[Steven Stahlberg]

I would like to ask some of the masters here (someone said 'intimidating forum' and that's no kidding!) - what setup do you mostly use for freehand painting? For instance, Paintbrush Tool on full opacity, Wet Edges off, Stylus-pressure controlling opacity only, size toggled up and down with the [] hotkeys, the default Swatches window for color picking? Or some variation on that?

[NukleoN]

Steven...

I'm certainly no painting master, but have you tried Painter? From the experience I've had drawing with Painter vs. Photoshop, well I'd much prefer to draw in Painter over Photoshop...plus I think the brushes are more subtle, and it's easy to control the brush size on the fly with CNTRL-ALT. Painter also responds very well to the Wacom.

[Steven Stahlberg]

Yes I've tried it, but didn't take the time to really learn it. I guess I'll do that now.

[Frost]

I doubt anyone here responds to the name 'master'. =) But personally, I use the brush tool in PS the most, set to pressure sensitivity at a full 100% range, no wet edges, usually sketching with a hard-edge brush and refining some things with a soft-edge brush. My favorite hotkey is the ALT key for color picking and 'X' to swap fore/back colors (and CTRL-Z...=).

[gowansy]

where do you select no wet edges :/
i'm a n00bie to digital art (we all start off as a n00bie at some point.)

i get my wacom 6x8 tomorrow

[Steven Stahlberg]

In PS: a little box you can tick and untick, in the option window for the Paintbrush.

[Gavin Greaves]

wet edges: is that just for watercolour effects?

[ToastyKen]

Yeah.. wet edges is Photoshop's Poor Man's Watercolor Effect, basically.

[Steven Stahlberg]

I'm not sure what it's meant to look like by the great and wise designers of PS tools (slight touch of sarcasm), but the effect is rarely useful, to me anyway.

[Briareos]

The setup you stated is pretty much what I use (me not a master tho). As far as color swatches I'm curious about that too. It would be cool to setup something similiar to a oil palette in PS, instead of picking colors throught the rgb/etc color picker... Maybe someone should make a nifty palette plugin for PS painting.

[29A]

Briareos: care to elaborate on that?

you mean lika a smallish image that you can use to blend colors?
as in making a separate layer with colorblobs airbrushed together and ALT picking a color from that?

[Binke]

I started using wet-edges after Loki had mentioned it..and..
the Wet-Edges option is REALLY useful sometimes. In my opinion that is. It uses another algorythm for the opacity/blending, thus I experience it being somewhat smoother/more sensitive then the default. You have to have a tablet with pressure sensitivity though to really take advantage of it. It's also great when doing shadows!

And I really don't think it is trying to mimic watercolors. If you want that, then get Painter.

29A: I think that's what he meant, if not, that's a cool idea too, I've wanted a feature like that for a long time. I think Satori PainterXL, has a window like that where you can mix colors in a little window.

[Lunatique]

I think I read once that Spooge toggles the number buttons while painting to adjust the opacity of his brushstrokes on the fly. If you study his work, you can see how it's applied. I guess that's part of his "signature style." And if anyone here is a master, it's the Demon.

[29A]

heh, i just checked the photoshop SDK released by Adobe. it turns out that the only plugins possible is filters and I/O related...
so i guess a separate layer will be the only way to accomplish that until Adobe decides to improve their architecture a little bit ...