Tag Archives: photoshop

drawnblog:

frenden:

Photoshop doesn’t do well with light pressure recognition. Making thick-to-thin strokes requires a lot more fidelity than would even be necessary with a proper sable brush and ink in meatspace. It blows out pressure at the low end and makes soft lines blobby as hell.

You can combat this by turning off the lowest pressure settings of your tablet at the driver level, but you shouldn’t have to. I want a brush engine that senses those slight variances and accurately translates them.

It’s possible. Manga Studio, which I’ve used for inking since about 2006, does a stellar job at light pressure translation. Getting feathered strokes that look like they came from my Raphael 8404 #4 sable brush is no harder than inking in the real world. Painter does a pretty good job of this too. At the very least, both allow you to tweak how the brush engine interprets your strokes on a per-brush-setting basis instead of using a sledgehammer on a finishing nail by leaving you with an only recourse of neutering your full range of pressure sensitivity at the driver level.

Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash all exhibit this problem. I don’t know if it’s an interpolation/smoothing issue or something larger, but I do know that the result is shitty lines.

Since around the time of the Photoshop CS6 Beta, I’ve been attempting to create a brush that combats these shortcomings by dropping out some of the lowest pressure mark-making with a combination of flow and texture settings. The result is a brush that, while not 100% opaque at the lightest marks, provides a hell of a lot more fidelity and control.

This is a quick video of the brush in action. Below is a download link for the latest test version of the brush’s Tool Preset.

DOWNLOAD THE BRUSH TOOL PRESET

Illustrator Ray Frenden just made your life a lot easier with his Photoshop brush tool presets. Say thank you. 

There goes Drawn! my favourite blog before tumblr being awesome. Can’t wait to check this out.

My third ordinary superpower comic – a Christmas present for my friend James.

New vs. Old Profile pics.

Does this reflect that the main differences in my life are:

  1. My blue has partially grown out;
  2. I actually drew my part incorrectly this time (as I would see it in a mirror, oops)
  3. I now believe in giraffe love; and last but certainly not least,
  4. I now have Arizonas?

I do, however, miss whiteboards.

I just wanted to talk a little more about my comic making process. I’m learning how to use Photoshop, but I’m not super comfortable with it, so I mostly draw things on paper. I do my drawings in pencil first, and then use pen to draw over the lines once I have things roughly how I like them. I use Staedtler triplus fineliners, but sharpie fineliners also work pretty well. The reason I use felt tip pens instead of ballpoint is that I find ballpoint pens catch more often and have problems with any previous grooves in the paper. I scan and take pictures of my work at various stages. The Ordinary Superpower comics I’ve been making required an additional step. I used Photoshop to colour them in. I mostly used the paint bucket and brush tool, although I’m sure someone with more expertise (or me when I have had more practice) could use more tools for more advanced effects.

The finished comics of my boyfriend, and John Green are also on my blog, in case you want to check them out 🙂

P.S. Tell me about your ordinary superpower and I may just use it in my next comic!

This is my second Ordinary Superhero comic! The first one also features arms, if you’re interested in checking it out.

So a bit about the comic. I forget where I first read about ordinary superpowers, but I loved the idea. I think everyone should consider what their ordinary superpowers are and celebrate them. Don’t forget to be awesome, you know? For example, an ordinary superpower of giraffes’ could be loving one another so so much, and one of my ordinary superpowers could be resisting reblogging every cute cat video I see. John Green probably has a multitude of ordinary superpowers, but signing is surely one of them.

I also made a post talking a bit more about how I make these types of comics, which can be found here.

P.S. Tell me about your ordinary superpower and I may just use it in my next comic!