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MARCH 07, 2002 A Closer Look: Photoshop's New Paint Engine
What's so great about this? Well, it means that parameters can be controlled by separate actions rather than just the pressure that was found in Photoshop 6. So you can have pressure controlling the opacity, tilt controlling the angle of the stroke and the airbrush wheel controlling the jitter, for example. As you can see in the image above, Shape dynamics include size jitter, diameter control, angle jitter, roundness jitter and minimum roundness. The size jitter has the greatest impact on the look of the stroke, tossing out the brush tip shape in random sizes up to the maximum diameter you set in the tip shape palette. Angle simply rotates the tip shape. And roundness controls how skewed the tip appears. [an error occurred while processing this directive] The next set of parameters, called "Scattering," controls, essentially, how far your tips stray from the center of your drawing path. 
Using these parameters, you can set the percentage of scatter and the amount of scattering tips that appear as you stroke. You can also "jitter" this amount so that strokes appear uneven. As with the Shape Dynamics, Scattering parameters can be controlled by Wacom tools. However, this is a fairly processor-intensive set of parameters, and varying the scatter with a pressure stylus will cause some slowness (even on a dual-processor 1 GHz G4). Finally (for now), we have Texture. 
With the Texture parameters, you can add true depth to your strokes, with the ability to choose from Photoshop's default textures or any you create yourself. Now, unlike the textures you find in Layer Styles, these textures are rasterized as they're applied, so each stroke can have its own texture. Actually, each tip in each stroke can have its own texture as well, providing for a much broader range of texture than simply a static texture applied across a layer. You can also set the scale, depth and depth jitter of each stroke for some excellent effects that help create the look and feel of natural media. Yet more You don't necessarily need to have a Wacom tablet to use the Photoshop 7 paint engine. But, as with dedicated paint applications, it certainly helps. It provides you with a much more natural drawing tool, and it also allows you to take better advantage of the new controls in Photoshop 7. But you can also allow Photoshop to do the thinking for you, either using set values for the various parameters or using "Fade," which fades out a particular parameter over a given number of steps. Next time around we'll cover the rest of the dynamics parameters, and also some global parameters that affect the look of your brush strokes. And, of course, we'll continue to bring you close-up examinations of the other new features in Photoshop 7. If you'd like more information now on the new features in Photoshop 7 in general, be sure to read our Photoshop 7 First Look article here. Or visit http://www.adobe.com. Dave Nagel is the producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of several World Wide User Groups, including Synthetik Studio Artist, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe LiveMotion, Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; and executive producer of the Digital Media Net family of publications. You can reach him at dnagel@digitalmedianet.com. Prev 1 2 3 Related sites: • Animation Artist • AV Video • Creative Mac • Digital Animators • Digital Media Designer • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Digital Video Editing • Digital Webcast • DV Format • Film and Video Magazine • Film Imaging • Hollywood Industry • Presentation Master • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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