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Make it Stand Out With the Painter Photo Brush!Similar to Photoshop’s dodge and burn tool, the Painter photo brush is where you make things come alive through color manipulation. You may be thinking, “wait a minute! I thought I’m learning to draw and not taking pictures!”It has nothing to do with that at all! Despite what the name implies, the Painter photo brush’s functions are essentially what artists use to enhance pictures, regardless if they are taken or drawn from scratch. Like most of the needed brushes for 2d digital art discussed thus far, you still need to find the Painter photo brush. And if you have been following along in previous articles, you know where to look! 1. Finding the Painter photo brushObviously, you need to click on the brush icon in the main tool window to get the brush categories out first. Then after that, you need to find the photo brush. It is very easy to locate as it’s in alphabetical order.
As there is a long list of possible brush categories, you will need to scroll down a bit to reach it. The icon for the Painter photo brush is a picture of a camera. Once you’ve done that, you need to choose the right variants depending on they type of painting you want to do. 2. What are the photo variants?Well, when you select the Painter photo brush variants, you got a few choices. Some of them you have heard about, and some, you haven’t. What should be familiar is the dodge and burn variants that got introduced to you in the Photoshop article.
Just as a reminder if you just happen to forget, the dodge variant creates a contrast of colors by increasing the light value of the colors in the affected areas. And just like the dodge variant, the burn variant does the opposite in that it creates contrast by darkening the values of colors in the affected area. The key word here is contrast! It is a term used, in this case, to describe the relative difference in color ranges between one value and another value within a given area in painting. If you look closely, you will find two other tools that are separated in the Photoshop program. They are the blur and the sharpen tools! And if you look even closer, they even have the saturation tool just like Photoshop! Though, I’ll save those for another time! Moving on though, you will soon find out that there are also other variants available beyond that! One particular tool that I find interesting is the diffuse variant. Basically, it can create something called a motion blur. This is a great tool when you want to create objects in motion that leaves a trail of color outlining the object. Last, but not least, is the add grain and scratch remover tool. Essentially, the grain variant creates a photographical feel to the picture by adding photo paper texture. The scratch remover tool, on the other hand, removes scratches from a digitally scanned picture. Are these important? Not really as you are just drawing and not dealing with photographs. This is why I recommend only the tools that are found in most art programs, and just not in painter, as you want to expand your knowledge of painting digitally rather than depending on just a program! 3. What variant options are available?After understanding what the variants are capable of, you need to manipulate them to your liking. Your options change with every brush variants used. With the photo brush, it’s no different. So what options do you get?
Besides the typical option of setting your brush size, this time, you can also set the strength of the brush. Without a doubt, if you increase the strength of the brush, you will blur or sharpen more. It really depends on what you need. What you want to know is the grain option. It allows you to create ‘bumps’ on the painting to give it texture. It’s not a whole big deal as you probably won’t be using it often. I know I don’t! And like always, there’s the jitter option. While it might be useful in other tools, I don’t particularly like to use it. This is because you want control! Just as a reminder, the jitter tool sprays the shape of the variant to different areas. You don’t want that when you’re trying to control the colors using the photo variant! 4. Things to consider for being productiveThe Painter photo brush variant is a lot of color management tools in one. Other programs, like Photoshop, split them up. While you get a lot of variants to use, and depending on how you look at it, they are actually very limited as they are classified as on category. However, this is not a bad thing at all! You want to deal with the minimum tools required to do a digital painting. When you monopolized your skills into a few specific tools, you’ll soon find out that there is no reason to use other variants. For this reason alone, get to know the few Painter photo variants rather than all of them. You should definitely understand how the dodge and burn tool works in this program as they are very important to creating depth. For others like the scratch remover and the grain variant, there is no need as they will just hinder your learning of 2d digital art. Still, don’t count them out just yet. You may still need to count on them for one particular instance. Other than that, just stay focused on a few tools. But most important of all is to stay motivated to learn!
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