Photoshop

Simple question

kylemesa — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:42:50 GMT

I use a normal mouse to do all my art, but when i see pictures of other digital artists workspaces, they have tablets. Would my art improve with a tablet, or is it just more like traditional art so people are used to it?

Need color circle swatches

Geir — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:09:18 GMT

Does anybody know were I can download color swatches arranged in a color circle? I know there are one in the program, but that one just doesn't cut it. I need one that goes from black to white (and of course has all the colors:)).

Adobe Gives A Sneak Peek Into 'Photoshop CS5'

hansvon — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:15:42 GMT

from goodgearguide.com.au ........... Facebook video unveils new Adobe CS5 tools

Adobe has posted a video on Facebook giving a sneak peek at features that will likely make their way into the next version of Photoshop. The video shows a selection of features that are being developed by 'Photoshop Labs', including Painter-style brushes, a new warp tool and more.

The new brush tools aim to match that found within Corel's Painter application. The video shows 'wet' paints being smudged, smeared and blended. It also shows an on-screen representation of the 3D properties of a brush, showing how it has been twisted to lay down different stroke types.

A similar system After Effects' Puppet tool has been added to Photoshop, enabling artists to warp image by placing pins into areas to lock them down, then moving the areas around them. An overlaid grid shows how the image is warped.

Adobe isn't saying that these tools will definitely be in Photoshop CS5 -- or any future version of Photoshop -- as the company doesn't want to be legally tied to releasing them, but tools from "here's just a little something we're playing with" sessions like this usually work their way into the next release.

Watch the video here.

YouTube - Sneak Peek Into the Photoshop CS5

key board shortcuts mixed up?

Evil Robot — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:16:29 GMT

For some reason all my Photoshop shortcut keys are all mixed up? Like ctl-T is opening a text menue instead of my transform menue and some other wacky stuff. Anyone know how I can fix the short cuts back to default without having to re-install. I'm using CS3.

Photoshop-Digital art-how to get it.....i know nothing about any of these.HELP!!

Ciderman — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:50:35 GMT

Hi people,

I bought the magazine yesterday and had alook through it. I'm a traditional artist and have never used any kind of photoshop or PC art oriented stuff.

I've found a few packages on amazon but they all go on about photos rather than art and i dont know what to go for.

I need advice on how/what to get to start digital art and also how it works. I have a reasonbly good laptop i recently bought for gaming so its got good memory ect as it needs it for W.o.W

I've looked at a few packages on amazon along with a pc tablet and pen. SHould i get both? I really dont know anything so if you could help i'd very much appreciate it.

Thank you

Glen

Bert Montroy's - Pixel Perfect

kenmo — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:21:23 GMT

Photoshop guro and digial art master Bert Monroy's internet show is worth watching... All of his past 140+ episodes are also available for downloading in varions video formats... The length of an episode varies between 15 to 30 minutes BUT imho is worth every minute of watching....

http://www.revision3.com/pixelperfect

D'ARTISTE

chuck_norris — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:05:38 GMT

Does anyone know how relevent the d'artiste books are to photoshop? I am only starting to digitally paint making the move from traditional art. I am thinking of buying the whole range.

Oh dear LORD NO.

Lentilstudios — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:53:43 GMT

I had almost completed a piece of digital work on PS I really loved, mainly because it was the first time I was able to do human art and make it look actually good, when a notice appeared that PS wasn't working properly and needed to close. Being an absolute idiot, I had become so sucked into making this piece that I'd completely forgotten to save it - at ANY point, which meant that PS closed and I just lost an ENTIRE piece of work, except for the original sketch scanned to the computer.

I nearly screamed. I tore a chunk out of my mouse pad with my teeth. Does anyone know if PS has a retreival system (like Microsoft word) that can salvage the file even partially? If not, which is what I'm assuming, I'm well and truly, royally screwed.

Someone shoot me.

Lentil.

Photoshop Dynamic Fire brushes - free from Suztv

suztv — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:38:18 GMT

I've posted my firebrushes for free - There are 52 different firebrushes in the set for use with your wacom tablet (or whatever tablet you might own). Let me know if you like them and if you make something I'd love to see it! Although a linkback or credit is not required for using them - happy Photoshopping people!

Visit the blog to download the brushes:

http://suztv.blogspot.com/

Bramble/Barbed Wire Brush Tool

xenus — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:42:52 GMT

does anyone have a bramble brush tool they can post or link? a barbed wire one would be fine also! I have issues 39-47 of imagineFX but havnt looked thru all DVD content so if theres a brush tool like the one i requested on there just name the issue and i'll try and find it. cheers!

How to make a video tutorial?

LordAlgol — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:46:09 GMT

I've been watching the speed painting video tutorials on You Tube and was wondering how do people make these videos?

Is there a software program that records all their actions in Photoshop or do they have to set up a video camera by their monitor or some other means...?

Custom Brushes

Alice_10210 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:34:33 GMT

Ok, so I've almost figured it out. I tried to make some custom brushes while looking at some tutorials, but there's two things I can't get right: How do you "spackle" the brush, (to make things like hair, and not scattering dots arround)and how do you make that powdery effect for the "pixie dust" brush? I'd really appreciate the help, thanks ^^;

Book recommendations please - (creating scifi/fantasy/cel/videogame art in Photoshop)

lpbaker — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:25:44 GMT

I have Photoshop CS2 and a 6x8 graphics tablet and I'd like to start creating scenery and characters. I will primarily be doing scifi/fantasy type art, but I will probably want to do cartoon style things too.

I've read through some of the tuts in the issue of ImagineFX I picked up, which are great, but what I'd like is a book that starts from the beginning and teaches the use of Photoshop for painting/drawing - eg, "how to import a pencil drawing and make it suitable to work from", "how and why to use layers", through to things like "here's how to make metal look metallic", and so on.

I'm sure no one book will cover everything, so I'm open to recommendations for multiple books!

I'd also be interested in recommendations for books relating to creating fantasy/scifi art in general, as previously I've been doing landscapes and portraiture in oils and watercolour (ie; very normal "real world" stuff, and using real paint and canvas/paper).

Thanks,
Lindsay
http://www.lpbaker.com

Matte Painting

Mad Hamish — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:56:43 GMT

well, his guys, as most of you can see I'm purty new on the forum, and also reeeaaaalll new to digital painting.

so I hvae a question for yawll that I'd like to know.

ME and a friend of mine are strating work on a children's book abour pirates, and it seems to me that the quickest and most realistic way to paint islands ( we're going for that thai island look) seems to be matte painting. however, I am totally cluesless as to how the process of matte painting works and also where I can find some good stock photos...

can anyone help?

Texture??Please help! T_T

Alice_10210 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:23:42 GMT

Everyone talks about the texture in Photoshop (I use CS3), but the texture settings in the brush window, always looks the same, any way I change it. Is there another way, or what's this big secret?? Please help me!

how many times do I have to install the Wacom tablet drivers in CS4?

LordAlgol — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:20:50 GMT

I've finally upgraded from PS7 to CS4 and it has a decent look and feel to it but almost once a week I get the message "please reinstall the tablet software" when I load the program. I never was hassled like this with the old PS7. I'm using a full retail version that I downloaded from Adobe and paid their insane price for, it's not a cracked version. Is anyone else having similar issues? If you've cured it on your system what did you do? How many installations before it "takes"?

My system:
XP 64
4 GB RAM

New Window Zoom Issue (CS4)

Silhouette — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:00:20 GMT

When painting I like to have the original document open and then go to Window > Arrange > New window for < document >.psd. This is so I can zoom in on one and see how the final product is coming along on the other and I can correct lighting mistakes or anatomy issues more easily.

Recently though whenever I use the hand tool on one window, as well as the zoom, it affects the second window. This never used to happen. The two windows would be independent of one another but now they react as if they're the same document. I'm not sure how to fix it.

The two windows will behave as separate documents for a few minutes but when I use the hand tool on one it shifts the second image as well.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Never used the Photoshop CS3 -is it hard?

Thunderskull — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:56:13 GMT

Hi thar, pplz!

I'm just asking.. Because I've got my PS CS2 for two and a half years now and got my hands on the CS3... But. I've heard from my friends that it's not as easy to use and it's pretty much the most stupid of all the Photoshops... Soo

Is it really? What do you think?

Photoshop brush issue

veela_chan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:08:35 GMT

Hey all, I'm using an Intuos3 on Photoshop, and something weird is happening with my pencil stroke. Whenver I use a very light touch on my tablet, the smallest diameter it will go is two pixels wide, before it disappears. So basically It's impossible to draw a pixel-thin line by using pen pressure alone. So, what I essentially get is really thick points whenever I'm drawing tapering objects like strands of hair or spikes. It used to be that I could ease my pressure so the object can taper all the way down to one pixel. The only way to do this is to reduce my pencil diameter to one pixel, which is obviously way harder to draw

I'm certain this issue has never happened before, and I've tried messing around with the brush shapes, and nothing seems to help... :(

Notice in the red circles, that's where I've been pressing the lightest, and that's where it would normally go down to one pixel wide, but it's just like it doesn't acknowledge it.

These are my brush settings, just so you can see, but they've not been changed ever since I've installed the tablet. This problem is occuring on two different Intuos3s, on WinXP and Windows7, and on PS CS3 and CS4, there's not difference in any of them

Can we use photoshop to create vector images like Freehand?

pegahoul — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:54:59 GMT

...or Illustrator?

Can photoshop Elements do that too?

Thank you

Peter

Anyone know how to turn off CS3's pixel aspect ratio correction?

lguzik — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:58:51 GMT

I know how to turn it off under the 'view' menu, but is there anyway to completely turn it off, forever, and then like take that feature and throw it into a desolate canyon, and fill said canyon with lava and cement in alternating layers?

Deciding on Software

froboy449 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:29:04 GMT

This is my first post and i'm sure that this issue has been discussed many times before. I've used adobe illustrator cs2 with pretty reasonable success in a graphic design class, but i''ve gotten to the point where i seriously want to consider buying some high-end software, and basically there are too many options out there with no way to really now what you're getting before spending the money, aside from the of chance that a friend has one of the high-end programs and let's you mess around with it. Since i don't have any friends who own high-end software, i was wondering if anyone here could help me out. I'm mainly looking at photoshop vs. illustrator, and it seems like all of the top artists use illustrator. But what is it that makes this program so great, and are there any other great programs out there?

P.S. Also, if it helps, i'm want to get software that allows pretty seemless transfer from pencil and paper to soft copies, and i'm really interested in doing art such as concept art, like in video games.

Colorize your hair using Photoshop

rebecca125 — Mon, 04 May 2009 06:18:55 GMT

In this tutorial you will learn how to colorize or change hair color using Adobe Photoshop. To do that follows some steps.

Open the image of which you want to colorize hair then click on the channels tab on the layers palette.

And duplicate the blue channel by right clicking and choosing duplicate channel on the channel.

Click o.k. in the duplicate channel dialogue box.

Turn the visibility off of the channels other than the blue copy channel by clicking on the eye icon on the channels palette and start working on the duplicated channel

From tools palette select dodge tool

Set these options for this tool. Range as highlights and exposure to 46%.

Now highlight the image other than the hair. You can also change the exposure of the tool as needed

Now from tools palette again select burn tool.

Set the settings for the burn tool. Range as shadows and exposure to 100%.

Now burn the image using this tool

After burning the hair click on the Channel by holding down the Ctrl key.

It will make selection of the channel.

And turn the visibility on of the other channels and click on the layers tab.

Press Ctrl J to make a new layer with selected area and turn the visibility off of the original image.

Now use eraser tool to erase the area other than the hair.

Now from the layers palette click on the effects button and choose color overlay from the drop down list.

Set the blend mode to hue and click o.k. turn the visibility on of the original image

Click on the color box and select your own color for the hair.

And see the color of the hair has successfully changed to different color.

You can also change the hair color to any color you want by clicking on the color box and selecting color from the color picker.

Hope this has been helped to you. Send your comments.

To see the video of this tutorial click here

Brushes - it can't be this hard!

pixelmech — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:44:53 GMT

Hello,

I'm new to painting with a tablet as of this year, I have a Wacom Bamboo. I've been trying to learn as much as I can over the last 5 months by watching tutorials and buying imagineFX of course, as well as just experimenting on my own.

I just bought issue 42 and watched Mike McCain's video and read the article on his great sci-fi painting. Because the video or the article doesn't go into specifics on the brushes he uses, it's real hard to tell exactly what he has going on. I seem to have understood many of the basic fundamentals of digital painting, but for the life of me I cannot seem to find or set up the proper brushes to do that kind of work.

I can see that Mike is using what appears to be a squashed brush with 100% opacity and 50% flow. It has smoothing, other and shape dynamics selected and texture. I'm the dynamics are pen pressure for opacity and size. But I have no idea what texture he is using to get the effect he is getting.

Later he switches to another couple of blockier brushes and a blotchy brush that seem to have similar properties, texture and dynamics. But I can't seem to figure out how to get the effects he is getting by playing around with the settings. Maybe it has something to do with the texture he is using?

The textures that come loaded with the Brush palette actually seem to be Patterns (which is awfully inconsistent - I loaded some textures in the preset texture folder to only find out I can't pull them in the texture setting in brushes - I can only pull patterns) and there aren't many of them. I tried making a few of my own based on metal textures and such, but I am getting bad results (like the pattern showing the edges for example).

So my long blown out question is, are these typical brushes people use? If so, can anyone help with the settings - particularly what kind of texture (pattern) should be used? I would love to experiment with those types of brushes, but I just can't figure them out.

Black and white window

AlexTooth — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:40:12 GMT

Hello, nooby question again.

When I was "undo-ing" I accidently changed the window view to black and white.

Then I realised actually it was very useful having one window of my image open as black and white, while I worked on the colour version.

Now, my problem is I can't repeat it today. I've tried all the key combination around "ctrl+z" but I can't seem to get it to happen. I have tried google, but it's rather a difficult search. I've tried all the options under the "window" file menu etc.

I didn't de-saturate the image, or change it to greyscale or anything like that. All it was was 1 window showing a black and white version of the colour painting. Temporarily - probably something you can switch on and off.