Photoshop Brush Tips

[RunningBear]

Can anyone offer tips/advice on how to make the best use of brushes to get good textures, colouring and shading. For example, if I have a tree shape brush, what's the best way of getting good colouring and shading in the foliage and bark? I don't simply want to stamp a single flat colour on the canvas. Thanks in advance

[Tamlin]

The Brush tool is normally used to apply a single colour, but here's one way you could achieve what you want:

1. Stamp your tree shape onto a new transparent layer.

2. Lock the layer's transparency, so you don't go "outside the lines" when colouring.

3. Pick a suitable Brush and set the Mode to Color. Select an appropriate colour for the leaves, then paint that on to the foliage area of your tree.

4. Select the Pattern Stamp Tool. Change the Mode to Luminosity and lower the Opacity. Pick a "bark-like" pattern and paint over the areas of your tree where you want the texture to show.

This is just a very rough guide to one way of doing it - you're probably already aware that there is no one set way of doing anything in Photoshop.

[RunningBear]

Thanks I'll give it a try