Paimt with the
History brush |
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Step
1: As co-author of three Photoshop
Wow! books, Jack Davis has
a great collection of Photoshop
tips. With this one, we'll
start by opening up our base
image-- a photo of some mangos--
and duplicate the background
layer for safekeeping by dragging
it to the New Layer icon |
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Step
2: Since we're going to use
the Impressionist mode of
the History brush, we need
to reduce the internal color
detail a bit-- otherwise our
brush strokes will look like
rainbow stripes than a paint
stroke. Run the median filter
(Filter-- Noise-- Median)
to give it a slight blur |
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Step
3: Jack likes to set up his
History palette with different
Snapshots, so he has a range
of hues to paint from. Let's
start by using Image-- Adjust--
Levels and moving the middle
input slider to the left,
taking a Merged Layers snapshot
and naming it "Lighter". Undo
the Levels change, and take
snapshots for "Medium" and
one with the slider moved
right for "Darker." |
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Step
4: One last step before we
get painting-- let's create
a dark Ground layer by creating
a new layer and filling it
with black, and a Paint layer
to paint in. Reduce the opacity
of the ground layer to 75%
for now-- it will give you
a tracing paper effect. |
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Step
5: Let's paint! With one of
the natural looking brushes
selected, I started by tracing
the outlines of the mangos.
The pressure sensitive Wacom
pen gives me the control I
need to get the look I want. |
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Step
6: To get a larger range of
color, I went back and forth
between the different snapshots.
Here, I'm painting in a bit
of a highlight from the Lighter
snapshot-- I've already added
a touch of shadow from the
Darker snapshot. |
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Step
7: Here's a close-up on part
of Jack Davis' finished piece.
If you'd like to try your
hand at getting impasto brush
strokes like Jack's, check
out his Photoshop 5.5 Wow!
book-- it's available at www.peachpit.com |
