Painting In Photoshop CS4

This entry is part 8 of 18 in the series Photo Shop CS4 Tutorials

Techniques Used In Painting

You can also create or change images in Photoshop CS4 with paint brushes and colors. The brushes can also be used as a healing brush and to erase things that you don’t want or need.
Painting In Photoshop CS4

Select Edit, Preferences, and Displays & Cursors in order to adjust the display. This will allow you to see the various painting tool sizes while you use them for your image. Choose the brush size you need for your image.
Select an area that you wish to paint and mark it. You have to do this because it prevents the part that is not selected from being painted. However, if you decide to paint the whole thing, then nothing should be selected.

Black is the default color for the foreground and white is the default color for the background. When you use the paint brushes in Photoshop CS4, they will use the current foreground color. To change foreground and background colors, you can type the letter X or select the double sided arrow. If you want the black and white colors, type the letter D. You can also choose a new color by selecting the foreground color from the tool box.

Another way to choose colors is by using the swatches palette or the color bar. You can also choose the Eyedropper tool. Any of these can be use to change the colors to what you want for your image.

Painting Tools In Photoshop CS4
•    Paintbrush – Select the paintbrush picture from the toolbox. If you need to, use the other options to change the size of the paintbrush. Use the drag method for the image or part of the image that will be painted. If you want to create straight lines, as you’re dragging, hold down the Shift key.
•    Eraser – The eraser gets rid of the background color if the process is done on the background layer. There are several types of erasers to use from the Eraser tool. You can choose pencil, airbrush, paintbrush or block. When you need to erase, use the dragging method on the image. It’s a good idea to have a copy of your work in the event you accidentally erase something you shouldn’t have.
•    Paint Bucket – The Paint Bucket is used to fill in areas that are close to where you have selected pixels. If you don’t want to have transparent spots filled, make sure that “Preserve Transparency” is checked. Select the Paint Bucket tool and in the Options bar, choose a tolerance value. Select the part of the image that will be filled with the Paint Bucket.

Photoshop CS4 Brushes

When using brushes in Photoshop CS4, you can paint and draw on images. This is one of the main parts of graphic design with this software. When you are learning how to use brushes, the skill is not something that you can catch on to overnight. It will take some work and some practice to get it the way it’s supposed to be. Once you get the hang of it, using the brushes will become a piece of cake.

Using a photo in Photoshop CS4, select Layer from the menu and choose New Layer. When you are implementing different elements to each photo, you should always use a new layer. Doing this can make it easier for you as far as editing is concerned.

In the main tool menu, select the Brush icon and choose Brush Tool. Select the paintbrush icon and choose one of three components (Airbrush, Paintbrush or Spray Paint). Depending on what effect you want, choose Airbrush for a light brush effect, choose Paintbrush for a solid brush effect and Spray Paint for a spray paint brush effect.

Choose the brush size you need by selecting Brush Size in the pull down menu. You will also need to choose the type of stroke that you will use. Choose the style that you want by selecting the Mode menu. A good suggestion is to use “Normal” because that is what most people use. Photoshop CS4 provides plenty of brushes for you to use. However, if you need more, there are plenty of websites that offer them. You can combine the brushes along with a graphic jr.com tablet to have a more realistic painting experience with much more precision.

In order to determine how dark you want your brushstrokes to be, you will need to use the “Opacity” arrow. You will use the sliding control to choose between 0 to 100%. There is also a sliding control to determine how much flow in regard to using your brushstrokes for color.

In order to use the eyedropper, select the Color Box. You can use the color scale until you get the color that you want. To use the color with your brush, use the left click on your mouse. When you need to add another element, you will need to add a new layer. See how it looks and if you don’t like it, you can always delete the layer.

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