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Tricks with Brushes

Lesson 4 from: Photoshop Power Tips and Tricks

Jesús Ramirez

Tricks with Brushes

Lesson 4 from: Photoshop Power Tips and Tricks

Jesús Ramirez

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Lesson Info

4. Tricks with Brushes

Lesson Info

Tricks with Brushes

So a lot of times when you're compositing or retouching you may need a specific brush to achieve an effect. In this case, in this composite, I would like to add mist onto this effect or fog or something like that. One of the best ways of adding mist or fog is by painting it in. And I would need a brush for that. There's several ways of getting brushes, you can buy one, you can find one for free online and download it or you can make one. Now a lot of people don't know that Adobe gives you if you have the full version of the Creative Cloud, unfortunately this does not apply to the people with the photography plan. But if you do have the full version of the Creative Cloud you can get brushes, patterns, UI kits, vector graphics, and a whole bunch more right from within the app and a lot of people don't know that those are available to them to use. So I will show you how that works. I'm gonna, I'm just opening up my Adobe Creative Cloud app. There it is. And if you go, usually you start on...

the home screen which is that screen there. And if you click on assets, you'll have three tabs, files, fonts, this one here is the one that most people never click on. That one is called market. And market gives you all these assets that you can download immediately onto your Creative Cloud Account and use them right away. So I can select from different categories. From user interfaces, you can see all, so for those of you that are designers you can actually get started right away with designing an app or maybe a graph or something like that by using one of these free resources, and this is not Adobe Stock. Adobe Stock you actually pay for the asset, this is already free included with your account. So we have vectors, you can download. Icons. Patterns. And brushes. So what I could do is select, click in the search bar there, type in, I'll type in clouds because I want to use a cloud brush to sort of create the illusion of a, of mist and fog. It brought these icons of clouds, I don't want icons I want brushes, so I need to click on the all categories filter and select brushes. Now I have all these brushes to choose from. And they're all different types of cloud brushes. So all you really have to do is look at the brush and you know, try to figure out which one will work for you or you can just download several and see which one works. I'll download this one here in the top right. Clouds number three. So I'm gonna click on this icon and select the library, the Creative Cloud library that I'm going to use. So I have a library called downloads, I'll download it there. I'll click on that. And if the internet gods are working you should see a download here in the brushes panel. So it's currently downloading. Okay so now we have the brushes, or that particular brush that I selected in the brushes section in my library. If you do not use libraries you may not see that panel. To enable it you can go into window, libraries, and there it is. For me it's right up here, in some cases other people have it nested there, you can click on it and open it. But I like nesting mine right up there. And that's another tip for you, you can click and drag panels and drop them anywhere where you see a blue highlight. So there you go, an extra tip for you. But anyway, when you have the brush downloaded onto your libraries panel you can simply click on it and it will automatically be added onto your brushes here and you can start painting with it. If I select white as my foreground color I can start painting that mist. So now I have this layer of fog in the composite. Obviously from that point I could colorize it and do other effects to it. And I actually did it on, I did it destructively, I actually painted on the composite layer. When you paint in effects like that you usually want to do it on a separate layer. Paint in your effect. And the reason you want to do that is so that you can work non-destructively of course, get rid of it if you need to, mask it, control it by adding color. So I'm adding a hue and saturation adjustment layer. I'm going to clip it to the layer below. Clipping means that the layer below controls the opacity of the layer above. In the case of an adjustment layer, the layer below will control where that adjustment is applied. So if I click on colorize, reduce the lightness, I can also change the hue, and now I can get a different color. So maybe look for a yellowish tone there to better match the scene. And I was able to quickly create fog in this scene by downloading one of the free brushes and you can get all kinds of brushes. Not just fog or things like that. What I recommend doing is just going into the brushes category, at their featured, and just scroll down the list and see what you find that might help. As you can see there's scattering effects, leaves, watercolor, a whole bunch of stuff, so. Those are all available for you to use if you do have the full version of the Creative Cloud. Once again, if you have the photography plan, you won't be able to access them. But take advantage if, of them if you do have the full version of the Creative Cloud. Once again, that's in the Adobe Creative Cloud app under assets and market. And Adobe Stock is right next to it and that's different. Everything in this tab you do have to pay for. But not in the assets tab.

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Ratings and Reviews

stephen
 

There are but a scant few who really know Photoshop well enough that are able to teach it with a comfortable flow, thoroughness and a pleasant personality. Jesus hits all the marks and I must say, I enjoy... and more importantly, learn more from him than most of the others. It's a pleasure learning from him. Thanks! (I watched 3 times in a row today LOL)

Jennifer
 

Absolutely loved this concise and useful course! This was the first time I’ve heard Jesús teach and I really enjoyed his teaching style. He gets right to the point, no fluff or filler, is easy-going. The tips he teaches in this course are great! I’ve been using photoshop for ten years and I learned something new in each section. Money well spent!! I can hardly wait to check out his other courses!!!

Scott Weishair
 

Amazing! Really cool stuff explained quite well. Loved it!

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