introduction to wacom & digital paint

[retro002]

hey guys,

gotta problem here. recently bought a wacom, i now try to paint on the pc. problem is, i dont really know how to start. ok, i gotta try around no problem i gonna do that, but i also have a couple of stupid questions available:

1. in photoshop is it neccessary to pick every shade i want to use? when setting opacity to maybe bout 50% i can darken the shades, but often it has a "muddy" feeling to it. anybody any links or sth on techniques? i saw some people using the lasso tool for defining shade areas, but this seems a bit weird to me.

2. is there any way to scale brushsize by hotkey or any other shortcut?

3. im not much of a painter, does one on the pc usually work from dark to light?

4. anybody got some good links to a "newbie tutorial"?
helping out with brushes etc.

5. yes i know painter is better, i promise i will use it, but i'd like to start with ps, cause of limited possibilities. (all that tools seem too much)

[gekitsu]

okay, answering questions first:

1) you can set brush opacity to pen pressure so you can vary the thickness of the paint. with the eyedropper (shortcut is either alt or ctrl... one works in ps the other one in painter but i can't tell them apart) you can pick up shades you already painted and paint further with them.
the muddy feeling is just a matter of getting used to the way digital paint in ps works. try a bit around and you'll come over that for sure.

2) in ps6 it is , and . (german keyboard). no idea what it is like ion ps7 german but in ps7 US, you have to switch to US keyboard layout and change brush size with ü and + (because it is [ and ] in the us layout)

3) totally your choice... dark to light, light to dark, local value to extremes, whatever you like and fits your way of working best.

4) no idea, sorry. in your place, i'd just search around for as much different painting tuts as possible and try each way of working for yourself. combine what you liked and discard what made your brain bleed out of the ears...

5) the day you get familiar to painter's heavy gui layout, you don't want to change back to ps

one main thing to help you starting -if you come from traditional painting- is realizing that it isn't actual paint you paint with but something actively light-emitting.
it is mixing a bit differently, too.

[cmortier2002]

4) Me trying also to find good brush tutorial for ps but found nothing until now. Anyway, if you buy recently a wacom, you probably have painter classic that is already very good and a tiny version of painter7 (without customisation and la lot less brushes), and there is a VERY good serie of tutorials Here
If you found one about photoshop, please put it here
:batman:

[gekitsu]

for photoshop brushes, i'd recommend the simple basic paintbrush tool. the one with un-aliased edges. i set it to about 40% opacity and bind pen pressure to opacity.

with the two hotkeys for increasing and decreasing brush tip size, i found this a very effective tool that painter doesn't offer. (it's one of the two things - the other one is layer/image management - that drives me back to photoshop from time to time)

as for custom brushes:

in ps6, everything you can do is capturing custom brush tip shapes. afaik, there'y a menu item in the edit menu for that.
in ps7, you can just open the brushes dialoge and change different options for different brush effects. learning by doing seems the best there, imho.

[cmortier2002]

Yiahh, thanks gekitsu.

[retro002]

@gekitsu: thanks for helping out. i think im getting slowly getting those brush things, but have definately problems on painting. up to now i do way more drawings, perhaps i should try an get some books on traditional painting to help me out.

thanks again

[Koryh]

I don't know what version of painter you are using but the last three that I can remember as well as the latest, has the exact same hot key for changing the tip size.
Actually it was in Painter that one could change the size of any brush including sampled shapes. This is only a Photoshop 7 feature.

BTW on an English keyboard [ ] changes the size of the brush in Photoshop AND Painter. In PS you can use , . to scroll through the brushes in the brush palette. Personally I think it would be better if you could scroll through your tool presets. That would be so much better.

Any way I hope that helps.

PS would it be cool if I uploaded some of my custom brushes and tools?

[bansq]

Im a newbie with my wacom too, and looking for good tuts and stuff. So far i have found forums the most useful resouce for learning stuff, as long as painters own "helptutorial" isnt helping a shite.
Andrew Loomis's books are quite good, but they dont have anything for painters, mostly lineart stuff, except maybe something from the illustration tips ive studied lightly.

[Darrell Bowman]

If you hold ctrl and alt then this will scale your brush size,
you will see a clear circle in painter.

one pixel is good for line. i use up to a 5 pixel for line sometimes. you can go larger if u like.
i change the gain alot below the brush stroke to get a more
dense line. finer the gain or 0 the less ink flows i find.

opacity will effect your paint too i use like 10 - 15 opacity
alot on my airbrush.

first thing i do in photoshop is i double click on my brushs
starting at one pixel then i make the next two etc up to about 5 then i make one like 8 i find i use ten and twelve alot for brushing in backgrounds but this may vary on the
fact you maybe using 300 dpi i mostly use 72 for 640 by 480
cd rom art work.

45 and 65 are good for large fill areas.

plus if the brush sensitivity is marked the touch of your pen
will have some effect on the pen size.
take a lot of practice and it took me 2 weeks just playing with
painter to get it to work the way i like.
in painter in preferences there is a is a thing called brush trackiing.
i could spend days on this just moving microns to get it to
just the way i work.

fool around play you cant break it.
we could write a tutorial but your questions would have to be
point by point we cant guess at what your needing.
you help us by asking the right questions.
alot of the guys would just say use ur brains but some
questions are valid so dont be afraid to ask.