Brushes


Photogenics comes with a variety of realistic brush types. Different brushes allow you to choose how your chosen colour and effect is applied to the image. Airbrush gives a smooth flow of paint with soft edges, others give different textures to your painting like chalk pastel.

Airbrush

The airbrush is selected by default when you start Photogenics, and is usually the best brush to use for image processing. By default, it is set up to provide a fast flow of paint, which is no good when trying to do smooth shading. The example picture shows the different effects you can easily acheive by changing the brush settings. The left image shows the default settings. You will find that going over what you have already done will quickly cover what was underneath. On the right is the kind of shading you can do with the pressure set low (about 5-15%) and the size around 50. Note that the faster your computer is, then the better you can paint with the larger brush sizes.

Pencil

Pencil is one of most realistic of the artists tools in Photogenics. Altering its pressure can give a good deal of control over what you draw. For instance, if you were drawing a picture you might do a rough outline with the pressure set to 20% and the size set to 1 or 2. To subtly shade in a picture, you should set the size to 3 or 4, and the pressure to 3-5%. However, if you want to do something like cross hatching, then reduce the size to 1 or 2 and the pressure to 1-15%. From left to right, the example picture shows what you can do with the pressure set to 4%, and the size set from 1 to 8. Note that as in real life, pencils work best on a white background, although there is nothing to stop you experimenting with other colours.

Chalk Pastel

Chalk Pastel is best for shading in quite large areas, and works best with a large brush size and a pressure of about 20% The example picture illustrates chalk pastel with a pressure of 20% and a size of 20, 30, and 40. Chalk pastels are usually used with black paper, but also work well with other colours. This brush is very good at blending colours together, as the colour builds up gradually as you move the mouse (unlike the airbrush which builds up colour as you press the mouse button).

WaterColour

Watercolour, realistically builds up colour so that it doesn't quite obscure what you are drawing over. For best results, start shading with lighter colours and gradually build up the amount of colour. Also, with large brush sizes move the mouse slowly, at around the same speed you would use a normal paint brush. The example picture shows what you can achieve with pressure at 2%, and size set to 10, 20, 30 and 40. Note that this works best on a very fast machine, due to the large brush size needed.

Felt Tip

Felt tip may not be the most used artistic medium, but Photogenics has a good rendition of one anyway. As expected, if you go over a dark colour with a lighter colour, nothing will happen. So it will only work on a light coloured background. Also, if you go over one colour with another colour, the colours will mix like real ink. For example if you go over orange with magenta you will get red, and if you go over yellow with cyan then you will get green. If however you go over a colour with one that doesn't mix, then you will get black, ie, going over red with blue.

The examples show what effect the pressure has on the brush, here at a size of 6. From left to right the pressures are 2%, 6%, 10%, 15%, 30% and finally 100%. Note that this brush will not work well with some image processing modes.

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