Painter 6 Tutorial: Making custom dab based brushes

[Jinny Brown]

Oboy! You've got me going now, Athena! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

There's a new tutorial on my site inspired by your mention of creating a brush by drawing with white on black.. (or something to that effect).

Here are the URLs to the set of tutorials, and thanks for the inspiration.. I put a link to the Painter Forum at TalkGraphics in both, near the top of the page. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

http://www.pixelalley.com/tutorials/...g-a-brush.html

http://www.pixelalley.com/tutorials/...man-brush.html

Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
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[This message was edited by Jinny Brown on May 17, 2001 at 05:55.]

[David Gell]

I've just visited your website Jinny and I really must compliment you. What you have created is an essential port of call for anyone interested in Painter [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Getting back to your gingerbread man tutorial, you have given me the idea of creating signature and copyright stamps for my artwork. The fact that the brush (stamp) can be resized and given other attributes such as variable colour and opacity has started to get me thinking of other possible uses [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

David

[Jinny Brown]

David,

Thanks for the nice description of my site, "Port of Call". [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Basically, what I've done, in building it, is to toss in everything that comes up that I've had time to write or paint about. There's no particular direction but it keeps growing and one of these days I'm going to have to weed out some of the junk and rewrite tutorials to make them better.

The two I just finished writing already need some additions. Yikes! There's not much chance that I'll ever get bored. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Thanks to Athena, I now know that when you capture a brush and want to put it into a new brush category, the time to create the new brush category is **before** the brush is captured, while the square selection is active, and before the brush variant is saved. I was doing it a very cumbersome and needlessly time-consuming way. (Plus, you get a nice little icon doing it Athena's way!)

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
________________________

[David Gell]

One point which I had previously thought about is this; does the ppi used during the creation of the initial dab image have any relationship to the final captured dab? I would assume that if the original image was totally vector then this would not make any difference, but is the gradient fill a vector?

David

[Jinny Brown]

Athena,

(This is a very long message, so be warned. I won't blame anyone if they don't have the patience to read it, but thanks in advance if you do. It's a series of responses to several messages from Athena.)

Now that I've had time to read this thread again (a lot in this one!), a few comments:

Message from Athena:
____________

"The cool tip to take from here is _use shades of grey to define what you wish to be partially transparent areas of the brush_. Any opaque parts of your brush will be in black."
____________

Yes, that is a cool tip, and thanks for sharing it. Another way of putting it (for anyone who doesn't already know), to explain how Painter handles captured brushes is that whatever is black in the captured brush dab shape will paint 100% color, and at the other extreme, whatever is white in the captured brush dab shape will be 100% transparent. As you said, Athena, shades of grey will be partially transparent depending on the percentage of white in the grey.

That's why the Gingerbread Man Brush dab is square with the figure cut out of the middle. The square selection was made on a black Canvas so the brush dab is 100% color and the cut-out figure in the middle of the dab (white) is 100% transparent.

Of course, there are a kazillion settings that can be added to a brush to make it paint with varying colors, value, saturation, depth, size, opacity, spacing, angle, size etc. after the fact of creating the basic brush. Then, it can be saved as yet another brush variant.. on and on into brush infinity! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
____________

"Then I went to Painter 6 and opened my .tif file. It's dimensions were not perfectly square, and the manual mentioned the instructions for making a square selection. (Actually, I think they mentioned the square dimensions for a reason, my first attempt at the brush looked funnier than the current one.) So I went to _Canvas --> Canvas size _added 100 pixels to the top and the bottom to give the future brush a more square shape.

Well, I still didn't follow their instructions which were, _choose the rectangular selection tool. Hold down the Shift key and drag across your brush shape to create a square selection_. . . ._ what busy work! _ I thought, and so I just went to the selection menu and said select all . . . since the dimensions of my tif were _kind of _ square."
____________

A quick way to get your TIF (or whatever format) brush dab image centered on a square Canvas is to:

1. Open a New Canvas large enough to give plenty of room around the brush dab image to make a square selection. (This requires that you know the pixel dimensions of the brush dab image so you can make the New Canvas larger.)

2. In the File menu, choose Place. Find the brush dab image file, click Open, and when the Place dialog box opens, click Open again. Your brush dab image will land smack in the middle of the Canvas as a Layer/Floater.

3. Below the Layers/Floaters list, click the Drop button.

4. Click the Rectangular Selection tool, hold down the Shift key and drag a square selection around the image, then proceed to Capture Brush, etc..
____________

"And a note about _expanding the size of your canvas_, if you, like me, tend to switch canvas colors you may want to be sure to have your canvas color that you create new documents with be the same color you have as the background for your future brush . . .in this case, I needed white to make the dimensions of my document __kinda__ square."
____________

In Painter, when you want to add extra pixels to your Canvas and want them to match the existing Canvas color (even if it's been Filled with a new color), click the Canvas with the Eyedropper tool and in the Canvas menu, choose Set Paper Color. Now, when you use Canvas, Canvas Size to add pixels to the top, bottom, left, and/or right sides, they'll match the existing Canvas color.
____________

"I imagine truly square dimensions add that extra polish [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]"
____________

I think a truly square selection makes your brush dab the shape you intended instead of distorted. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
____________

" .. just realize that where you paint black or shades of black is where your captured dab will lay down color. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]"
____________

Right! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
____________

"The next rule i broke . .... was the suggestion to keep the size of the brush close to the size i was going to use it at . .my .tif was huge relative to my expected size but I just wanted to get this test rolling so I didn't mess with the size."
____________

Not only is it a good practice to create the brush dab shape close to the size(s) you'll be using but saving in a less "costly" format than TIFF would also be good if the brush dab is created outside of Painter and another format is available (there should be a few available in most programs). TIFF's can be huge files and unnecessarily so for this kind of work, making brush dabs.
____________

"You see, the manual says,
<Quote>
_to prevent too much aliasing, create a shape with soft (greyscale) edges and draw it close to the size you'll use _
<UnQuote>"
____________

I forgot to mention this in my Gingerbread Man Brush tutorial but after I drew the figure with the Lasso tool (made a selection for the figure), in the Select menu, I chose Feather and typed 3 pixels. You'll notice, especially evident in the large brush dab that covers the Canvas, that the figure cut-out is feathered.. and soft-edged. (Better add that step to the tutorial.)

It wasn't necessary to do that with the square selection since jaggies aren't a problem on vertical and horizontal edges.
____________

"at this point my first suggestion is . . . _Never_ save new settings over the default variant. When i followed their instructions, i ended up re-creating the dab that the variable round brush comes with as default . . ._(in short, my variable round brush now looked like my fan. . .when my intent had been to make a different brush not write over the variable round brush)_
>
> How did I fix this mistake? Luckily, i had never messed with the default variant so i was able to recover from this boo-boo by _restoring my default variant_."
____________

Actually, that wasn't really a boo-boo. It would have been, had you saved your new variant with the same name as the Painter default variant. *That* would have overwritten the default variant and it would be gone (unless you happened to have a backup copy of the Painter.brs file that you could paste into the main Painter 6 folder and get things back to square one again).

Using Brushes palette, Variant menu, Restore Default Variant is a common practice and is used whenever we've been playing with brush settings and want to get things back to the default settings again.

When saving a brush variant *******always******* give it a unique and descriptive name not already used by Painter. Otherwise, you run the chance of overwriting and thereby wiping out a Painter default brush variant. Then, if you don't have your Painter 6 default files backed up somewhere, you're stuck having to Uninstall Painter and reinstall.

These Painter default files are in the main Painter 6 folder and I keep a backup copy of all of them in a separate folder outside, and away from, the Painter 6 folders. They come in handy when one of the Painter 6 default files becomes corrupted.. and this happens more often than one would like it to. It's best to make this backup set immediately after installing Painter because they're not altered yet and are still "pristine" (and still the original file size which also matters).
____________

" . . .If you make the same mistake i did . . that is the only recourse I know of.. (absent doing something truly radical like re-installing. . . maybe Jinny has a better suggestion [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] on correcting a mistake of that magnitude)
____________

No "magnitude" here. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] This is normal use of Painter... Restore Default Variant, that is.
____________

" + While you have your future image for brush selected, skip to page 267 of painter manual the section is titled __To Create a New Brush Category__ doing this now, serves two purposes
<ul>
+ a) it creates a brush category you will later fill with your newly fashioned brush
+ b) it creates the brush icon you will see in your toolbox when you go to select brushes"
____________

Well! You see.. .it's always good to read the manual. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] Obviously, I didn't and that's why my tutorial doesn't include this sensible way of getting the new Brush Variant straight into the New Brush category! Guess I'll have to rewrite both of them now. What a dunce-esse, I am! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] (Thanks, Athena!)
____________

" + goto Brushes palette, brushes menu -->New Brush
+ Name your brush and click ok"
____________

Just to clarify for anyone who doesn't know, New Brush creates a new brush category.. not a new brush. A new brush (or new brush variant) is created when you Save Variant.
____________

"The first brush I posted here, started with the scratchboard pen as its template. The brush I just made in this recreation, started as a variable round brush .. . even the template you start with can impact how the brush turns out (or so i suspect)."
____________

It does! It makes a big difference which brush variant is used as the source from/on which to build a custom brush variant. Each Painter default brush variant has its own "set of settings".

To use the brushes you mentioned as an example, the Pens/Scratchboard Tool variant has, for starters, the following settings in the Brush Controls palette, General section alone, not to mention their many other settings:

Dab Type: Rendered
Stroke Type: Single
Method: greyed out
Subcategory: greyed out
Source: Color
Opacity: 100%

The Brushes/Variable Round Brush variant has, in the Brush Controls palette, General section:

Dab Type: Camel Hair
Stroke Type: Single
Method: greyed out
Subcategory: greyed out
Source: greyed out
Opacity: 63%

You can see how different just the Brushes palette, General section settings are ... and that's only the beginning of the "set of settings" for each of these brushes.
____________

"To make a new .BRS file. so you can share your discoveries with all your Painter friends [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

to use some one else's .brs file, you should click here"
____________

It's great to share brush inventions (of our own making), but we need to be sure we're not distributing or downloading/otherwise receiving any brush libraries or individual brushes that are copyrighted. For instance, ones that come with Painter versions as defaults or as extras on the CDs, on third party CDs like the ones that come with The Painter 6 WOW! Book, Painter 6 F/X & Design, or from sites that offer brushes for sale (if there are any).

This is why, so far, I've stuck to sharing brush "recipes" only. I once wrote to Tanya Staples, Corel Painter Product Development Manager to ask this specific (legal) question.. whether or not it was OK for us to share our own brush libraries containing brushes that we create ourselves. Her response led me to suspect that she didn't understand the question clearly as she said that Corel preferred that we contact Tech Support if we needed files. I never bothered her about it again since she's a busy gal but one of these days I'm going to try for a better answer/better communication. I think that she thought I was referring only to corrupted files that we might need to replace, not user-created custom brush library files, as my message contained that topic as well.

Thanks for all your Painter 6 User Guide research and hard work on this project, Athena. It's been very valuable and a lot of fun.

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Next Message from Athena:

"I need to add the .tif file i used and figure out how to get the .brs file to y'all. i was going to post it as an attachment but the file size is larger than the 300kb limit so until I figure out what to do next, please email me a request for the .brs file that i made. and i'll email it to you."
____________

That's what the brush recipe template I posted earlier was for. All you need to do is fill in the settings and post it here. No files to transfer that way. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

A single brush in a brush library shouldn't be that big (over 300 kb). Are there other brushes in the library? I just tested a couple of libraries with only one brush in each. One was 30 kb and the other only 1 kb (the latter was the Fan brush I made yesterday). The Gingerbread Man brush was also only 1 kb in its own library. Unless you've been creating a ton of brushes and put them all in one library, there must be some others in it too.
____________

"I'm really sorry for the inconvenience. I hope to have the starting .tif up for you before midnight in california [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] (hehe give myself a little time)"
____________

JPG or GIF would be better for sharing (JPG for color transitions, or gradients, GIF for flat color/black and white), as the file sizes are smaller than TIFF. Besides, you can post them in your message like the other images you're posting.
____________

"you will have to follow Judi's suggestion and be sure that the file is named as a .brs .... my windows or netscape (can't quite pinpoint who) wanted to name the file an .html. ...and that would not work . .."
____________

The only ways I can think of to transmit a .BRS file would be as an attachment to e-mail (the Painter Forum is a message board, not e-mail), or FTP which requires that it be uploaded to an FTP server then downloaded.

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Next Message from Athena:

"if you already downloaded and used the brush just make your own icon by laying down a dab and then making a square selection and while the image is selected, goto the brush mover. . ."
____________

Um... I right-clicked the .brs file links you posted and they were HTML files.. but you know that already. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_______________________

[This message was edited by Jinny Brown on May 17, 2001 at 11:41.]

[Jinny Brown]

David,

Even if an image was created in vector software, or using Painter's vector-based bezier curves to create a Painter Shape, the drawing has to be converted to raster (or pixels) to be edited as an image or used to create a captured brush (dropped to the Canvas then selected).

Painter brushes paint pixels so the vectors aren't part of the process except when doing the original drawing using Painter's Shape tools (or another program's vector tools).

To see how ppi can affect an image in the context of your question:

1. Open a 500 x 500 72 pixel Canvas.

2. Use the Pen tool to draw a closed Shape with plenty of angles and curves, too, if you want. (The purpose of using angles and curves is to show the degree of jaggedness which doesn't show on horizontal or vertical edges.)

3. In the Select menu, choose Set Shape Attributes, uncheck Stroke, and double-click the Fill color swatch then pick a medium blue.

4. Drop the Shape to the Canvas (Layers section, click Drop button).

5. In the Select menu, choose Auto Select, Using: Current Color (the blue used to fill the Shape).

6. In the Edit menu, choose Copy.

7. Open a new 500 x 500 pixel 300 ppi Canvas.

8. In the Edit menu, choose Paste.

9. Now zoom in (to the same percent in both images for equal comparison) and compare the edges of the Dropped Shape on both the 72 ppi and 300 ppi Canvases.

I usually work at least at 300 ppi. Also, feathering the selection (edges of the selected image) helps. Select menu, Feather, then type in the number of pixels (depending on the size of the image and it's final use, 1 or 2 pixels is usually enough to soften the edges).

Hope this helps clarify things a bit. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_______________________

[David Gell]

Thanks for your comparison instructions re ppi Jinny. Unfortunately I cannot seem to get them to work for me. The Auto select using current color does not appear to do anything. When I cut and paste the image into the 300 ppi document, the image appears identical under magnification to the one at 72 ppi. I must be doing something wrong somewhere.

David

[Jinny Brown]

David,

Hmmm... I don't know why you don't see what I do in the comparison. In mine, the Dropped Shape in the 72 ppi image looks relatively smooth around the edges. In the 300 ppi image where I pasted a copy, it looks quite jagged along the angled edges.

All I can think of is that our monitors may be making the difference in what we see.. or.. maybe you need to zoom in more so the pixels are really big, then compare.

Now what was the other issue? I hate these little Reply windows where you can't see the original message. Guess I'll have to copy what I've typed and go look, then come back here and finish my response.. ARGHH!

Be right back....

Back again... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

About Auto Select: You first need to use the Eyedropper and click on the color you want to select (for instance, the Shape's color), to make sure that it's the Current Color when you use Auto Select. If, for instance, you have a white Canvas your Shape is blue, and the Current Color is black, since there's no black in the image for Auto Select to find.. well.. nothing will happen. (I know, because that's exactly what I did when working out the instructions. <G>)

Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
________________________

[jassony]

Athena, in Xara you don't need to export your object as a tiff to get it into Painter.

Create your object in Xara, go to create bitmap copy use the transparency option. Copy the bitmap to the clipboard. Open Painter open a new canvas the size you want the brush to be and paste the bitmap you created in Xara onto the canvas.

This eliminates another file name stored on your hard drive. I do this all the time to create objects then save then in my object folder in Painter.

Judi
P.S. I did that with the laces I posted in the Xara forum and they remain transparent.

[David Gell]

I'm really getting confused now, but taking everything very lightheartedly [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

First off, I have followed your suggestion Jinny and used the eyedropper tool to first select the color for the auto select function. This works fine. I now have more thoughts and observations for you. The original object of the excercise was presumably to compare two images at different ppi. and evaluate the edge pixels.

My first problem is that there are two windows on my monitor, both measuring 500 x 500 pixels, but one is at 72 ppi, and the other is 300 ppi. Why are the two windows the same size on my monitor? If ppi stands for pixels per inch, then I would have expected the 300ppi window to be significantly smaller than the 72 ppi one. Maybe ppi means something different then?

The image created at 72ppi has the boundary pixels dithered. When the Auto select using current colour method is used, the dithered colours are ignored and so the oblect is copied and pasted minus the dithered pixels. This would not then give a fair visual
comparison.

When an image created at one ppi value is pasted onto a canvas of a higher ppi value, does Painter somehow increase the ppi of the selected object as it is pasted?

I think I need to sleep on this [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

David