In addition to the settings of diameter and hardness, Photoshop also provides very detailed settings for brushes, which makes the brushes rich and colorful, rather than just the simple effects we saw earlier. The shortcut key 〖F5〗 can bring up the brush palette. Note that this brush palette has no dependency on the brush tool. This is the detailed setting palette for the brush. In fact, it should be more appropriately named the Brush Palette.
Click "Brush Tip Shape" on the left side of the Brush palette. If any of the following options (such as Shape Dynamics) are checked, uncheck them all first. Then select the 9 pixel brush in the brush preset list. As shown below. From this we see the familiar diameter and hardness, which serve the same purpose as those we have encountered before, controlling size and edge feathering.
The wavy line at the bottom is a preview of the brush effect, which is equivalent to the effect of drawing a stroke in the image. Whenever we change the settings, this preview will also change.
0321 Now look at the spacing option under the hardness. The current value is 25%. What does this mean?
In fact, the brush we used earlier can be seen as being made up of many dots arranged. If we set the spacing to 100%, we can see the dots arranged end to end, as shown on the left below. If it is set to 200%, you will see that there is a clear gap between the dots, and the gap is just enough to place another dot. As shown below on the right. It can be seen from this that the distance is actually the distance between the centers of each two dots. The larger the distance, the greater the distance between the dots.
So why didn’t we feel that it was composed of dots when we drew the straight line before?
That's because the spacing value is a percentage, and the reference for the percentage is the diameter of the brush. When the diameter itself is small, the distance between the dots calculated by this percentage is also small and therefore not noticeable. When the diameter is large, the distance calculated by this percentage is also large, and the effect of the dots becomes obvious.
We can do a comparison experiment, maintain a spacing of 25%, set the diameter to 9 pixels and 90 pixels respectively, and then draw a straight line in the image, and then compare their edges. As shown below on the left. You can see that the edge of the first straight line is smooth, while the edge of the second straight line clearly has arcs. These arcs are composed of the outer edges of many dots, as shown in the right picture below.
Because of this, the spacing should be appropriately reduced when using larger brushes.
But the spacing distance is minimum 1%, and the brush diameter can be up to 2500 pixels. Then when the brush diameter is 2500 pixels, the minimum spacing between the dots reaches 25 pixels, which looks very obvious. If you encounter such a situation, just draw a large rectangle instead.
It should be noted that if the spacing option is turned off, the distance between the dots will be based on the speed of mouse dragging. The dots will be denser in slow places and sparse in fast places.
Before 0322, the brush we used was a perfect circle. Now with an additional roundness control, we can set the brush shape to an ellipse. Roundness is also a percentage, representing the ratio of the length and diameter of an ellipse. At 100%, it is a perfect circle, and at 0%, the ellipse has the flattest shape. The angle is the tilt angle of the ellipse. When the roundness is 100%, the angle is meaningless, because a perfect circle will look the same no matter how it is tilted.
In addition to entering numerical values to change, you can also drag two control points (red arrows) in the schematic diagram to change the roundness, and click and drag anywhere in the schematic diagram to change the angle.
After using Flip X and Flip Y, although the angle and roundness remain unchanged in the settings, the shape of the brush will change in actual drawing. As shown in the left picture below, the horizontal direction is the effect of flipping X, and the vertical direction is the effect of flipping Y.
0323 It seems that the two flipping effects are the same, both are rotated at a certain angle, but in fact they are not. Flip and rotation are two completely different concepts. As shown in the picture on the right below, if you carefully observe the positions of the three red, green, and blue points on the edge of the ellipse after flipping, you will understand that this is not something that rotation can do. Flip is also called mirroring. Draw the ellipse in the upper left corner of the picture above on paper, then take a mirror and place it at the two thin lines in the picture. The scene you see in the mirror is a mirror image. You can do it yourself and see if the image looks like the picture above.
We talked about the brush spacing issue before, and this spacing is somewhat special under ellipses. We set a brush with a diameter of 20 pixels, an angle of 15, a roundness of 50%, and a spacing of 200%. Hold down the SHIFT key to draw an effect similar to the picture on the left below. I see that the distance between the two straight line brushes is different. Why is this?
Because the ellipse has two standard drawing radii (diameter), one is the longest and the other is the shortest, which are called the long radius (diameter) and the short radius (diameter). The brush spacing is the distance between the centers of the two dots before and after, and this distance is based on the short radius (diameter) as the standard. Note that the spacing we set is 200%. If the long diameter of the ellipse is 10 pixels and the short diameter is 5 pixels, the distance between the centers of the brush dots is 5x200%=10 pixels. At this time, if you draw along the long diameter of the ellipse, you will see that the origins are connected head to tail, because the 10-pixel center distance between the dots is equal to the 10-pixel long diameter of the ellipse itself. Only when drawing along the short diameter direction can you really see the 200% spacing effect. As shown in the middle picture below, the two straight lines in the preview are the long and short diameters of the ellipse, and the left picture is drawn roughly along the direction of these two straight lines.
If the roundness is set larger, such as 60%, then it will be impossible to draw connecting or overlapping dots with a spacing of 200%. As shown below on the right.
If they are to be connected end-to-end along the long radius, then the roundness multiplied by the spacing must equal 1. If it is greater than 1, it will be separated. If it is less than 1, the brush dots will overlap.
Therefore, when the brush is an ellipse, the actual spacing drawn may be smaller than the set spacing size. When the brush is a perfect circle, since the length and diameter are equal, this situation will not occur. To ensure that the brush spacing is equal in any direction, it must be a perfect circle brush.
In addition to perfect circles and ellipses, we will also learn to use arbitrary shapes as brushes in the future.
0324Now let's take a look at the shape dynamics in the brush settings. First set the spacing to 150% in the nib shape settings. Then click the "Shape Dynamics" option, set the size jitter to 100%, control selection off (you can also select pen pressure if you don't have a drawing tablet device), and select 0% for minimum diameter, angle and roundness. As shown below on the left. You will see the effect as shown in the middle picture below. The so-called jitter means randomness, and the so-called randomness means irregularity. For example, if it is a random single digit, then this number may be 1, 8, or 3, which is completely irregular. Just like when you drop the sand in your hand on the ground, the landing point of the sand grains is random, and the random numbers are unpredictable.
Then the size jitter means the size is random, which means that the diameter of the brush changes irregularly. Therefore, we see that some dots are large and some are small, and there is no change pattern. If you use this brush to draw multiple times, the effect will not be exactly the same each time.
Here we set the spacing to 150% in order to better see the effect of the change in brush dot size. If the spacing is set to the standard 25%, then the effect will be as shown on the right below. Looks a bit like a frayed seal edge.
The larger the value of size jitter (random), the more obvious the effect of jitter (random) is. The greater the size contrast between the brush dots. This percentage is the ratio of the numerical difference between the brush diameter and 1 pixel.
The minimum diameter calculation formula for large and small jitter is: brush diameter - (brush diameter × jitter percentage). If the answer is 0, add 1, and if it is a decimal, round it up.
If the diameter of the brush is 10 pixels and the size jitter is 100%, the range of change is 10 to 1 pixel. If the size jitter is 50%, the range of change is 10~5 pixels.
If the diameter of the brush is 12 pixels, the range of size jitter at 100% is 12 to 1 pixel, and at 50% it is 12 to 6 pixels. 30% of the time it is 12~8 pixels.
The above calculation process is relatively boring, and it may be difficult for everyone to think clearly in a short time. It doesn't matter. Here we just demonstrate a derivation process and control principle. In actual use, such precise calculations are rarely needed. As long as you feel comfortable with it, it's OK.
Note that there is also a minimum diameter option under the size jitter, which is used to control the smallest dot diameter in the size jitter. If the size jitter is 100% and the minimum diameter is 30%, the drawing effect is equivalent to a simple size jitter of 70%. If both are 100%, it is equivalent to no size jitter. However, we have just learned how to calculate the minimum diameter through the formula. You can also use the size jitter value to control the minimum diameter. So why is there this "superfluous" option?
Let’s put this question aside for a moment and let’s draw three straight lines.
First line: Set the brush diameter to 10 pixels, spacing 150%, roundness 100%, and size jitter 0%. Control off.
Second straight line: Based on the first setting, enable the "Control" option under the size jitter, select "Fade", fill in the following number with 20, and the minimum diameter is 0%. As shown below on the left.
The third straight line: Based on the second setting, set the minimum diameter to 20%. As shown in the middle picture below. The drawing effect of three straight lines is as shown on the right, arranged from top to bottom.
What is going on? First understand what fade out is.
0325 fade means "gradually fade", which refers to the process of change from large to small, or from more to less, which is a state transition. Just like drinking a drink from a cup, the process of drinking is equivalent to the fading process of the drink.
Now looking at the first line, that setting actually makes the entire Shape Dynamics option useless, since it doesn't have any effective controls.
The second straight line turns on the fade control, which means that it "gradually fades" starting from the size of 10 pixels. To what extent? to 0 pixels. So we see the brush dot gradually shrink until it disappears completely.
So how to control the length of this fade? It is the value 20 filled in later. This 20 represents the step size, which means passing through 20 brush dots. You can count them carefully.
The third straight line turns on the minimum diameter control. 20% of 10 pixels is 2 pixels. At this time, the fade option cannot completely hide the brush. The minimum value of blanking is 2 pixels. The step size is still 20 steps, so the transition from 10 pixels to 2 pixels is 20 brush dots. After 20 brush dots, the size of 2 pixels is maintained, and these 2 pixels will never fade.
You and your lover dine at McDonald's and buy a can of drink, then:
If you are not interested in this can of drink, you have never touched it from beginning to end. That's like the first straight line.
If you are salivating over the can of drink, drink it quickly while she or he goes to the bathroom, leaving only an empty glass. That's like a second straight line.
If she (he) carves a mark on the cup to tell you that the level of the drink cannot be lower than this mark when she (he) comes back, it means that your lover knows you too well, and you can only be like the third straight line. Control your own limits because of the other person's foresight.
The process of you drinking a drink is the fade-out, the time you take to drink the drink is the step length, and the mark carved by your lover on the cup is the minimum diameter.
In addition to fading, you can also use pen pressure, pen tilt, pen wheel, and rotation to control size. These three options require additional hardware. The picture on the left below is the effect of drawing with pen pressure. The so-called pen is an input device called a digital drawing tablet. Use an electronic pen to move on the matching base plate instead of a mouse. As shown below on the right.
The bottom plate can sense the strength of the pen tip contact (in layman's terms, it is the difference between the light and heavy strokes), and advanced drawing tablets can also sense the tilt of the electronic pen and the rotation angle of the pen tip. These effects cannot be simulated by ordinary mice. The light pen wheel refers to the thumb wheel attached to some electronic pens. Without this device these controls have no effect.
Note that the pen mentioned here is completely different from the vector drawing tool pen we will use in future tutorials.
As for the other two control options in "Shape Dynamics", "Angle Jitter" and "Roundness Jitter", as the name suggests, they control the angle and roundness of the flat oval brush. The definition process and corresponding relationship are the same as the size jitter mentioned above. The detailed definition process will not be introduced here. You can test the effect by yourself. In order to make the effect more obvious, it is best to change the brush used previously: angle 90, roundness 50%, spacing 300%. As shown below on the left.
The so-called angle jitter is to make the flat oval brush change the angle irregularly during the drawing process, so that the brush will look "crooked". As shown in the middle picture below.
Roundness dithering is to irregularly change the roundness of the brush, so that the brush will look "fat and thin". The range of changes can be controlled through the "Minimum Roundness" option, which is the same as the minimum diameter in size jitter. As shown below on the right.
Note that when the roundness setting of the brush itself is 100%, using angle jitter alone has no effect. Because 100% roundness is a perfect circle, and a perfect circle looks the same at any angle. But if roundness dithering is also turned on at the same time, since roundness dithering gives the brush various flat oval shapes, angle dithering will also have an effect.
The dithering options of Flip X and Flip Y have the same meaning as the flip in the brush definition. It doesn't have much practical significance under a perfect circle or elliptical brush, and it only has an effect under other shapes of brushes.
0326 Until now, we have always used perfect circle or elliptical brushes, which are quite boring and have the same effects. Now let's use other shapes of brushes.
As shown below, select a maple leaf shape (red arrow) in the brush tip shape. The sampling size of this brush is 74 pixels. If you change this value manually, you can restore it by clicking the "Use Sampling Size" button. Brush sampling will be introduced later. Now change the Diameter to 45 px Size and the Spacing to 120%. As shown below on the left. This setting is because it is more suitable for our current image size of 400x300. You can decide other values by yourself, and you can also create images of other sizes.
Do you feel depressed because you always draw in black? Then we change the foreground color to orange (243,111,33). In Photoshop, the foreground color is the color of the drawing tool. Notice that even after changing the foreground color, the preview below the Brush Settings palette is still black.
Now compare the effect of flipping XY, as shown in the middle picture below. The first row shows the effect without flipping and jittering. The second line adds the effects of flip X and flip Y. It can be seen that the maple leaves in the second row (the 3rd and 4th from the left in the middle picture below) appear to be upside down, left and right. This is the flip effect, also called a mirror image.
Now we set more options: size jitter 70%, angle jitter 100%, and roundness jitter 50%. In this way, it looks like "different sizes, different angles, and different flatness." Then set the spacing to 100%. Don't draw boring straight lines this time. Is she (he) still angry because you stole a drink? Then quickly draw a heart and give it to her (him). As shown below on the right. But now we only talked about how to draw, not how to print, so you can only express your feelings through the monitor.
0327Do you think the color is too single? So let’s make some changes to make the colors richer. We use the "Dynamic Color" option for this purpose. As shown in the left picture below, set "Foreground/Background Jitter" to 100%. The function of this option is to change the color between the foreground color and the background color. The default background is white, but you can also choose it yourself. As shown below on the right.
In the above picture, 5 background colors are changed during drawing: yellow, gray, green, blue, and purple. Including the foreground color orange, there are 6 colors in total. But if you look closely, you will find that there are actually far more than 6 colors. Why is this?
This is because the effect of dithering is within a range, not just limited to two extremes. Just like the previous brush diameter jitter, there are not only two diameters, the largest and the smallest, but a series of diameters with intermediate transitions. The same principle applies to dithering here. The selected foreground color and background color only define the two endpoints of the dithering range, and a series of resulting transition colors in the middle are included in the dithering range. As shown in the picture below, the two color blocks at the head and tail are the foreground color and the background color, and the middle is the transition zone between the foreground color and the background color.
In the foreground/background dithering, there are also control options. Its usage is similar to what we have encountered before. If you choose fade, it will transition from the foreground color to the background color in the specified step. If you continue to draw after the step, , will remain the background color. Turn off foreground/background dithering (set to 0%). Let’s take a look at the hue dither, saturation dither, and brightness dither below. In fact, hue, saturation, and brightness are equivalent to the HSB color model. The related concepts have been mentioned in course #01. The dithering here is performed using this color model.
Now bring the heart-shaped image we drew earlier into Photoshop, as shown on the left below. Then use the menu [Image Adjustment Hue/Saturation] shortcut key [CTRL U], which activates a color adjustment function, as shown on the right below. Try changing the hue, saturation, and value (i.e., brightness) to see what the effects are. The specific usage will be introduced in future tutorials.
You'll see that changing the hue changes orange to red, blue, etc. Changing the saturation can make the orange grayer or more vibrant. Changing the value (brightness) can result in a darker or whiter cast.
Now we still use the previous maple leaf shape brush, set the size to 30 pixels, roundness 100%, spacing 100%, turn off shape dynamics, and turn off other options in color dithering. Select a pure red foreground color, set the hue dithering to 20%, 50%, 80%, and 100% respectively, and draw a straight line each. The effect is as shown on the left.
As you can see, the higher the degree of hue dithering, the richer the color. Why is this? What is the standard for this percentage of hue dithering?
Let’s answer the second question first. This percentage is based on the hue range. In Course #01, we learned about hue and knew that hue is a ring. In order to facilitate viewing, we cut the hue ring at 180 degrees and stretched it into a hue bar with red in the middle and cyan at both ends, as shown on the right as shown below .
The color we picked is red, which is right at the center point of this hue bar. Then the percentage of hue jitter refers to the range extending to the left and right with this red as the center. Therefore, the hue range occupied by the four straight lines of maple leaves we drew is as shown on the left. From the picture, the larger the percentage, the more hues are included, so more colors appear. The first problem in front is easily solved.
Moreover, using this picture, we can also roughly guess what hues appear: 20% only have red and some orange; 50% have more purple, yellow and magenta than the previous one; 80% have more than the previous one There are some greens and blues, but absolutely no cyan; 100% the most obvious change is the addition of cyan. You can take a look at the picture on the left.
Saturation dithering will make the color lighter or darker. The larger the percentage, the wider the range of changes. As shown in the left picture below, after turning off other dithers, the effects are drawn using 50% saturation dither and 100% saturation dither respectively.
Brightness (brightness) jitter will make the image brighter or darker. The larger the percentage, the wider the range of change. As shown in the right picture below, after turning off other dithers, the effects are drawn using 30% brightness dither and 100% brightness dither respectively.
There is one last option in Dynamic Color: Purity. This is not a random term because there is no word jitter behind it. This option has an effect similar to Saturation, used to increase or decrease color saturation overall. Its value is between plus and minus 100%. When it is -100%, everything drawn is grayscale. At 100%, the color is fully saturated. If the purity value is these two extreme values, saturation dithering will lose its effect.
0328 Before this, we made changes to the shape and color of the brush. Although there are various random contents in the learning content, they are all such as spacing, color, size and so on. The drawn trajectory can still be seen clearly. To achieve random effects on distribution, we need to learn dispersion. First set a brush: 5 pixels, roundness 100%, spacing 150%. After turning off shape dynamics, dynamic colors, and all other options, enter the scatter options and set the scatter to 500%, as shown on the left below.
When drawing at this time, you can get the effect as shown on the right as shown below. You can see that the dots of the brush are no longer limited to the mouse trajectory, but appear randomly within a certain range around the trajectory. This is the so-called scattering.
Note that there is a "two-axis" option. What is this used for?
In order to make the effect more obvious, we change the brush diameter to 15 pixels, spacing 100%, spread 100%, and then draw a straight line with this option turned off and on, as shown in the left picture below. It looks a little different, right? Let’s add a grid and take a look, as shown on the right below.
You can see that if the two-axis option is turned off, the dispersion is limited to the vertical effect, which looks high and low, but the distance between them in the horizontal direction is still fixed, that is, 100% in the brush settings. If the two-axis option is turned on, the spread will be effective in both horizontal and vertical directions. So the dots on the second line are not only high and low, but also spaced differently from each other.
Under the scatter options, there is a quantity option. Its function is to multiply the number of brush dots. The value is the multiple. So now let's go back to a 5 pixel brush with a spacing of 150% and a spread of 500% on both axes. Use numbers 1 and 4 to draw two straight lines respectively. The effect is as shown below. It can be seen that the number of dots on the second line is significantly more than that on the first line. Theoretically, this is equivalent to drawing the first straight line 4 times.
The quantity dithering option below the quantity option randomly changes the size of the multiple during drawing. The reference value is the value of the quantity itself. Just like the earliest learned size jitter is based on the diameter of the brush itself. During dithering, the values will only become smaller, not larger. In other words, it will only be less than or equal to 4 times, but not greater than 4 times.
0329 Now let’s take a look at the noise option in the brush settings, as shown on the left below. Its function is to produce noise on the edge of the brush, which is the effect of burrs. There is no numerical adjustment for noise, but it is related to the hardness of the brush. The smaller the hardness, the more obvious the noise effect will be. It has no effect on hard brushes.
The wet edge option darkens the edge of the brush, making it look like a watercolor brush. As shown in the middle picture below.
The function of the airbrush is exactly the same as the airbrush method we learned before. Since they are the same, why set two? This is because the airbrushing style here can be saved along with the brushes. In this way, the spray gun mode will be automatically turned on the next time you use this stored preset.
The smoothing option is mainly to allow the mouse to draw smoother line segments during rapid movement. The picture on the right below is a comparison of the effects after turning off and turning on the smoothing option. However, turning this option on will take up a lot of processor resources and will run slower on computers with low configurations.
Finally, let’s briefly introduce the differences between Illustrator’s brushes and Photoshop. As shown below on the left. Due to vector graphics, Illustrator can easily distort the brush into any shape, so it can imitate a drawing effect similar to that of a Chinese brush.
In addition, in Illustrator, you can easily create dotted lines that are difficult to achieve in Photoshop. You only need to turn on the dotted line option in the Stroke palette and fill in the dotted line interval size. As shown below on the right.
