Quick method for making a custom Photoshop Brush

How to make a simple, pain free Photoshop brush!

Ever wanted to make a Photoshop brush? It's fairly straight forward, this little tutorial will have you making your custom brushes in no time! You will be defining a brush, adding it to your palette and then, all going well, using your newly defined brush in your projects! Lets draw a shape on black on a white background.

1 ) Open PS and make a new document – 300 x 300 px and 72 DPI for good measure, make sure the background is set to white.

2 ) Working in black and white (Shortcut ‘D’ for black and white) draw your brush shape (in black) onto your new document. Remember your brush shape needs to be dark /black when you come to creating your brush. For the sake of this little tutorial I have made mine a solid brush.

Photoshop Brush - Feel free to use this one

3 ) Either by using the marquee tool or Apple + 'a' to select all (CTRL + A for windows). If you have selected the brush you want to define, you can go to the next step! 


4 ) Go Edit > scroll down to  ‘Define Brush Preset’ and click on it!

5 ) label your brush, I called this one ‘blob’.

Label your new defined brush

Well done, you should now have designed your very own custom brush and saved it to your library. If you press F5 to look at your brush palette, you will see the brush you have just made at the bottom of your library. Why not open a new document and test out your newly created Photoshop tool, make ink splats, draw faces this is just to set your onto the path of making more awesome brushes.

Brushes!

Thank you for reading!

Speed tips for photoshop layers!

Ho Ho Ho a quick post before Xmas!

A couple of tips for working with Photoshop layers!

If like me you need work layers in Photoshop any time saving measure is a bonus. I have a compiled a short list of techniques for making the best use of Photoshop’s layers and icons and this is by far… only the tip the iceberg for tricks and techniques. Enjoy! (Swap CMD for CTRL on Windows)

Change the layer order, move it up and down :

Cmd+[ Move Down

Cmd+] Move Up 

Cmd+Shift+] = to move it to the bottom of the stack

Cmd+Shift+[ = Move it to the top of the stack

Direct select a layer
With move tool selected (V) hold Cmd to highlight the layers directly from the art board. This will also highlight groups.

Duplicate a layer 

Ideal for copying a layer! Cmd + J to copy a selected layer! Or you can drag the selected on this icon! OR right click and duplicate. A personal fave.

Colour Coordinated
In addition to organizing you layers into folder and groups, why not colour coordinate the layers so you glance at groups? Brown for dirt, green for sea etc. Right click and select a colour.

New Layer Cmd+Shift + N brings up the new layer dialogue.

Cycle Through Blend ModesNeed to see what a multiply, saturation, or overlay will look like on the fly?

Shift + (Minus or plus, top right of the keyboard)

Layer Opacity
With the layer selected you can quickly change its opacity by pressing ...

Shift + 22, 30, 23 (a number from the top row) typing the number in quick succession will change the layers opacity percentage. Hold shift and then press “22” the layer will be 22% “30” = 30 %. Very handy for digital painting or retouching.

Group Layers
Select your layers and press Cmd + G to group them together. If you are not grouping your numerous layers… you should start. For sanity’s sake.

Well everyone! I hope this is a little something to leave 2016 on! Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year!

#Photoshop #tips #layershortcuts

Business Card Sized Mini Prints. Artwork samples & illustrations. 1st Run

Mini Printed Pictures

I printed these mini business card sized pictures with idea to hand them out as sample prints to prospective businesses and to canvas for private commissions. Being pleased with the general quality of these miniature reproductions I am offering the last of the first run (1st Run) to the open market. Being satisfied with result of this batch I intend to print another batch although the characters and prints themselves may well be different in the next set.

Displaying the complete range of the first run

Top left to right : Bloated Zombie, The Poet, Golemn the cat, Madman's throne,
Gorian, Tulip, White hare, and the reverse of the card

About The Collection of Artwork

The collection of a printed cards consists of a range of illustration work taken from my portfolio, also available for viewing on JD illustration - my commercial illustration portfolio blog. Drawings and artwork vary from monsters, folklore to everyday characters. Some of the pieces have featured in exhibitions in the North and South East Cornwall.

The White Rabbit

The Poet

Gorian - The Miserable Imp

Can I buy These Cards?

Yes, although these cards are now in limited supply and once the first run from which there were 50 cards, there will be no more of these cards (1st Run) . Should you wish to purchase these cards I will sign the reverse before sending them to you via recorded post. The other 'Samples' do not have a signature which were sent out for canvasing purposes.

Please contact me for further information and which cards you would be interesting in buying from what is listed above.

http://jdillustration.jimmsdesign.co.uk/contact-freelance-illustrator.html

Quick Techniques For Reducing Banding / Posterization in Photoshop - BRUSH STROKES

Posterization – Rough Techniques For Reducing Banding!

Notice the subtle rings around the soft brush?

What is it?

If like me you work as illustrator/designer, I’m sure you will have run into the dreaded banding aka Posterization If so, I will go into detail shortly. Please note; this is told from an illustration and design bias.

Illustration in Photoshop has been a blessing for me. Edit, undo, save as, copy, paste, re-colour artwork the list goes on. This issue comes when working with radial and linear gradients and tones of black and grey. Working with a lot of black and orange as part of the colour palette, I have had to figure out ways for dealing with or working around banding. For example, when I’m rendering characters like Rufus the rat, he has grey body with even darker creases in the body, getting the shading and highlights to blend hasn't always been easy - banding has been a big issue. As it stands, I’m still uncertain as to how to get a completely smooth finish when rendering by work with a grey and black tones. I can offer some methods for reducing this so called ‘banding’ effect and the bane of drawing Rufus. 

For additional information this has been written based on the specs of the my iMac - OSX, but this issue has proven to effective on a TFT Screen using windows 7 and older versions of PS.

My Setup 1 : New Document ‘I like RGB’

From the off I have tested this on Photoshop CS5 and CC with similar results from version to version. 64 bit – 32 bit RGB to CMYK I’m not entirely sure if this has an influence aside from whether you are working with 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit; the later offering marginally tighter rings and hues. For this example I have worked with A 300 DPI document, in RGB using 8 bit (this can be changed later) also with the colour profile listed below on an iMac. This is by no means a significant contribution to the final out come but maybe worth noting. 

‘tangent alert’
 Using RGB in the early stages is my preferred method, not everybody’s. Isn’t this madness? You won’t see genuine colours of your artwork! Well unless, your screen is calibrated exactly and your using pantones, guaranteeing what you see on the screen to print can be tricky anyway. Besides, I work across both mediums of screen and print. 

Method 2 :  Ultimate Trick - Brush & Noise

I’m assuming that you are running into this issue whilst using a soft edged brush tool in Photoshop, based on that, I would advise turning the 'noise' on under the brush panel (as shown - press F5 bring this window up) this helps in the blending of steps with greys as shown below. As far as I can tell, based on my work, this improved the overall smoothness and graduation of the tones from light to dark regardless of bit mode or any other. You can also dabble with the filters if you are using large radials (That would be a different article). 
As you can see below, the black brush at the top has rings (banding) and the one below has far fewer the brush used on the lowest part of the blob has noise switched on. The speckled effect will be less obvious once you take your artwork to print.

See how the rings blend together of the lower part of the blob?

Method 3 : Big to small, playing with scale

Another trick for tightening this banding is by shrinking/scaling down your completed artwork. When you have applied the 'noise' and finished the process you can physically shrink the image to hide some of the messier details - an illusion essentially. 


This is a method that I have used not only to disguise banding when digitally painting but also to give the appearance of tighter line work and detail.



Step 1 piece of art = 100%
Step 2 scale art to = 75%

So when you print the document some so the details and blemishes are hidden away from the naked eye. This approach can also hide some of the rings in banding with added element of noise!

Conclusion
You will see the benefits for this when you come to printing your work, especially if you are working with shades of grey.

To summarise - Add noise to your brush mode.

Hope this helps!

This method was used when illustrating/digitally painting Rufus the Rat for Satzuma LTD

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