an RGB or CMYK equivalent.

6. If you need to have the exact color for printing, you will need

to make a spot color channel (see the section “Creating spot

color channels”).

VIDEO

TRAINING

Spot Color Channels

Kuler

With Photoshop CS4, you can now access the intuitive tools of

Adobe Kuler to quickly create new color themes. Kuler began

its life as a Web-hosted application for experimenting with color

variations and also allows for the sharing of color themes through

an online community. To view the Kuler panel, choose Window >

Extensions > Kuler.

The Kuler panel is divided into three tabs.

•

About: Introduces you to Kuler and links to the online com-

munity. You can create a free account to store themes as well

as participate in Kuler forums and rate other users’ themes.

82 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

•

Browse: Allows you to

browse thousands of color

themes created by the Kuler

community. Be sure to

check back often because

you can view by criteria

such as the newest, highest

rated, and most popular

themes. You can also search

for themes by tag word, title,

creator, or hex color value.

Create: Allows for the use

of multiple color rules that

are rooted in traditional

design and is one of its best

aspects. Kuler supports

the following color rules:

Analogous, Monochromat-

ic, Triad, Complementary,

Compound, and Shades—all

are based on color theory.

To use a color you create, simply double-click its swatch to

load it as the Foreground color in Photoshop. Across the bot-

VIDEO

TRAINING

Designing with Kuler

tom of the Kuler panel are additional options to save a theme,

store it in the Photoshop Swatches panel, or upload it to the

Kuler community.

Creating spot color channels

While most jobs use a four-color process to simulate colors, you

may need to use a special printing technique called spot colors.

Spot color channels are specialty channels used by a printer to

overprint special inks on top of your image. You can create a new

spot channel based on a selection.

Working with Color 83

1. Open the ﬁle Ch06_Postcard.tif from the Chapter 6 folder

on the CD. This layered TIFF ﬁle has been mostly prepped

for printing at a commercial printer (note that it’s in CMYK

mode). One of the last steps is to specify the spot color ink for

the type.

2. Select the layer Surf - PMS 8883 C.

3. Command/Ctrl-click on the layer mask

thumbnail to create an active selection.

4. Switch to the Channels panel. Command/

Ctrl-click the New Channel button in the

Channels panel.

5. If you made a selection, that area is ﬁlled with

the currently speciﬁed spot color.

6. Click the swatch next to the word Color.

7. Specify a spot color in the Color Libraries

window and click OK. The Spot Channel au-

tomatically takes the name of the spot color.

8. Set Solidity to 100% to simulate the spot

color within your Photoshop ﬁle.

9. Click OK to create the spot color channel.

Eyedropper Tool

The Eyedropper tool lets you sample colors from

an open document. This can be a useful way to

choose colors that work well with an image. Let’s

try out the tool:

1. Open the ﬁle Ch06_Sampler.tif from the

Chapter 6 folder.

2. Select the Eyedropper tool from the Tools

panel or press the keyboard shortcut I.

Using the Eyedropper tool, you can sample the color of the

rooster’s feathers. This can be useful for painting as well as

color correction. For example, you can check the color details

on two different shots of a rooster. You could then adjust color

to make the images match more closely. For more on adjusting

color, see Chapter 10, “Color Correction and Enhancement.”

84 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

3. Adjust the Sample Size in the Options bar:

•

Point Sample: This method reads the

value of a single pixel. It is very sensitive

to clicking because you can have slight

variations in color at the pixel level. For

example, if you clicked on a blue sky, ad-

jacent pixels could vary from each other.

•

3 by 3 Average: This method reads the average value of a

3 × 3 pixel area. This is a more accurate method for select-

ing a color using the Eyedropper tool.

5 by 5 Average: This method reads the average value of

a 5 × 5 pixel area. It creates a more representative color

sample.

The remaining options simply use a larger sample area to

produce an averaged color. The larger sample areas should

be used on higher resolution images.

11 by 11 Average

31 by 31 Average

51 by 51 Average

101 by 101 Average

4. Click the red feathers to set the foreground color.

5. Option/Alt-click the grassy area to set the background color.

Color Panel

The Color panel is another way to access color

without having to load the Adobe Color Picker.

The Color panel shows you the values for the

Foreground and Background colors. You can

quickly mix or pick new colors from within

the panel:

•

You can adjust the sliders to mix a new color.

To change color models, click the panel’s

submenu.

You can click the spectrum across the bottom

of the panel to pick a new color.

Painting Tools 85

The Color panel might display two alerts when you select a color:

•

An exclamation point inside a triangle means the color cannot

be printed using CMYK printing.

•

A cube means the color is not Web-safe for color graphics

viewed on a monitor set to 256 colors.

Swatches Panel

The Swatches panel holds color presets. You can quickly access

frequently used colors by clicking their thumbnails. You can load

preset swatches by clicking the Swatches panel submenu (top-right

arrow). Additionally, Table 6.1 shows several important shortcuts

when working with the Swatches panel.

Table 6.1 Keyboard Shortcuts for the Swatches Panel

Result Macintosh Windows

Create new swatch from Click empty area Click empty area

Foreground color of panel of panel

Select Foreground color Click swatch Click swatch

Select Background color Command-click swatch Ctrl-click swatch

Delete color swatch Option-click swatch Alt-click swatch

Painting Tools

Several tools are available in Photoshop for paint-

ing. While these tools have subtle differences, they

have one important component in common—the

use of Photoshop’s dynamic brush engine. Before

exploring the unique tools, let’s look at how to

control your brushes.

Brushes Panel

The Brushes panel contains several options. Most

of these will be well beyond what you’ll need to

get started. I’ll brieﬂy cover the options, but be

sure to return to this panel as you increase your

skills and conﬁdence.

86 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

Brush presets

Photoshop has several brush presets to get you started right away.

You access these presets from the Brushes panel; several are

loaded and more are in the Photoshop Presets folder. Let’s check

them out.

1. Create a new document. Because this exercise is just for prac-

tice and you won’t be printing the ﬁle, choose the 800 × 600

preset from the New Document dialog box.

VIDEO

TRAINING

Creating Custom Brushes

2. Press D to load the default colors of black and white.

3. Select the standard Brush tool by pressing B.

4. Choose Window > Workspace > Painting to arrange the

Photoshop interface so the most commonly used panels for

painting tasks are visible.

5. Click the Brushes panel tab.

6. Click the words Brush Presets. Photoshop displays a list and

thumbnails of several brush styles.

7. Scroll through the list and choose a style.

CREATING CUSTOM SAMPLED BRUSHES

You can use an image to create a custom brush. This

image can be a scan that you input or a stroke that you

draw using other brushes. Let’s give it a try:

1. Open the ﬁle Ch06_Brushes_to_Sample.tif from

the Chapter 6 folder.

2. Select the ﬁrst brush shape using the Rectangular

Marquee tool. You can sample an image in size up

to 2500 pixels × 2500 pixels.

3. Choose Edit > Deﬁne Brush Preset. A new box

opens for naming the brush.

4. Name the brush and click OK. The brush is added

to the set you currently have loaded in the

Brushes panel.

5. Activate the new brush and paint in a new docu-

ment to experiment with it. You might want to

adjust the Spacing option to your preference.

6. Repeat for the other three brush shapes.

Painting Tools 87

8. Draw a stroke in your blank document to see the brush preset

in action.

9. Repeat using different presets and create strokes to become

familiar with your options.

10. Click the Brushes panel submenu (the triangle in the upper-

right corner) and load a new Brush library.

11. Experiment with these brushes.

12. Load additional presets and continue to become familiar with

your many options.

13. When done, you can restore the default set of brushes. Click

the panel’s submenu and choose Reset Brushes.

Brush Tip Shape

While the brush presets are readily available and

very diverse, they won’t cover all your needs.

Fortunately, Photoshop offers a ﬂexible interface

for customizing existing brushes as well as creat-

ing new ones.

1. Make sure you have the Brush tool selected.

2. Bring the Brushes panel to the forefront and

make it active.

3. Choose a brush preset (from the thumbnail

icons) that you’d like to modify. You can see

the changes in the preview area or click your

test canvas to try out the brush.

You can modify the following brush tip shape op-

tions in the Brushes panel by clicking the words

Brush Tip Shape:

•

Diameter: Controls the size of the selected

brush. You can enter a value in pixels (px) or

drag the slider to a new size.

•

Use Sample Size: Resets the brush to its original diameter.

This is only visible if the brush was created by sampling pixels

(such as part of a photo or a scanned stroke).

•

Flip X: Changes the direction of a brush by ﬂipping it on its

X-axis (essentially making a mirrored image). This is useful if

the brush is asymmetrical.

88 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

•

Flip Y: Flips the brush on its Y-axis.

Angle: Speciﬁes the angle of a brush. This works well for

sampled or elliptical brushes. You can type in a number of

degrees or visually change the angle of the brush by dragging

the arrow in the brush preview interface. You can use angled

brushes to create a chiseled stroke.

Roundness: Speciﬁes the ratio between the short and long

axes. A value of 100% results in a rounder brush, whereas 0%

creates a linear brush. Elliptical shapes can be used to create

natural-looking strokes.

Hardness: Creates brushes with soft edges. This can be useful

to create more natural-looking strokes. You can adjust hard-

ness between 0% (very soft) and 100% (no feathering). You

cannot adjust hardness for sampled brushes.

Spacing: Controls the distance between brush marks when

you create a stroke. You can adjust spacing using the slider or

type in a number. If you deselect the check box, the speed of

your cursor will determine spacing.

Shape Dynamics

To create a more natural brush, you should

adjust the Shape Dynamics of the brush. This

can create natural variances that make the brush

more realistic. The Shape Dynamics option

adjusts the currently selected brush; therefore, be

sure to choose a brush from the Brush Presets or

Brush Tip Shapes area.

VIDEO

TRAINING

Using a Tablet

Painting Tools 89

•

Size Jitter and Control: Specify how much variety Photo-

shop places in the size of the brush (trying to simulate the

natural variation a real brush would produce). You can specify

a total jitter size in percentage. Additionally, you can specify

how to control the jitter from the Control pop-up menu:

•

Off: Select Off if you do not want to limit control over the

size variance of brush marks. The jitter is random.

•

Fade: Allows the brush to taper off (like it ran out of ink

or paint). The brush will get smaller based on a speciﬁed

number of steps. Each step is one mark of the brush tip. If

you specify 15, the brush will fade out in 15 steps.

•

Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, Stylus Wheel,

or Rotation: Let you tie jitter to dif-

ferent features of a pen or stylus. Some

Photoshop users unlock more features by

connecting a stylus and graphics tablet.

The most popular tablet manufacturer is

Wacom (www.wacom.com).

•

Minimum Diameter: Sets a limit on how

much variation in scale can be introduced in

the brush. A 0% value lets the brush shrink

to a diameter of 0, whereas 25% allows the

brush to range from full size to a quarter of

its starting width.

•

Tilt Scale: Ties the amount of scale to the tilt of the pen

(or stylus). You must have a graphics tablet attached to utilize

this feature.

•

Angle Jitter and Control: Specify how much variety in the

angle of the brush can occur. A larger number creates more

variety. The control area ties the jitter to your pen.

•

Roundness Jitter and Control: Introduce jitter into the

roundness of the brush. Additionally, you can control the jitter

with a pen.

•

Minimum Roundness: Limits the amount of jitter.

90 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

Scattering

Enabling Scattering can add variation to the place-

ment of strokes. This can simulate splattering or

wilder strokes. There are a few options to work with:

•

Scatter and Control: Distribute brush

strokes from the center of the click. The

Both Axes option distributes strokes radially.

When the option is deselected, the strokes are

distributed perpendicular to the stroke path.

Count: Speciﬁes the quantity of brush marks

applied at each spacing interval. This option

works in conjunction with the Spacing option

from Brush Tip Shape.

Count Jitter and Control: Specify how

much variety there is in the number of brush

marks for each spacing interval. A high value

will put more brush marks into the stroke.

These properties are controlled in the same

way as Shape jitter.

Texture

You can enable the Texture option to introduce a

pattern into your strokes. This can help simulate

canvas in your texture. Click the pattern sample

to choose from one of the loaded patterns. Click

the triangle menu to open the pattern picker to

choose from the loaded textures. If you’d like to

load additional textures, click the submenu in the

pattern picker to load a built-in texture library.

You can adjust several other options in the win-

dow and examine their effects in the preview area.

Painting Tools 91

Dual Brush

What’s better than one brush? Two, of course. By

using a dual brush, you can use two brush tips

to create a more dynamic brush. When selected,

you’ll have the option of choosing from a thumb-

nail list of presets for the second brush. You’ll

also see several options to modify the brush tip.

You can modify the diameter of the second brush

as well as specify spacing and scatter amounts.

Color Dynamics

By now you might be thinking, those brushes

are pretty dynamic, what else can Photoshop

change? Well, color, of course. When you select

Color Dynamics, you can enable several options

that will produce subtle (or dynamic) variations

in color:

•

Foreground/Background Jitter and

Control: Allow the brush to utilize both the

Foreground and Background colors that you

have loaded. This can create a nice variation

in color by loading lighter and darker shades

of one color as your Foreground and Back-

ground color swatches.

•

Hue Jitter: Allows you to specify how much

variety of color can be introduced. Low val-

ues create a small change in color and higher

values create greater variety.

•

Saturation Jitter: Introduces variation in

the intensity of the selected color.

•

Brightness Jitter: Adds variety in bright-

ness. A low value creates very little change

in the brightness of the color. A higher value

creates greater variations.

92 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

Other Dynamics

The Other Dynamics section offers additional

styles of jitter that can be added:

•

Opacity Jitter and Control: Add variety to

the brush so the opacity varies throughout the

stroke. You can tie the opacity variation to a

pen and tablet for greater control.

Flow Jitter and Control: Affect how paint

ﬂows through the brush. A larger number

means more paint ﬂows through. The default

value is 100%, which creates even strokes. A

lower value causes less ink to be applied with

each stroke.

Other brush options

A few other options can affect your active brush.

These are either enabled (selected) or disabled

(deselected); they have no modiﬁable properties.

•

Noise: Places additional grain into the brush

tip. It works well with soft-tip brushes.

•

Wet Edges: Causes the paint to appear darker at the edge of

the stroke. It simulates the effect of painting with watercolors.

Airbrush: Allows you to simulate a traditional airbrush (a

device that uses pressurized air to spray paint out of a nozzle).

The airbrush applies gradual tones and allows the paint to

build up. You can also access this option by clicking the Air-

brush option in the Options bar.

Smoothing: Produces better curves in your brush strokes

when painting.

Protect Texture: Is a good option to enable if you are using

Texture in your brush strokes. It keeps the pattern and scale

consistent when switching between textured brushes. This will

make your strokes more consistent.

Table 6.2 shows the frequently used Brushes panel keyboard

shortcuts.

Painting Tools 93

Table 6.2 Shortcut Keys for Using the Brushes Panel

Desired Result Macintosh Windows

Decrease/increase brush size [ or ] [ or ]

Decrease/increase brush Shift + [ Shift + [ softness/

hardness in or Shift + ] or Shift + ] 25%

increments

Select previous/next , (comma) or , (comma) or

brush size . (period) . (period)

Display precise crosshair Caps Lock Caps Lock for

brushes

Delete brush Option-click brush Alt-click brush

Rename brush Double-click brush Double-click brush

Toggle Airbrush option Shift + Option + P Shift + Alt + P

Brush Tool

After all this talk of brushes, there are still a few

notable things to say about the Brush tool. Be

sure to look in the Options bar for important

brush controls. From left to right, these options

are the most useful brush controls:

•

Tool Presets: Stores frequently used brush

conﬁgurations for convenient access.

•

Brush Preset Picker: Displays a greatly re-

duced Brushes panel. You can access thumb-

nails of the loaded brushes as well as adjust

diameter and hardness.

•

Mode: Lets you change the blending mode

of your painted strokes. Blending modes

attempt to simulate real-world interactions

between two elements. For example, Multi-

ply allows the strokes to build up, much like

a magic marker. You’ll ﬁnd much more on

blending modes in Chapter 9, “Using Blend-

ing Modes.”

•

Opacity: Affects the opacity of your strokes.

94 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

•

Flow: Reduces the amount of paint ﬂowing to the brush.

Airbrush button: Enables the Airbrush.

Brushes panel button: Toggles visibility of the Brushes panel.

Click it to open the Brushes panel, which gives you greater

control over the brush shape and dynamics.

Pencil Tool

The Pencil tool is similar to the Brush tool. It

shares many of the same options and controls.

The fundamental difference is that it can only be

used to create hard-edged strokes. While there

is a Hardness setting available for some brushes, it does little to

change the stroke.

There is one unique Pencil tool option: Auto Erase. Enabling it via

the Options bar instructs the Pencil tool to erase previously drawn

strokes if you draw over them a second time.

Color Replacement Tool

The Color Replacement tool can replace a se-

lected color with a new, user-speciﬁed color. This

tool was originally positioned as a way to remove

“red eye” from photos. Photoshop CS2 added a

new Red Eye tool speciﬁcally for that purpose, yet the Color Re-

placement tool remains somewhat useful. Let’s try it out:

1. Open the ﬁle Ch06_Color_Replacement.tif from the Chap-

ter 6 folder.

2. Select the Color Replacement tool from the toolbox. It is

nested within the regular Brush tool’s well.

3. Choose a soft brush tip from the Options bar. Leave the Blend-

ing mode set to Color.

4. Select one of the three Sampling options:

•

Continuous: Updates with each drag of the brush.

Once: Requires an initial click. Photoshop replaces the tar-

geted color only in areas that closely match the initial click.

Painting Tools 95

•

Background Swatch: Requires you to change the back-

ground color swatch. You can do this by choosing the

ALTERNATIVE COLOR

REPLACEMENT

Eyedropper (I) and Option/Alt-clicking on a color in your

document. Photoshop then replaces only areas containing

The Color Replacement tool

the current background color.

is effective but using it can

For this image, let’s use the Once option.

be a bit time-consuming. An

effective alternative is to use

5. You can place additional color replacement limits using alter-

the Color Range command

natives in the Options bar:

(Select > Color Range). This

•

Discontiguous: Replaces the sampled color in all places

that it occurs in the whole image.

command allows you to select

a color, and then add addi-

tional colors to the selection.

•

Contiguous: Requires that colors are contiguous to, or

touching, the color immediately under the pointer.

When combined with a Hue/

Saturation adjustment layer,

•

Find Edges: Attempts to replace color while preserving

the sharpness in the detail of the edges.

it is truly effective. For more

on this useful tool, be sure to

see Chapter 5, “Selection Tools

For this image, let’s use the Find Edges option to get more of

and Techniques.”

the colors.

6. Enter Tolerance as a percentage (between 0 to 100%). Lower

values require the colors to be very similar to the pixels you

click. Higher values have a greater tolerance and will modify

more colors. For this image, let’s go toward the middle of the

road with a setting of 50%.

7. Select the Anti-alias check box to reduce any fringe in the

color-corrected regions.

8. Choose a Foreground color to replace the

unwanted color. For this image, you’ll change

the green balloon ﬁrst, and then make all the

balloons purple.

9. Zoom into the image near the green balloon.

10. Click and start to paint; be careful not to get

too close to the edges.

11. Some spotting may occur, so you’ll need to

click in the center of any spotting and paint

additional strokes.

12. When you complete the ﬁrst balloon, move

on to the other balloons and paint them in

as well.

96 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

History Brush Tool

The History Brush is easy to use but a little hard to understand at

ﬁrst. Essentially, it allows you to paint backward in time. This can

be very useful because it enables you to combine the current state

of an image with an earlier state. For example, you can process an

image with a stylizing ﬁlter, and then restore part of the image to

its original state.

The History Brush is directly tied to your History panel. This useful

panel shows you each action you have taken on an image. You can

then move backward through your undos by clicking them. By de-

fault you have 20 levels of undo, but you can change this setting by

increasing the number of History States in your general preferences.

Let’s put the History panel and History Brush into action:

1. Choose Window > History to activate the History panel.

2. Open the ﬁle Ch06_History_Brush.tif from the Chapter 6 folder.

3. Use the Color Range command to select the wooden box.

4. You’ll now run a Brush Stroke ﬁlter to stylize part of the image.

You can use Filters to create special effects in an image. (For

more on ﬁlters, see Chapter 14, “Maximizing Filters”). Choose

Filter > Brush Strokes > Sumi-e. Adjust the sliders to your

preference. Click OK to apply the ﬁlter.

Painting Tools 97

5. Choose Select > Inverse to select the vegetables in the photo.

6. Choose Filter > Brush Strokes > Angled Strokes. The default

settings are ﬁne for this purpose (but feel free to adjust as

needed). Click OK to apply the ﬁlter.

7. Choose Select > Deselect to clear the active selection.

8. Examine the image and the History panel. The image looks

more like a painting at this point, but some key areas (like the

ends of the squash) are too heavily stylized.

98 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

9. The History panel shows you all the actions you have per-

formed on the open image.

10. Look at the top of the History panel to see a snapshot of the

document. It was automatically created when the document

was ﬁrst opened. The brush icon next to it indicates that it has

been set as the source for the History Brush.

11. Choose the History Brush from the toolbox or press Y. Be sure

to not choose the Art History Brush.

12. Select a soft-edged brush sized at approximately 70 pixels.

13. Paint in the ends and tops of the vegetables to restore the origi-

nal details.

14. Try lowering the Opacity to 25% and paint in additional de-

tails of the original image.

The History Brush can be very useful when either ﬁltering an

image or performing color correction tasks. It allows you to selec-

tively paint back in time to restore lost or important details.

Painting Tools 99

MORE SNAPSHOTS

Snapshots can also be used as “digital breadcrumbs” so you can ﬁnd

your way back to earlier versions of the image. You can add more snap-

shots so you can quickly jump back to speciﬁc points in time by:

• Clicking the Create new snapshot button (camera icon) at the bot-

tom of the History panel.

• Changing the preferences for the History panel. Click the submenu

icon for the History panel and choose History Options. You can

choose to Automatically Create New Snapshot When Saving.

Remember, History States and snapshots are temporary. When you

close the open document, they are discarded.

Art History Brush Tool

Ofﬁcially, you can use the Art History Brush

tool to create stylized paintings. Unofﬁcially, it

doesn’t work very well. The Art History Brush

tool is very similar in setup to the regular His-

tory Brush. It requires you to select a snapshot to

paint from. If you’d like to try this tool out:

1. Open the image Ch06_Art_History.tif from

the Chapter 6 folder.

2. In the History panel, choose a Snapshot or History State to use.

3. Select the Art History Brush tool from the Tools panel.

4. Select a small, soft brush from the Brush

Presets picker.

5. Choose a method from the Style pop-up

menu. There are ten methods to choose from;

those with the word tight in their name work

better than those with loose in their name.

6. Set the area number to a low value. This

reduces the number of strokes and gives you

better control over the tool.

7. For Tolerance, enter a low value (less than 30%) to constrain

the strokes to a tighter area.

100 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

8. Drag in the image to paint.

What you should see could be loosely called “impressionistic.”

Chances are this tool won’t become part of your regular workﬂow.

PAINTING ALTERNATIVES

If you are looking for a solid alternative to create digital paintings,

you might want to check into some other programs. The following two

programs have downloadable demos that you can try out:

• Studio Artist: www.synthetik.com

• Painter: www.corel.com

Paint Bucket Tool

The Paint Bucket tool allows you to quickly ﬁll an area of adjacent

pixels with a new color. The command is fast but not extremely ac-

curate. The Paint Bucket tool works similarly to the Magic Wand

tool, but instead of creating a selection, it ﬁlls

with a color. The Paint Bucket tool works well if

you have an easy to select area but not well on

complex images.

Let’s try it out:

1. Open the ﬁle Ch06_Paint_Bucket.tif from the

Chapter 6 folder.

2. Select the Paint Bucket (G) tool from the

toolbox.

3. Load purple as your Foreground color.

4. Set the Tolerance setting to 90. A high toler-

ance ﬁlls more pixels within a broader range

on the ﬁrst click.

5. To make a smoother selection, make sure the

Anti-aliased check box is selected.

6. Click with the Paint Bucket tool on the red

helmet. The colors will change but will look

ﬂat and unnatural.

7. Choose Edit > Undo and go back to before

using the Paint Bucket.

Painting Tools 101

8. In the Options bar, change the Paint Bucket’s

Blending mode to Color. This will paint with

the color you’ve selected but blend it with the

existing luminance and saturation values.

Working with Gradients

A gradient is a gradual blend between two or more

colors. You can use gradients to create a photoreal-

istic backdrop or to draw in areas like a blown-out

sky. The Gradient tool is extremely ﬂexible and

offers the versatile Gradient Editor for creating

custom gradients. Before you utilize the Gradient

tool, let’s explore how gradients are formed.

Gradient Editor

All gradients are edited using the Gradient Edi-

tor (which becomes available when you activate

the Gradient tool). To access it, click the thumb-

nail of the gradient in the Options bar.

•

Presets: You have several preset gradients

to choose from, and you can browse them by

thumbnail. Additionally, you can load other

gradients by clicking the panel’s submenu.

•

Name: Naming each gradient can make

gradients easier to sort through.

•

Gradient Type: The two major categories of

gradients are Solid and Noise. Solid gradi-

ents use color and opacity stops with gradual

blends in between. Noise gradients contain

randomly distributed colors within a user-

speciﬁed range. Each has a unique interface.

102 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

Solid Editor

Solid gradients blend from one color to another, providing a tradi-

tional gradient type.

•

Smoothness: This option controls the rate

at which the colors blend. You can set it to be

gradual or steep. The larger the number, the

more Photoshop optimizes the appearance of

the blend.

Opacity stops: A gradient can contain

blends between opacity values. To add a stop,

click in an empty area on the top of the gradi-

ent spectrum. To adjust a stop, click it, and

then modify the Opacity ﬁeld.

•

Color stops: A simple gradient contains only two colors.

However, you might want to use a more complex gradient in

your project. You can click below the gradient to add another

color stop. Double-click a stop to edit its color with the Adobe

VIDEO

TRAINING

Designing Custom

Gradients

•

Color Picker.

Stop Editor: Selected gradient stops can be adjusted numeri-

cally. You can edit the opacity, color, and location (0–100%,

read left to right.)

•

Midpoint: Between stops are midpoints. By default the mid-

point is halfway between two stops. You can adjust the mid-

point to shift the balance of the gradient.

Noise Editor

Noise gradients use a speciﬁed range of color to

create noise. These gradients do not blend smooth-

ly between colors but rather create a new gradient

each time you click the Randomize button.

•

Roughness: Noise gradients use a rough-

ness setting to determine how many different

colors are used to create noise.

Color Model: You can choose between three

models: Red-Green-Blue, Hue-Saturation-

Brightness, or Lab.

Painting Tools 103

•

Color Range sliders: Adjust the range of colors available to

the gradient. Bring the black and white sliders closer together

to limit the amount of color present in the noise gradient.

•

Options: You can choose to further restrict colors as well as

introduce random transparency. To create a new gradient,

click the Randomize button. Every time you click, a new gradi-

ent is generated.

•

New button: To add a gradient to the Presets window, type a

name into the Name ﬁeld, and then click the New button. This

new gradient is not yet permanently saved but is stored tem-

porarily in the Preferences ﬁle. You must click the Save button

and navigate to your Presets folder (inside the Photoshop

application folder). Be sure to append the ﬁlename with .grd to

inform Photoshop that it is a gradient set.

Gradient Tool

You can use the Gradient tool

to manually draw a gradient on

a layer. To access the Gradient

tool, select it from the Tools

panel or press G. The Paint

Bucket shares the same well

as the Gradient tool, so if you

don’t ﬁnd the Gradient tool,

press Shift+G to cycle through

your tools.

The Gradient tool can use any gradient you create in the Gradi-

ent Editor or from the Presets menu. To select a gradient, you

can choose from those available in the Options bar. You can also

load preset libraries or manually load gradients by accessing the

panel’s submenu.

104 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

You must choose one of these ﬁve methods to build your gradient:

•

Linear Gradient (A): Blends from the starting point to the

ending point in a straight line.

Radial Gradient (B): Blends from the starting point to the

ending point in a circular pattern.

Angle Gradient (C): Blends in a counterclockwise sweep

from the starting point.

Reﬂected Gradient (D): Blends symmetrically on both sides

of the starting point.

Diamond Gradient (E): Blends in a diamond-shaped pattern

outward from the starting point.

You have a few available options to further modify the gradient:

•

You can specify a blending mode to affect how the gradient is ap-

plied to the layer. (For more on blending modes, see Chapter 9.)

To reverse the direction of colors in the gradient, select the

Reverse check box.

To create a visually smoother blend by adding noise, select the

Dither check box.

To use a gradient’s built-in transparency, select the Transpar-

ency check box.

Let’s use the Gradient tool to ﬁx a common prob-

lem, a washed out sky:

1. Open the ﬁle Ch06_Grad_Sky.tif from the

Chapter 6 folder.

2. Choose Select > Color Range to create an

active selection in the sky area. Adjust Fuzzi-

ness to get a gentle selection.

3. Load a dark blue as your Foreground color

and a lighter blue as your Background color.

You can try to select colors from the existing

sky to make your gradient believable.

Painting Tools 105

4. Choose the Gradient tool and select a Linear

Gradient.

5. Select the Foreground to Background gradi-

ent from your preset list (it’s the ﬁrst one).

6. Click at the top of the sky and drag down

toward the rocks.

The sky should look more natural now with

greater variation in colors. If your sky has a lot

of texture in it, try setting the Gradient tool to

Color mode before drawing.

GRADIENT MAPS OFFER UNIQUE COLOR

Gradient Maps are another way to

harness the power of gradients to

enhance an image. The Gradient

Map can be applied as an adjust-

ment layer or image adjustment

command (stick with the adjust-

ment layer for greater ﬂexibility).

You can create a new Gradient

Map by choosing Layer > New Ad-

justment Layer > Gradient Map.

The Gradient Map will map a new gradient to the grayscale range of an im-

age. A two-color gradient produces a nice duotone effect. Shadows map to

one of the color stops of the gradient ﬁll; highlights map to the other. The

midtones map to the gradations in between. A multicolored gradient or

noise gradient can add interesting colors to an image. This is an effective

technique for colorizing textures or photos.

Open the ﬁle Ch06_Gradient_Map_Demo.psd to see Gradient Maps in action.

Turn on each map one at a time to see the effect. By using blending modes in

conjunction with the Gradient Map, you can get a more pleasant effect.

106 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

Eraser Tools

Photoshop offers three kinds of Eraser tools

to complement your drawing tools. Even though

these tools have a purpose, you should quickly

move beyond them because they often produce

crude edges in the erased area that lower the

quality of your project.

The three options include:

•

Eraser tool: This tool deletes pixels as you drag over them.

On a layer they are replaced with transparency. On a Back-

ground, the pixels are replaced with your Background color.

To use, just drag through the area you want to erase.

Background Eraser tool: This tool is designed to help

erase the background from an image. The difference between

foreground and background in the image must be very clear

and high contrast. This tool is signiﬁcantly less ﬂexible than

the technique of layer masking, which is covered in Chapter 7,

“Layer Masking.”

Magic Eraser tool: This tool is most similar to the Paint

Bucket tool in that it attempts to select and modify similar pix-

els under your click point. Instead of ﬁlling those pixels with a

color, however, the Magic Eraser tool deletes them.

From years of personal experience, I strongly suggest avoiding the

Eraser tools. These three tools are relatively primitive in their ap-

proach to selecting pixels for deletion. Additionally, the erasers are

permanent—the discarded pixels are gone for good. It bears repeat-

ing: If you have anything beyond a basic image that you need to

extract from its background, the answer is layer masking, which is

covered in depth in Chapter 7.

Drawing Tools

Even though Photoshop is best known as a pixel-based (or raster)

program, it does have a respectable set of vector drawing tools.

Vector graphics are made up of mathematically deﬁned lines and

curves. Vector graphics are resolution-independent, because they

can be scaled and repositioned with no loss of quality. Vector

Drawing Tools 107

graphics are a good choice for creating shapes (such as rect-

angles, circles, or polygons) within your Photoshop document.

The added beneﬁt to using the drawing tools is that you can then

scale the shapes and modify the design while still maintaining a

crisp image.

Choosing the Right Drawing Tool

Photoshop offers six shape tools. They can

be used to create vector shapes, vector paths

(which can be used to make a selection), or raster

shapes. The following list explains how to change

how the shape tools work:

•

Rectangle tool: The Rectangle tool draws

rectangles; if you hold down the Shift key, it

draws squares.

•

Rounded Rectangle tool: The Rounded

Rectangle tool is well suited for drawing but-

tons for Web sites. Adjust the Radius setting

to modify the amount of curvature.

•

Ellipse tool: The Ellipse tool draws ellipses; if you hold down

the Shift key, it draws circles.

•

Polygon tool: The Polygon tool creates polygons. The fewest

number of sides a polygon can have is three (which is a tri-

angle). The most complex polygon you can create is a hectagon

(a 100-sided ﬁgure). Enter the number of sides in the Options

bar. Additionally, the Polygon tool can be used to create stars

by clicking the Geometry Options button in the Options bar.

•

Line tool: The Line tool draws lines. Specify a thickness in

the Options bar. The line can be between 1 and 1000 pixels in

width. You can also choose to add arrowheads by clicking the

Geometry Options button in the Options bar.

•

Custom Shape tool: The Custom Shape tool is very versa-

tile. There are several shapes built into Photoshop. These can

be extremely useful during the design process. To view your

loaded shapes, click the drop-down Custom Shape Picker.

Additional shapes can be loaded by clicking the submenu in

the Custom Shape Picker. Choose from the built-in libraries or

108 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

Loading Custom Shapes

Thousands of free shapes are available to download for Photoshop.

An Internet search using the keywords “Photoshop,” “Free,” and

“Custom Shapes” returns plenty of great results. You can choose to

load these custom shapes temporarily or add them to your preset list.

Temporary load:

1. From the Custom Shape Picker, click the submenu.

2. Choose Load Shapes.

3. Navigate to the desired shape library (it should end in the

extension .csh).

4. Select the shape and click OK.

5. You can choose to Replace the current shapes or Append the

new shapes to the end of the old list.

Load into Presets:

1. Navigate to your Photoshop application folder.

2. Open the Presets folder.

3. Open the Custom Shapes folder.

4. Copy the custom shapes ﬁles into the Custom Shapes folder. Be

sure the shapes are not compressed (such as a .sit or .zip ﬁle).

5. Restart Photoshop; the presets will be loaded into the submenu

in the Custom Shape Picker.

CREATING CUSTOM SHAPES

You can create custom shapes and save them for future use:

1. Create a shape with the Pen tool or paste one into Photoshop from

Adobe Illustrator.

2. Select the Paths panel, and then select a path. It can be a vector

mask from a shape layer, a work path, or a saved path.

3. Choose Edit > Deﬁne Custom Shape.

4. Enter a descriptive name for the new custom shape in the Shape

Name dialog box. The new shape now appears in the Shape pop-up

panel, which can be quickly accessed from the Options bar.

5. If you’d like to permanently save the shape by adding it to a library,

choose Save Shapes from the submenu in the Custom Shape Picker.

Drawing Tools 109

Drawing Shapes

Using the Shape tools is very similar to using the Marquee tools.

In fact, the same shortcut keys apply: Holding down the Option/

Alt key after you start drawing causes the shape to draw from the

center of the initial click, whereas holding down the Shift key con-

strains the width and height to preserve a constant ratio.

Let’s try using the Shape tools:

1. Create a new RGB document sized at

1024 × 768 pixels. Fill the Background

Contents to Transparent. Name the

document Playing Card.

2. Select the Rounded Rectangular Shape tool.

Set the Radius to 10 pixels.

3. In the Options bar, choose to create a Shape

Layer and set the ﬁll to White.

4. Click and draw a rectangle in the shape of a

playing card.

5. Choose the Custom Shape tool. Open the

Custom Shape Picker and select the Heart

shape. If it is not visible, choose Reset Shapes

to load the default set.

6. In the Options bar, set the ﬁll color to red.

7. Draw a large heart in the center of the card

(hold down the Shift key to constrain its pro-

portions).

8. Use the Alignment tools to center the heart in

the middle of the card. Select both layers in

the Layers panel. Activate the Move tool and

choose the Horizontal and Vertical Align-

ment buttons in the Options bar.

9. Draw a heart icon near the upper-left corner of

the card. Leave room for a letter A (for Ace ).

110 Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing Tools

10. Press Command/Ctrl+J to

duplicate the current heart

layer. Move it to the lower-

right corner. Invoke the Free

Transform command and

rotate the heart 180˚.

11. Press T to select the Type

tool. In the Options bar

choose a font such as New

York or Palatino. Set the

style to Bold, the size to 100

pt, and the color to Red.

12. Click in the upper-left cor-

ner and add the letter A.

13. Press Command/Ctrl+J to duplicate the current “A” layer.

Move it to the lower-right corner. Invoke the Free Transform

command and rotate the A 180˚.

If you’d like to look at the completed project, open the ﬁle Ch06_

Playing_Card.psd and check it out.

THREE KINDS OF SHAPES

You can use the Shape tools

to create shapes in three

different ways:

• Shape Layers: Creates a shape on a separate layer. A shape layer

has a ﬁll layer that deﬁnes the color and a linked vector mask that

deﬁnes the shape.

• Paths: Draws a work path on the current layer. This path can then

be used to make a selection. It can also be used to create a vector

mask, or it can be ﬁlled or stroked. Paths appear in the Paths panel.

• Fill Pixels: Paints directly on the active layer. It makes the Shape

tools perform like Paint tools. In this mode you create raster, not

vector, graphics.