how can i make a painted feel/look to my art with photoshop?

[killer_gym_sox]

ive been using photoshop for a while now and i know how to color sorta like a comic artist.. Well i know about the cuts and flats and all that jazz.. But i really want to know how to use photoshop to make it have a painty feel. Do you use specific brushes with specific properties? do you use a filter? The filters confuse me sometimes.. Id try something like paint daubs or colored pencil.. and it just doesnt turn out anything like its titled. Never really got taught how to color with photoshop.. just how to make pictures look better.. Any help?

[killer_gym_sox]

bump..

Does anyone know? 189 people viewed but nobody knows??

[DragonGX]

dont use filters.. its all in your style.. if you have traditional painting experience its alto easier to get that effect.. if you paint like youre drawing with a pencil you wont get it, you have to think liek a painter..

[killer_gym_sox]

hmm.. but is there a brush that u can create to make it look like pastel?

[metalpig]

I guess you can use some of the natural texture brushes (or make your own) and then build up from a lower opacity, but you won't get any true blending. Photoshop doesn't blend, unless you use smudge tools, even then it's only a "kind of a blend". I normally use the round with a mostly hard edge at about 10-70% opacity which gives an okay feel for my quick work. If you really want a painterly feel, you should use painter.

[Pencil Soldier]

Sure, we can jsut run out and buy another 600 dollar program. -_-

[Jin]

Hi,

Painter doesn't cost $600.

If you own Photoshop or Painter Classic, you're eligible for upgrade pricing to Painter 8 at $149.

(The Painter 8 upgrade is a full version.)

If you own a Wacom tablet, you probably have Painter Classic 1 or Painter Classic 2 depending on when you purchased the tablet.

If you don't own a tablet, buy one of the lower priced Graphires and call Wacom first to make sure they bundle Painter Classic with it. Also ask them if they're offering a good deal on full Painter versions with the purchase of a Wacom tablet.

You might also be able to pick up an older version of Painter at e-Bay but make sure you check the seller's record and get a fully licensable version.

Painter 5, 5.5, 6, or 7 are all good but Painter 6 and 7 have regular Layers while Painter 5 and 5.5 have the older Floaters.

Painter 6 has the old and well liked Water Colors. Painter 7 has the new Water Color technology and those brush variants work very differently from the old Water Colors. Some people hate them, some like them.

If you do buy Painter, try to get the newest version possible, i.e. Painter 7 as it has more capabilities than even Painter 6 which was a good version once the 6.1 patch was installed (Painter 7 needs to have the Painter 7 Update installed as well) Both the 6.1 patch and the Painter 7 Update (patch) are available to download on the Corel FTP server so if you get Painter 6 or Painter 7 let us know and we'll give you the URL and instructions.


In any case, you'd be far ahead with any of these full Painter versions when it comes to painting with a "painterly look".

Painter's by far the best software when it comes to simulating traditional drawing and painting tools.

Even with Painter Classic 1 or Painter Classic 2 you'll get some very nice brushes and the great Clone painting capabilities.

[madster]

If you are running Photoshop 7, the new paint engine, combined with the Natural Media brushes can mimic pastels very well.

There are a couple of tuts out there about the paint engine,

http://www.creativemac.com/2002/10_oct/tutorials/pspainteng2021030.htm
http://www.creativemac.com/2002/11_nov/tutorials/pspainteng3021119.htm
but here's the info straight from the horse's mouth:

http://studio.adobe.com/learn/tips/phs7paint/main.html

[Elwell]

Originally posted by metalpig
If you really want a painterly feel, you should use painter.

If you really want a painterly feel, you should use paint.

[madster]

Originally posted by Elwell


If you really want a painterly feel, you should use paint. :rofl: :thumbsup: :chug:

[Furnace]

Start out with the tutorials that Madster recommended. To go beyond that, you might want to add a very, very small bevel to your brush strokes to give it that thick look. If you really want to go overboard, you can place each stroke on it's own layer so they overlap each other and the bevels don't keep mixing together. Of course, you need to have a powerful machine to begin with because heavily altered brushes tend to be a half second behind the mouse movements. I'd post some examples, but I'm at work and don't have the ability to post anything.

[Wight Zombie]

i know what your feeling as ive gotten decent at photoshop comic colors and i started feeling wierd in a way that i was searching for a natural evolution in coloring. just recently i borrowed my friends wacom graphire because he never uses it. i had borrowed it two times before andbarely tried it as it seemed very unwieldly. the third time i gave it a shot i played in the control panel for it and got it usable for doing all computer related tasks even plpaying starcraft :) so anyway im like awesome! now to paint in photoshop 6 like the pros! ehhhh RONG! i found photoshops brushes sucked, and it seemed the standard brush wasnt pressure sensitive with the GRAPHIRE pad. the air brush was but the brush tool wasnt. suckage.

so im like well what can i do with photoshop. so i colored some joe mad inks for tsting and had some limited success. i loaded some of its default nature bullshit brushes, it seemed somewhat decent but just didnt cut it on things like clothes. skin was okay. also they couldnt resize so i was stuck in a very small world that way.

i used joe mads inks to play with the wacom pad.

the 1st test i did with the wacom thinking i could paint in photoshop. it came out rather artsy in a watercolorish way. i did it by coloring very lightly then using levels in photoshop to get the contrast and color in.
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/joemad1.jpg

the second one i played with skintones more and although it came out better it still looked watercolory which i just didnt want.
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/joemad2.jpg

the 3rd one i had a little fun and i painted a redish undercoat in photoshop with some browns on top and some peach on top of that and out came something decent skin color wise but then the shhirt came out just wierd. i could see materials would be a bitch.
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/joemad3.jpg

then i remembered i had painter classin on the graphire cd so i busted it out as i was slighty familiar with it from the times before i had failed. out came something half to my liking. specially her chest and clothing, came out nice and painty looking.
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/joemad4.jpg

i wanted to play with some more tsts now so what better than to color some of my pencils from a old wizard the guide to comics bart sears tutorial.
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/arm.jpg
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/chesttst.jpg

okay i thought so painter was working out on some level and i was playing with the brushes and the pressure sensitivity of the graphire pad, kinda fun, kinda confusing, but overly very fast, then again my comic coloring was almost the same speed. so i decided to paint up a original inking of my of frankenstien. kinda judge how to do shit ya know?
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/franken1.jpg

i learned it can be faster than ps6 doing comic coloring BUT the look doesnt pay off sometime and if what your painting has any little details you can get bogged down.

so i decided to do a full painting type thing and compare it to a comic coloring style. it was of a original pirate i drew and inked.

this is the original done in comic type coloring in photoshop
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/jolly2.jpg

heres the on i did in painter
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/jolly1.jpg

now comparing the two i noticed plus's and minus's on both sides. the sword came out way better on the comic one. the metal skulls and bones on his shoulder came out way better on the painting. the belt and knee skulls, the hat and his beard came out better in the painting and to a lesser extent his hand came out a smidge better in the painter one. but the comic one just looked a bit sharper, and the overall coat pants shirts and again the sword came out better.

interestingly using the wacom i touched up the comic colored one in a minute with the dodge tools in photoshop and a few parts came out even better like his pants and sword, adding that useless but cool glitz and gloss and dimensioning the picture some more.
http://www.redknightentertainment.com/rkewerks/sitphiles/jolly3.jpg

so what im trying to say is now im more confused than ever! actually its funny i came to the site and had never visited this tutorial section before and i was looking for the same thing you were! wierd..... basically painter is a wild app and even though i dont like some of its interface it is working out to some extent.

for painting in photoshop all i can think of at the moment is using hard edge round strokes very softly with opcaity set even as low as 10%, then using levels conotrast the hell out of it and when you do that you get a somewhat painted look like i did playing with joe mads inks specially the third one, although doing cloth right escapes me but i havnt tried more than twice so maybe that can be conquered :)

as for painting id like to use a kool style that involves inks blended with a paintish feel. while i sorta achieved that with my frankenstien i failed horribly with the pirate for a more natural type look. true the pirate pic is way huger and you could see paintish detail up closer but still compared to comic colring i did i just dont thinnk he can compete specially since he took a couple more hours in painter than ps6. im currently investigating a few other techniques and i havnt given up on photoshop 6's standard tools eyt so ill let you know if i work up anything else style wise and when i get some more painting done iin ps6 ill toss up some step by step shit on how to do that. into day 4 of wacom graphire tsts!

[twindragon]

I hope these tutorials help you out I think this girls work is great!:D

tutorials (http://www.gorblimey.com/tutorials.html)

[Wight Zombie]

actually yah socar miles uses the similar technique as mullins, who i remebered uses a photoshop technique of running colors over eachother to make a image without cray brushes.

in this link you can see his underlaying technique exactly like socars myles.
http://www.goodbrush.com/hirez_pgs/process/marine.htm

look through his galleries like this

http://www.goodbrush.com/hirez_pgs/concept/concept1/armsraised.htm

and you can see his more raw strokes in photoshop and you can see through a hard base color then subtle softer builds you can make bitchin art with simple round brushes in photoshop. basically you have to break it down, do some basic shapes like spheres and squares, and when yu can shade them well then try some more objects. i think even though i might play in painter some more ill use photoshop because im simply a photoshop . good luck in your quest for your next artistic step, its a wild one!

[Signature]

I think it's all about the approach you choose.

You have to choose the right colors and use different kinds of edges.
(A colored pencil or pastel look depends mostly on the color choice I think)

Look at these tutorials to see good approaches and theory for example.
http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?t=31438
http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?t=31503
http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?p=304170
http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?p=304171

Round brushes with different opacity are a good way to learn.

That's a good tutorial too imo:
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/tut_learn.php

No offense Wight Zombie but I think it's a pretty digital look you have there.
For a traditional look I'd define shapes through values so that you don't need lines.
Then you can still add lines if it's the style you want to go for.
The painting should just work without lines as well.

I like the smudge tool in The Gimp. I like it better for blending than the one in Photoshop.

I did this with a mouse in the Gimp for example with round brushes and smudging.
I think it has a painterly feel to it.
http://64.191.99.205/~andyt/images/albums/Other-Digital-Stuff/lullaby.sized.jpg

I also used a noise filter on a layer on top to get a grainy feel if I remember correctly.
Have fun and experiment.

[Wight Zombie]

Originally posted by Wight Zombie
actually yah socar miles uses the similar technique as mullins, who i remebered uses a photoshop technique of running colors over eachother to make a image without cray brushes.

in this link you can see his underlaying technique exactly like socars myles.
http://www.goodbrush.com/hirez_pgs/process/marine.htm

look through his galleries like this

and you can see his more raw strokes in photoshop and you can see through a hard base color then subtle softer builds you can make bitchin art with simple round brushes in photoshop. basically you have to break it down, do some basic shapes like spheres and squares, and when yu can shade them well then try some more objects. i think even though i might play in painter some more ill use photoshop because im simply a photoshop . good luck in your quest for your next artistic step, its a wild one!

no offense taken, its supposed to be digital hence this line in my 1st post - """as for painting id like to use a kool style that involves inks blended with a paintish feel."""

i love the digital effect and harsh lines, im trying to find a cool painting technique to use within the line that doesnt look out of place, which cureently many of my experiements look like poo because they contrast a bit too much. id like to make something work for me in photoshop.

[LarryDallas]

Hey! I didn't know Bill Murray was guest starring on Angel... ;)