Customizing Brushes
The various Brush Tips and options are accessed through the
Control Palette
Dialog Box. To open the Control Palette dialog box
you must first make sure the option is selected. On the menu bar
click on View | Toolbars... to open the
Toolbar Dialog box.
Put
a check next to Control Palette and any other toolbars you would
like opened. Once the Control Palette is selected it can
easily be opened and closed by pressing the Tab key on your
keyboard.
The Control Palette/Brush Tip Tab
Now that you've got your Palettes so that they'll open
with the Tab key, you need to press the Paintbrush
button on the
Tool Palette
so that the proper Control box
will open with the Tab.
Brush Shapes
Your drawing tools come with various shapes and sizes as well
as preset categories such as Pen, Pencil, Crayon etc. When a
drawing tool is selected on the Toolbar,
the Paper Textures menu will be available on the Tools Controls
Tab. Paper Textures may be added to any drawing tool.
Custom Brushes
PSP allows custom brush tips to be added either through selecting
a brush stored on your disk, or creating your own custom design.
Custom designs aren't nearly as difficult as they sound, simply
open the image and select the area you would like to use as your
new brush.
Open the Custom
Brushes dialog box and click on the create button.
Mousehold Creations has an excellent tutorial on creating
custom brushes
in PSP 5 as well as a sizeable collection of links
to custom brushes to download from around the Web.
Opacity Settings
Opacity can be fun as varying levels will let more or less of the
background image show through. Adjust the slider to a lower
number for greater transparency and a higher number for a more
solid effect.
Density Settings
Density dictates how the paint flows onto the canvas.
Lower settings allow less paint on the canvas while
higher numbers allow more.
Hardness Settings
The Hardness settings adjust the focus of the Paintbrush.
A setting of 1 gives a soft focus while 100 will give you
sharp edges.
Size
Size is just what you would expect it to be... the size of the
brush. Sizes vary from 1 (one pixel) all the way up to 200.
Steps
The same effects of Photoshop's 'spacing' can be accomplished in PSP 5 by
using the Step option. Either move the slider or type
a number in the box. The larger the number the more space between
'brush strokes'; the smaller the number the less space.
Additional Resources:
Drawing Tools
Introduction to Paint Shop Pro 5 : Table of Contents
Lines
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