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Brush With Greatness
Harness the power of Photoshop’s brush tools to transform simple photos into artistically enhanced creations.

by Ken Hubbard

A painter relies on the different textures, hairs, and shapes of her paintbrushes to achieve a variety of artistic effects on her canvas. Thanks to Photoshop’s preset and customizable brush tools (as well as brushes that can be downloaded from other sources), photographers can apply an assortment of dramatic actions to otherwise ordinary photographs, whether it involves painting, erasing, retouching (e.g., removing blemishes), or incorporating other special effects (for instance, adding a ghosted leaf overlay on top of an image for a more ethereal effect).
Once you’ve decided on the look you’re trying to achieve, there are several factors to take into consideration within the Photoshop brush palette (the brush palette is where you’ll control everything related to your brushing technique). First you’ll need to determine the type of brush you’d like to use: The palette includes everything from a natural brush to faux finish, wet media, drop shadow, and even calligraphic versions.
Once you’ve selected your brush style, you’ll need to control your brush’s basic features. Each brush is controlled slightly differently. If you’re using a round brush, for example, you can alter its “roundness” (perhaps making it more oblong), in addition to changing its size and “hardness.” Do you want a soft edge or a hard edge on your brush? If you’re retouching skin, it would be preferable for your brush to have a soft edge so that your retouching blends seamlessly into the surrounding skin (if you chose a hard edge for skin retouching, you’d see the circle imprinted onto the skin). If, however, you’re painting something (a solid line, or maybe filling in a box), you’d want your brush to have a hard edge.

Browsing through your brush palette, you’ll see the various advanced features you can control with just a click. You’ll want to customize everything on your brush for your particular photographic needs, from texture and noise to scattering, shape, and color dynamics.

Spacing is an important feature that should be carefully considered when working with brushes. If you’re using the simplest of brushes and set the spacing to 1%, then click and drag across your image, you’ll get a solid line. But as you increase the spacing percentage, you’ll see that solid line turn into a line of dots. So if you’re looking to add a solid line, keep that percentage down near 1%. However, if you’re attempting to add a border of neatly spaced leaves, for example, you’d set the spacing to 100% instead.

Controlling the opacity will also drastically affect how the final image comes out. You can perform a full-opacity retouch, where Photoshop takes a cloned section from one part of an image and places it directly on top of the section of the image that needs to be retouched, or you can alter the opacity level for just a slight retouch.
Say you’re retouching someone’s face, and she has dark rings under her eyes. You’re not going to take an entire patch of lighter skin and place it over the darker area; instead, you’re going to tone down your opacity to 5% and subtly retouch the rings out from under the eyes.

The same goes for fiddling with opacity when adding special effects to a photo. For example, if you’re creating a holiday card like the one I explain in more detail further below, you can add a leaf overlay either as a solid block of leaves or you can change the opacity so the leaves are subtly ghosted in the background.

Adding texture is another technique that can be mastered using the brush tools. Scrapbookers are especially fond of the texture effect— you can take an ordinary picture and make it look older or slightly weathered with just a little bit of texture. You can achieve this effect by taking a textured brush like a sponge brush and selecting a color. You then simply create a new document and “paint” onto this new document. Copy and paste the original image on top of this texture and adjust the opacity so the texture comes though.

There’s no simple tutorial that can instantly explain all of the nuances behind Photoshop’s brush tools. Using these tools involves a lot of trial and error and experimentation to achieve the results you’re looking for. That’s why it’s important to always work in layers when you’re using the brush tools. Experiment with every effect in separate layers so that you can go back later and readjust, change, or delete the effect without disrupting the entire image.

Sample Brushstrokes

To illustrate how a photographer can harness the power of Photoshop’s various brushes, I used the Paintbrush tool to enhance an image I shot for a Thanksgiving holiday card. I started out with a picturesque image of a late-autumn scenic shot that captures the vibrant colors of the season.

© Ken Hubbard

I decided to add an autumn-leaf overlay on top of my image. In Image 2, I set the maximum leaf size I want to “brush” onto my image. I then created a new layer and placed it on top of the background copy layer—that enabled me to “brush” the leaves on top of the border and image.

Click image for larger view

© Ken Hubbard

Image 3 documents how I adjusted the scattering level in my image. This involved setting a random pattern of leaves, including how apart they were from each other and how many fell within the brush circle.

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© Ken Hubbard

Next I decided to add a textured background (Image 4). I created yet another new layer and placed it behind the background copy layer. I selected the Paintbrush tool and one of the sponge textures (I like to set the texture to an adequately large size so you can see the pattern). I set the spacing to around 25 so it wouldn’t brush on in a solid line and chose two colors that were appropriate for the image from the toolbar.

Click image for larger view

© Ken Hubbard

Image 5 shows all of the layers that were involved in enhancing the image, while Image 6 shows off the final holiday card with text in place. It’s not difficult to create a similar holiday greeting—with a little willingness to experiment and a compelling starting image, the creative possibilities using brushes are infinite.

Click image for larger view

© Ken Hubbard

 

© Ken Hubbard