Page 77 - Photoshop User December 2016

interesting texture. Vary the size of the brush, its Opacity and Area, and even the Style to build up the effect.
Creating More Complex Effects
The actual filters used aren’t that important until you get to really small details. More often than not, I just create snap- shot layers from various adjusted layers and blending. I have a special trick for doing this that you can see in this video. The reason for the adjustments is so I can paint with lighter or darker colors. I simply use effects such as Blur or Crys- tallize to add a little variety to the samples, but in the end those effects are pretty much lost until you paint with very fine details (use small brush sizes and the Dab setting) or
duplicate them and mask the painted layer to reveal them. In this case, the blur and contrast add more drama to the painting and it begins to feel more vintage.
Optionally finish everything off with a mask to slowly reveal the original image.
You can also keep adding layers and snapshots to get richer or more complex results.
Using a variety of brushes and Styles from the Options Bar lets you get some really incredible textures. Painting on different layers gives you lots of flexibility in masking and blending. And while you can get some great results with the tool presets, try to avoid the temptation to pick just one and cover your entire image in one pass and call it done. I like to think of this tool as a foundation for deeper textured effects, so spending some quality time with it is necessary to put it under your control, and definitely use it with other tech- niques. And remember that your snapshots vanish when you close the file, so it’s generally best to work all in one session, or to save your snapshots as separate files, then load them back in as layers to create new snapshots. Weird, huh?
Okay, I’m really looking forward to seeing your painterly results on Facebook and Instagram! Tag #KelbyOne and get painting! ■
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