ok :)
im ready to enter the world of PS brushes.

reason:
i need foliage, mid-distance forest edges in particular.

i attached some examples of what i mean by 'forest edges':
the fringed out profile or shilouette of a canopy,
in front of the sky, some distant background,
or some other forest in the back. ...

of course, id like to find whatever is there to download and play with it.
so if you know some links, id be greatful ..

also, i dont mind at all to learn how to make myself some of my own, only i odnt have the slightest clue of where to start.
any hints are thus very much appreciated.

best regards and thanks
d

Here's going to be the problem with using foilage brushes in Photoshop...

Whatever image you use to create the brush will be converted to grayscale. All brushes in Photoshop are grayscale. When you paint with the brush it will use the foreground color. Now, that being said, there are options to vary the color of the brush as you're painting, but each "stamp" of the brush will still be only one solid color. I think, at best, it would look like a painting.

Photoshop comes with a couple of grass brushes. You might want to experiment with them to see if the brushes are going to be able to do what you want.

Making a brush is easy. All you have to do is make a selection in the image. Then, go to EDIT>DEFINE BRUSH PRESET. You'll then find the brush listed as the last brush in the brush palette. Select it and you can change all the brush options... including size and color jitter.

--Racc

racc ! :)

thus, if i want my brush to show the profile of the canopy, i first need to get rid of the background transparent, correct ?

thnks
d

thus, if i want my brush to show the profile of the canopy, i first need to get rid of the background

Yes, exactly. However, the selection does not need to be sqaure. It can be any shape. If you go into quick mask mode (the two buttons below the foreground and background color swatches), you can paint the selection and get soft edges, etc. thus eliminating the need to actually remove the background.

--Racc

yo racc :))
cool thanks
d

btw ...
Each stamp of the brush will still be only one solid color. I think, at best, it would look like a painting.
I wasnt thinking so much of painting the forests themselves with these 'canopy-brushes', rather than using them to define the forests edges, a 'positive' for the clone tool, and a 'negative' for the eraser.
Also, i could use imagine that using them at a low hardness would work to imprint some kind of shading on a canopy.
Plus theres probably a few more things one can do using the brushes combined with patterns. ...

Okay, now I see. That makes a lot more sense. Using the brushes with the clone tool.... :dizzy: Duh! How could I have missed that!? I do it all the time. Sometimes I feel like such a rock-brain.

You get something stuck in your head and you can't... well, yes I'm going to say it... see the forest for the trees!

--Racc

it must be the hard weekend you had, racc !
:)
d

btw
now that we mentioned the fact that brushes in Ps are monochromatic ...

does anyone know, by any chance, whether that works any differently in PSP ?
i think i picked up the expression 'tubes' when i was reading through some tuts.
are thes the equivalent to PS brushes in PSP ?
are these tubes monochromatic as well ?

regards
d

'tubes' in psp are not brushes, per se. they are more pre-formed, self-containted images which you place, not brush. and i know of no brushes in psp that are in color. tubes can be altered in size with a slider and one 'brush' can contain multiple images which get placed at random or in a sequence. but, they are fixed images.

so, you might have a tube that contains several images, like a tube for insects where each time you click on an image a new insect gets placed or randomly placed where you click.

you can also make your own tubes by 'saving as tube (.tub)'.

Craig

PSP Tubes sound a lot like the Image Hose in Painter. I seem to vaguely recall on old free plugin that would do something similar in Photoshop. Don't recall the name, though.

--Racc

racc
is it this one ?

They're called Picture Tubes in Paint Shop Pro. Micrografx Picture Publisher and Corel Photo-Paint also have them, but call them Image Sprays. In Painter, they're called Image Hose Nozzles. If you are a Photoshop user, you can add this functionality with a plug in called PhotoSpray.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/weekly/aa032999.htm
http://www.humansoftware.com/pages1200/Photospray/HSpsp11.html

rgds
d

I'm not sure, I never used it. Based on the information in your links, it seems to be.

--Racc