Does anyone have any settings for a real blender in CS2?

 I want to lay down red and yellow, and run the blender brush over it, and get orange. Is this even possible in CS2? Or am I relegated to sticking with Painter to do real blending?
 

You can try to get a blender effect with the Healing Brush Tool (J), to use it that way you need to change it's settings. At first simply make a new document, 100 x100 px whatever size filled with white color and define it as pattern, after that take the healing brush, in the field Source: click on Pattern and choose that white pattern you just made. Now try to take that brush and go over your color fields, it will appear white if you make your strokes but it will render the blend later on, just try it, though it only works if the two colors you want to blend are on one layer, and the healing brush doesn't work into transparency. Still not the same effect painter offers.. but still a nice tool to play with ;)

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The liquify trick may do the job but it's not exactly fast or at hand.

I will tinker tonight and see what i come up with. :)

Lizkay, while not exactly what I was looking for, a very neat trick!

 

I will drop this in my bag for later use.

The blending brushes in painter are great. I prefur painting in Photoshop but blending in Painter is better.

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well i just use a hard round brush with pen pressure and just keep on working over the top. But if you want a very blended feel maybe use the smudge tool on an weak strength.

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I'd say lower the opacity of the brush and just work the colours over the top of each other,

other than that I preffered the blending in Painter 

Yeah, the smudge tool's probably your best bet.  But what a lot of people do is just set up a colour pallette on another layer.  Then you can just sample colours whenever you need them; and seeing larger swatches right next to the image you're working on would probably work better than using the Swatches pallette.

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it really does depend on what you want use this blended effects for. The smudge tool is ok but you can lose texture with it.

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I guess it all comes down to experimentation.  You might be able to achieve a more painterly texture if you reduce the size and/or strength of the smudge tool, or you could just copy everything to a new layer, and then adjust the opacity or blending mode if it gives you the desired result.EDIT:  On the other hand, the blur tool might be a better thing to use.  It reduces the texture definition of the brush strokes, and makes it look more airbrushed, but it's good for reducing colour contrast.  Ryan Church uses it as his primary blender, even though his Painter blenders are more akin to the smudge tool.  If you want a more scumbled texture, you should probably use the smudge tool (although it requires a lot of control); otherwise, it's probably best to do transparent overlays (think glazing in an acrylic or watercolour painting), and then soften the transitions with the blur tool.  I guess that's really all you can do.

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The first is actually to use your healing brush as the guy mentioned above. First create a small 128x128 pixel pattern and fill with white (you may be able to use another color but it works well with white). Then Edit/define pattern and name it. close that file you won't need it anymore. Then with the healing brush set it to pattern in the options bar and pick the pattern you just created. Now you can make small storkes or squiggly etc whatever works between the two colors you are trying to blend and it will blend them pretty well. Play with the other settings to see how it works.

The second and also good work around is to use the Filter/Noise/Median. Make a selection around the area you want to blend (sometimes I select a larger area than just the dividing line between two colors; Quick Mask Mode is good for making your selections quickly) then go to Filter/Noise/Median and apply typically a large amount, maybe not always, then hit ok. the area should blend very well. Mess with the amount or whatever it is called in the Median dialog box to see what works best. You may want to use the apply filter again Ctrl + F. You would use quick mask to make quick selections, apply filter/noise/median then go back and select other parts with quick mask and use Ctrl+F to apply the filter again.


The 3rd I only experimented briefly but it seemed to work. Use your art history brush set to Dab and stroke the area you want to blend.

Smudge tool seems the least effective solution. I've seen tutorials on using it but the strokes always come out and doesn't blend well. If anyone has any suggestions on the stength settings on the smudge tool or any other info I would appreciate it.

I use a Belkin Nostromo that I programed with all my PS painting shortcuts. Some I still use the keyboard for but most I can put on the Nostrom N52. It is a big time saver and the N52, not the newest one, works well and only costs around $30.

If anyone needs my PS Nostromo profile send me an email and I'll email it to you. sjokc@cox.net

I've never had any success with the default Photoshop smudge tool, but, using the smudge tool at smallish sizes and very low strength in conjunction with a cloud/smoke brush tip seems to work fairly well. With the right brush it can act very much like Painter's 'just add water' blender. With that type of brush (a couple of  Nagel's cloud brushes give good results), and a very light touch on the tablet, the tool does no smudging at all... just blending. The only downside is that if you work with multiple layers, you may have to create a flattened copy and untick the affects all layer box... otherwise it can get a bit treacle like.

I have created my own brush in Photoshop. It's a kind of spackled brush wich adds a nice tecture. I can use this as a colouring brush, smudge brush, dodge and burn. Firstly i always build up my values with a hard brush and end up using my custom brush delicately over my unblended edges. I think of my smudger as my finger, blending as i would with charcoal, and the paint brush like a dry brush adding tiny hints of colour. Always reverting to a limited selection of brushes for blending tends to work well for me keeping things quite natural in application.

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