brush tip shapes - natural

[Talietty]

Hello,

This may be a rather silly question, but working on a new brush and would like to start with selecting a tip - ie, fan, flat, etc.  - when looking  at Create and modify brushes in Adobe Photoshop it shows a pannel in the brush settings that actually shows "real" brush tips, but all I have are created brush stroke tips - nothing showing me brushes I can start with - please advise what I need to do to bring these up?   I saw in one article that there should be a default "natural brushes" set - but I don't have that.  

Guidance would be appreciated 🙂  (have current PS)

[Trevor.Dennis]

I've always started with an existing Bristle brush. Changed the settings to give me what I want, and save it as a new preset.  Now you come to mention it, I don't know how to turn on the Bristle Qualities options from scratch so to speak.  

See what Bert Monroy says about them.

[Talietty]

Fantastic, thanks so much - will check it out!  

[Talietty]

Checked it out - nice, and thanks so much, however, he is also starting with a panel I'm not able to see - ie., actual brush tips to work with before manipulating the settings .. hmmm....  my current thoughts on workaround are to work with a "hair" brush and go from that point to shape base and see if I can manipulate to what I am trying to do ...

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

I think you might be referring to the preview panel that was removed in V21.0.3.  Check out the help page HERE

and scroll about half way down the page to the section below.  I have highlighted the relevent information, but I have no idea why the preview window was discontinued.  We had lots of changes to panels when Photoshop moved to HTML5 from Flash, for instance, but I am fairly sure that was earlier than this change.

A couple of this forum's regulars worked with Dave Cross at MAX in 2016 and he told us a cool story about selecting flyaway hair.  Apparently he showed what looked like an impossibly good selection of flyaway hair to Scott Kelby and other members of the Photoshop Guys team.  Dave later confessed that he had hand painted the fine hair detail back into the selection.  That's something I have also done for as long as I can remember.

For a long time I used the Hair & Skin Texture Brushes by Castrochew with some additional presets that I made.  You can still download that set and it is free.  My own presets used fully hard round presets of one or two pixels, with opacity jitter set to fade. That still tend to be too heavy IMO, so I usually reduce the layer opacity to at least 50%.

I still use that set and my own presets, but nowadays I also use a lot of Aaron Blaize sets.  They are not free, but typically cost just US$5 and they are outstanding.

ON SALE! Photoshop Brushes & Texture Sets - The Art of Aaron Blaise (creatureartteacher.com)

What adds huge value to his brush sets is that he often has videos describing how to get the best out of them.  This is for his Hair & Fur Volume 2 

I have a bunch of his brush sets and love them all.  His cloud brushes can produce highly convincing skies.  Hmmm...  I can see he has several new sets since I last checked out his site, so you are going cost me some dollars! LOL.

[Talietty]

Lol - sorry about that!  🙂  Thanks for all the helpful tips!  Will check out..  

Miss not having ability to see and work with brush tips directly (as clearly before ...)  wonder why discontinued?  

I have played with some brushes and have come up with a few good/interesting effects - so fun!  I'm trying to get to an oil brush with more realistic effects - between "painting" and applying with "palett knife" , but in the process have come up with some fun options - going back and forth in some cases with AI to get the specific feel/shape of bristles - I created 8 that I like and will be working with to see if I can get the desired effect(s)

While I really enjoy the tactile experience in physical paintings and sculptures - diving into the digital sphere is super fun and interesting  - so much dexterity in playing with the direction and working toward the "final" - (which is much harder, as ideas seem to take over lol ...)

Again, thanks so much.  Take care

[Trevor.Dennis]

If you are interested in oil paint brushes thhat appear to have depth, search for Photoshop Impasto brushes.  This video deals with it nicely and talks about the Kyle Webster Impasto brushes.

You can also experiment with layer styles like Bevel & Emboss.

If you find interesting presets, try reverse engineering them with Brush Settings to see how they work.  You have exactly the same tools available to you as Kyle Webster, Aaron Blaise etc.

[Talietty]

Thanks so much Trevor.  Yes, I've been playing with his oil brushes, the video helped direct a bit more.  It's a shame his Impasto Kit is not available - however working more with his brushes, as well as lighting tricks, and layer styles I'm getting really interesting results.  Bevel & emboss, is still a bit of a weak area I need to work with more, but certainly see where it will help with the thick spot illusions. 

Getting the hang of creating interesting brushes is a blast!