Creating Your Own Brushes

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Creating Your Own Brushes

As was mentioned in Chapter 1, you can create your own brushes for use in Paint Shop Pro. To use a custom brush, select one of the painting tools, such as the Paint Brush or Airbrush. Then go to the Tool Options palette and click the brush preview window or the arrow next to it to access a drop-down list of brushes, shown in Figure 11.21.

Figure 11.21. The Custom Brush drop-down list.

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The easiest sort of brush you can save is a generated brush tipone whose characteristics are determined solely by the settings in the Tool Options palette. To create such a brush, choose the Paint Brush or Airbrush, select the settings you want, and then click the preview window for the brush tip (or the arrow adjacent to the preview window). Click the Create brush tip button, which is the uppermost button on the right of the Brush Tip drop-down list. If you want the current brush variance settings to be saved along with your new brush tip, check the Save Variance check box. When you click OK , your brush tip is added to the brushes in the drop-down list.

You can also create your own custom brush from any selection or figure. As an example, choose the Picture Tube tool and create a brush out of one of the Picture Tube elements like this:

  1. Apply one of the coins from the Coins tube file to a new image with either a white or a transparent background. Crop the image to just a bit larger than the coin.

  2. Choose one of the painting tools (to have access to the proper Tool Options palette).

  3. Open the Custom Brush drop-down list and click the second button on the right, called Create brush tip from selection . This opens the Create Brush Tip dialog box.

  4. In the Create Brush Tip dialog box, shown in Figure 11.22, give your brush a name and, if you like, enter author, copyright, and description information. If you want the current brush variance settings to be saved along with your new brush tip, check the Save Variance check box. You can also set a default step for your brush. When you click OK, the current selection or figure is then added immediately to the available custom brushes.

    Figure 11.22. Create Brush Tip dialog box.

    graphic/11fig22.gif


  5. To use a custom brush, select the brush from the drop-down list in the Tool Options palette.

Notice that you did not actually have to select the coin. A figure surrounded by white or transparency is all that you need.

NOTE

graphic/p2.gif NOTE

When you use a custom brush with a custom shape, the Hardness and Thickness controls in the Tool Options palette are greyed out. These controls modify a brush's shape, and you can't modify the shape of a brush created from a selection.

Now compare the difference between the results produced with the custom brush created from a tube element and the results produced with the tube itself. The custom brush paints with a material coloreither the current Foreground material, if you paint with the left mouse button depressed, or the current Background material, if you paint with the right mouse button depressed. The opacity of the paint is determined by the Opacity setting selected in the Tool Options palette.

Figure 11.23 shows an example of the coin custom brush in use, with Opacity set to 75. (Notice that the parts of the brush that correspond to the dark areas of the figure paint more opaquely than the lighter areas, with white areas being completely transparent.)

Figure 11.23. The coin brush in use.

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Compare the results shown in Figure 11.23 with the results that you get when you use the tube. With a tube, you paint with a fully opaque , full- color image. Which to choosethe brush or the tubewill depend on what effect you want to achieve.

Now let's try creating another brush, this time using a dingbat character as the selection:

  1. Set the Foreground color to black, and then select the Text tool and choose Floating . Then click inside an empty image.

  2. In the Text tool's Tool Options palette box, select the dingbat font you want to use, in the style and size you want. (Astigmatic One Eye's ButtonButton font is used in the example here.)

  3. In the text box, add the dingbat character you want to use for your brush and click OK.

  4. Choose one of the painting tools. Click the brush preview button in the tool's Tool Options palette, and in the selection list click the Create brush tip from selection button. When the Create Brush Tip dialog box appears, enter a name and choose whether to save the variance settings. The dingbat character is now added to your available custom brushes.

Figure 11.24 shows an example of the dingbat character in use, with Opacity set to 15.

Figure 11.24. The dingbat brush in use.

graphic/11fig24.gif


NOTE

graphic/p2.gif NOTE

You aren't restricted to using only one character when you create a custom brush from a text selection. If you want to use a word or phrase or other string of characters as a brush, that works just as well as a single character. Figure 11.25 shows an example.

A brush made from a text string.

graphic/11fig25.gif


Keep in mind, though, that the maximum size for a brush is 500x500 pixels.

In similar fashion, you can create a brush from a preset shape or from the output of an effect. Figure 11.26, for example, shows a brush created from the output of the Kaleidoscope effect. In short, any figure at all can be used as the basis of a brush.

Figure 11.26. A brush made from the output of the Kaleidoscope effect.

graphic/11fig26.gif


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Paint Shop Pro 8 Power
Paint Shop Pro 8 Power!
ISBN: B001QCXEI6
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 125
Authors: Lori J. Davis

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