[Gort]

I see a lot of tutorials out there for digital painting in Photoshop, and they're all very helpful. For the most part they address some of the fundementals for painting altogether, but none (that I've found so far) address any of the specifics in digital painting like building up with different opacities ("I use a 25% here then a 60% there with a ...so on and so on"). I know that Spooge works with different opacities, but how exactly (a general question directed to everyone's take on the matter and not just Craig's)?

Is there a common process that everyone uses or is it a personal preference of the artist? Be mindful that my inquiry is directed to Photoshop and not Painter.

Thanks!
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[B0b]

i let my pen do the talking, i generally have opacity set to pen pressure

[Frog]

I always set the opacity depending on what I'm doing, I rarely use 100%.

For blending in PS I use low opacity hard brushes set to 10% - 20%, I hate the soft edges that the airbrush creates and I haven't found a better way to blend one colour into another in PS. Basically I build layers and layers of paint to blend, using the eyedropper tool to keep resampling and repainting the blend until I get a smooth transition.

Also low opacity brushes are necessary for subtle effects, low key highlights and shadows etc... You can use them almost like a glaze or by using darks over lights you can create a watercolour like effect.

I had a tutorial featured on 3d festival a few months ago which explains my painting technique in more detail. If you check it out you can see that using low opacity brushes to build up colours can achieve very subtle and realistic effects. The reflections on the legs of the frog in that tutorial were created exactly in that way.

[edit] Another thing to bear in mind is that using blending modes is another great painting tool, ie paint highlights in "screen" and shadows in "multiply" mode. The advantage of doing this rather than just painting lighter or darker colours on top of your image is that you preserve the underlying detail.
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[eyewoo]

My reply would be identical to Frog's first three paragraphs above.

For realistic work I always use a hard edged non-textured brush set low... The setting really depends on whether I'm roughing in or doing final touchups. The closer to the final touchups the lower the opacity - sometimes as low as 4 or 5 percent.

I generally use preasure sensitivity for opacity, even at low settings.

For my children's illustration work, my brushes are still all over the place... I do use varying opacity settings, but not generally as low as for my realistic work.
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[Loki]

It's everybody's personal choice.

One thing you have to be careful about in photoshop 7 is to acknowledge and use the difference of flow and opacity. One can really tweak brushes nicely with 'flow'. I made some cloudbrushes recently and a jitter in 'flow' makes all the difference.

But as I always say: Make your own brushes and find your own perfect way of using them. Somebody else's way might not be the right one for you.

Btw: this must be the 100th time someboday has asked this question
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[Gort]

Thanks everyone!

Loki - my apologies for the redundancy, but I did do a search on the topic, and the returns were quite extensive (the topic titles didn't really elude to my inquiry; there were lots and lots of returns, so I thought I might address it directly). Most didn't really address the question specifically (I suppose I should brush up - pardon the pun - on my searching skills), so I do appreciate your feedback.
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[Loki]

Hey - it's all good and you are right with the not extensive answers - since it's everyone's personal choice. And I'm just a surly bastard.

But on a sidenote: with PS7 it's really worth it to spend a lot of time working out brushsets for different tasks. Don't rely on the standard ones - tweak them - not only for looks, but also tweak them for performance - make quick sketch brushes, luscious color-jitter insanities and complex scatter brushes ... make your own, unique, tailored and deadly toolset
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