8. Exploring Special Effects

Introduction

PAINTER’S SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE SO NUMEROUS and complex that an entire book could be written about them alone. Because they’re so powerful, there’s much less need for third-party filters than with Photoshop or other image processors. But with that power comes complexity; some of these effects have evolved into “programs within the program.” This chapter focuses on five of Painter’s most frequently used “mini-programs”—Apply Surface Texture, Apply Lighting, Patterns, Glass Distortion and Mosaics. It also covers several special-effects dynamic layers—including Bevel World, Burn, Tear and Liquid Metal—and a handful of other exciting effects.

An innovative artist, Laurence Gartel combines painting and collage with special effects such as Apply Surface Texture, in Red Blue. To view more of Gartel’s work, turn to the gallery at the end of this chapter.

Adding Effects with Surface Texture

One of the most frequent “haunts” of Painter artists is the Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture dialog box. You’ll find it used in a number of places throughout this book. The Apply Surface Texture dialog box contains intricate, powerful controls, allowing you to apply paper textures to images, build realistic highlights and shadows for masked elements, and more. First, the Softness slider (located under the Using pop-up menu) lets you create soft transitions, such as smoothing the edge of a mask or softening a texture application. Adding Softness can also increase the 3D effect produced when you apply Surface Texture Using Mask (when working with an image that contains a mask). And with the Reflection slider (bottom Appearance of Depth slider), you can create a reflection in your artwork based on another image or the current pattern.

Another very important Surface Texture control is the preview sphere, located below the image Preview. Think of the sphere displayed as a dome supporting lights above your image. Although the preview sphere seems to show a spotlight effect, any lights you set are applied evenly across the surface of your image. Experiment with adding more lights by clicking on the sphere. Adjust an individual light by selecting it and changing its color, and adjusting its Brightness and Conc (Concentration). Use the Exposure slider to control ambient light in the environment.

Creating subtle textured, dimensional brushstrokes with Apply Surface Texture Using Image Luminance

You can get some interesting effects by changing your color choices for the lights. For instance, if the area to be lit contains a lot of blue, you can add more color complexity by lighting with its complement, an orange-hued light.

Applying a reflection map. Reflections can add interest to shiny type and to other surfaces like glass or metal objects in your illustrations. The Reflection slider allows you to apply an image that you designate as a clone source to your illustration as a reflection. Open an image and make a selection or mask for the area where you’ll apply the reflection. You can use a pattern as a source for a reflection map or you can open an image the same size as your working file (the current Pattern is applied automatically if you don’t choose another image as clone source). (Turn to “Making an Environment Map” and “Applying an Environment Map,” later in this chapter, to read about how Michelle Lill builds custom-made reflection maps and applies them to her images. And for more inspiration, check out Michelle Lill’s E-Maps folder on the Painter Wow! CD-ROM, and in Painter’s application folder, Extras, Patterns for more Pattern libraries.)

Creating 3D effects. You can use Apply Surface Texture to enhance the surface of your image and give dimension to your brushstrokes. Image Luminance, in the Using pop-up menu, adds depth to brushstrokes by making the light areas appear to recede or “deboss” slightly. If you want to bring the light areas forward, check the Invert box. Experiment with the sliders to get the effect you desire. You can get a stronger 3D effect by clicking to add a second light (a bounce or a fill light) to the preview sphere with a lower Brightness or a higher Concentration (Conc) setting.

Steve Campbell created Coffeehouse. After scanning his pencil sketch, he opened it in Painter and used Watercolor and Chalk brushes to color the drawing. Campbell incorporated a variety of custom textures, applying them with Surface Control effects such as the Distress feature.

Combining Surface Texture with other effects. Apply Surface Texture works especially well when combined with other Painter tools. “Creating an Impressionist Look,” on page 300, uses a Glass Distortion dynamic layer and Surface Texture to add paint-like texture to a photo. “Draping a Weave,” on page 298, uses a powerful Glass Distortion displacement in combination with Surface Texture to achieve the look of draped fabric. And Steve Campbell used Surface Texture and Apply Lighting together to add gradations to textured areas while creating the illustration “Coffeehouse.”

Adding Dimension with Lighting

Painter’s Help gives a good description of how to adjust the controls under Effects, Surface Control, Apply Lighting. Here are some tips and practical uses for the tool.

In Still Life, Chelsea Sammel created drama in her image using Effects, Surface Control, Apply Lighting. Then she painted over some areas with Brushes variants. She finished the image with an application of Apply Surface Texture Using Paper and a rough paper texture.

Applying Lighting to unify an image. Like most of the Surface Control effects, applying lighting across a composite image can help to unify the piece. (If the lighting effect is too dramatic, try using Edit, Fade immediately afterward to reduce it.)

Preventing hot spots. You can avoid “burnout” of lit areas by increasing the Elevation of the light, reducing the light’s Exposure or Brightness, or giving the light a pastel or gray color.

Lighting within selections or layers. Add instant dimension to a selection or a layer by applying lighting within it.

Creating subtle gradient effects. To achieve colored gradient effects in an image, some artists prefer lighting with colored lights instead of filling with a gradient; they prefer the Apply Lighting command’s smooth luminosity shifts over the more “mechanical” result usually achieved when using gradations.

When you use Surface Texture together with Apply Lighting, you’ll get more dramatic results if you choose similar lighting directions for both commands.

Painting back into lit areas. For artists who want to achieve a more painterly effect, the Apply Lighting command can look a bit artificial. In creating Still Life (left), Chelsea Sammel used Apply Lighting and then she broke up the lit area with brushstrokes, sampling color from the image as she worked.

Creating softly lit backgrounds. On a white background, start with the Splashy Colors light effect. Increase the Brightness and Elevation and reduce the Distance on both colored lights until they form very soft-edged tinted circles on the background. Click in the Preview to add another light or two and change their colors. Move the lights around until the color, value and composition are working. Repeat this process two or three times, making minor adjustments in light color, light position and other settings.

Exploring Patterns

Choose Window, Media Control Panels, Patterns to open the Patterns panel. On the Patterns panel, there are commands that let you make seamless wrap-around pattern tiles. (To access the menu, click the right triangle on the Patterns panel.) Once a pattern has been defined and is in the Patterns panel, it becomes the default Clone Source when no other clone source is designated. You can apply a pattern to an existing image, selection or layer with Cloning brushes, with the Paint Bucket tool (by choosing Fill with: Clone Source in the Property Bar), with any of the special effects features that use a clone source (such as Original Luminance or 3D Brushstrokes), or by choosing to fill with a pattern or clone source (Ctrl/-F). (The Fill dialog box shows a Pattern button if no clone source image is designated; if a clone source is available, a Clone Source button appears.) Use the pattern feature to create screen design backgrounds, textile design, wallpaper—anywhere you need repeating images. (For step-by-step techniques, see “Creating a Seamless Pattern” and “Applying Patterns” later in this chapter.)

Athos Boncompagni used the Pens variants and the pattern features in Painter to create this seamless tiling pattern.

Capturing a Pattern. To make and store a pattern image in the Patterns panel, select an area of your document with the Rectangular Selection tool (or press Ctrl/-A to select the entire image) and on the Patterns panel, click the right triangle and choose Capture Pattern. To offset your pattern use the Horizontal and Vertical Shift options and the Bias slider to control the amount of the offset. Experiment with these settings to get nonaligned patterns—for example, to create a brick wall look, wallpaper or fabric.

The evolution of a fractal pattern. The original pattern was made by choosing Make Fractal Pattern from the Patterns panel menu (top left), and then a hard edge was added with Effects, Surface Control, Express Texture Using Image Luminance (top right). We loaded the Eucalyptus Bark gradient, and applied it via Express in Image—chosen by clicking the right triangle on the Gradients panel bar (lower left). To change the color, we adjusted the Bias to 23% in the Express in Image dialog box (lower right).

Using Pattern wrap-around. Painter creates a wrap-around for the pattern tile you create. Here’s a great way to see it work. Select a pattern in the Patterns panel. From the pop-up menu on the right side of the Patterns panel, choose Check Out Pattern; a pattern tile image will appear. Choose the Image Hose category in the Brush Selector. Select an Image Hose nozzle from the Toolbox’s Nozzles panel. Begin spraying across your image and beyond its edge. Notice how the hose images “wrap around” the edges of the pattern tile (so that when the pattern is captured and an area is filled with these pattern tiles, the edges will match seamlessly).

Making a Fractal Pattern. Choosing Make Fractal Pattern from the Patterns panel menu automatically creates a pattern as a new file when you click OK in the Make Fractal Pattern dialog box. Some of the textures you can create with Make Fractal Pattern make very cool paper textures: Select the area of the fractal pattern that you want for your texture (or choose Select, All) and on the Papers panel, click the button on the upper right and choose Capture Paper.

After creating this topographic map using Make Fractal Pattern, we added clouds for more atmosphere by copying our original Fractal pattern file and pasting it into the map image as a layer. We changed the Composite Method in the Layers panel to Screen to apply only the light parts of the clouds to the topographic map image. Then we adjusted the Opacity slider for the clouds layer to 90%.

Enhancing Fractal Patterns. You can add any special effect to fractal (or regular) patterns and they still remain patterns. Here are two creative applications of fractal patterns.

To create a hard-edged fractal pattern with wild color, make a Fractal Pattern, setting Power to −150%, Feature Size to 75% (for a relatively coarse pattern) and Softness to 0. Click OK. Select Effects, Surface Control, Express Texture Using Image Luminance. Adjust the Gray Threshold and Grain sliders to about 80%, and set the Contrast slider at 200% for a contrasty effect. Click OK. Now color the pattern by choosing the Spectrum gradation from the Gradients panel and clicking the right triangle of the Gradients panel and choosing Express in Image. Experiment with shifting the distribution of color in the image by dragging the Bias slider. Choose Select, All and capture the pattern.

To make an abstract topographical map image with color and relief, create a new pattern using Fractal Pattern’s default settings: Power, −150%; Feature Size, 100%; Softness, 0%; Angle, 0°; Thinness, 100%; and Channel, Height As Luminance, click OK. Give the image a “topographical” look by choosing Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture, Using Image Luminance (Amount, 200%; Picture, 100%; Shine, 0% and Reflection, 0%). Tint the image with Express in Image and the Earthen gradation, loaded from the Painter 6 Gradients library, in the Painter 12 application folder, Extras, Gradients folder. Now, add a little relief by applying a second pass of Apply Surface Texture, Using Image Luminance (Amount, 100%; Picture, 100% and Shine, 0%). To add a swirl to your “map” choose Effects, Surface Control, Quick Warp and click the Swirl button. Experiment with different Angle Factor settings in the dialog box.

To create Pencil and Brush, artist John Derry built a mosaic in Painter beginning with white grout.

Creating Effects with Glass Distortion

Try using another image as a “refractor” for your main image. With Painter’s Glass Distortion features you can superimpose glass bas-relief effects (using a paper texture or another image). You can apply the procedure directly to your image by choosing Effects, Focus, Glass Distortion. Or you can use a Glass Distortion layer, which lets you preview the effects on a copy of your image without changing the original image; however, the Effects, Focus, Glass Distortion command features a dialog box with more controls. (To learn more about using Effects, Glass Distortion turn to “Draping a Weave” later in this chapter. To read about using a Glass Distortion layer, turn to “Creating an Impressionist Look.”)

A colored pen-and-ink sketch was used as reference for this mosaic. Top: The cloned sketch (with Tracing Paper turned on) shows the mosaic in progress with recently applied tiles. Bottom: The same stage with Tracing Paper turned off. Click Tracing Paper on and off without closing the Make Mosaic dialog box by using the check box.

Working with Mosaics

Tile mosaics became a popular medium at about 200–300 B.C. in the Roman Empire, Greece, Africa and Asia; floors and walls of many buildings were decorated with mosaics made of small pieces of glass, stones or shells. They were most often built to celebrate a historic event or for religious purposes.

Inspiration for mosaics. You can build mosaics using Painter’s Mosaic brush and dialog box in any of three ways: by drawing them from scratch, by basing them on a line drawing that you’ve scanned, or by creating a clone-based mosaic using an existing piece of art or a photo. Keep in mind that because of the nature of the Mosaic tool, your decorative design or photo reference should have a strong compositional focal point. If you want to use a photo that has a busy background, consider simplifying it first by desaturating or blurring. (For tips on neutralizing busy backgrounds, see “Creating a Shallow Depth of Field” on page 247.)

Laying down tiles. Here’s a way to try out Painter’s Mosaics. Open a new blank file, or a reference on which to base your mosaic. Visualize the forms in your design before you begin laying down the tiles, and rotate your page by dragging with the Rotate Page tool (nested with the Grabber tool in the Toolbox) to accommodate your drawing style so you’ll be able to make smooth, controlled strokes to describe the forms.

The default grout color is white, shown here (left) in the Colors dialog box. Dragging the Lightness slider to the bottom darkens the color of the grout. The Colors dialog is accessed by clicking on the Grout Color button in the Mosaic dialog box.

Open the Color panel by choosing Window, Color Panels, Color. (If the Color panel is not open, you cannot open it while the Mosaic dialog box is open.) Then choose Effects, Esoterica, Make Mosaic to open the Make Mosaic dialog box. Opening the dialog box will turn the background of the currently active image white, the default grout color. To change the grout color in the Colors dialog box, click in the Grout box, and choose a new color. Then choose a contrasting color in the Color panel to paint some tiles. Switch colors again and continue to make tiles. Once you have tiles in place, you can sample color from an existing tile by pressing the Alt/Option key as you click on it. You can undo an action without closing the Mosaic dialog box by pressing Ctrl/-Z. To erase a tile, click the Remove Tiles button and stroke with the Mosaic brush over the tile. While working on a mosaic, save it in RIFF format to preserve the resolution-independent nature of the mosaic. (Because mosaic tiles are mathematically described, a mosaic can be resized without loss of quality.) See the Painter 12 Help for an in-depth explanation of Painter’s mosaic-building tools.

Hiroshi Yoshii painted Bird with Painter’s Liquid Metal. He used colored environment maps and multiple Liquid Metal layers to sculpt the bird’s outline and body.

Special Effects Using Dynamic Layers

Painter features seven kinds of dynamic layers (plug-ins) that allow you to create exciting special effects quickly. They are Glass Distortion, Kaleidoscope, Liquid Lens, Burn, Tear, Bevel World and Liquid Metal. In the paragraphs below, we focus on special-effects applications for several of these plug-ins. (To read more about working with plug-in layers turn to the introduction of Chapter 6; see Chapter 6 to see how dynamic layers apply to image correction and photography. Turn to “Creating an Impressionist Look” later in this chapter to read about using the Glass Distortion dynamic layer in combination with Apply Surface Texture. And the Painter 12 Help contains good descriptions of each of these dynamic layers.)

Painting with metal and water. Painter’s versatile Liquid Metal dynamic layer allows you to paint with bas relief and give it the look of chrome, steel, ice, water and other materials. The Liquid Metal layer works in an existing file to make a layer on which you create the metal. To make a dynamic layer, open an image, click the Dynamic Plug-ins icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Liquid Metal from the menu. To paint with chrome, select the Brush in the Liquid Metal dialog box and choose Chrome 1 or Chrome 2 from the Map menu. Drag in the image with the Brush. For thin lines, try a Size of 8.0 and a Volume of 25%. For thick lines, increase Size to 50 and set Volume over 100%.

If you’d like to paint with bubbles or water drops that reflect your image, begin by making a clone of the image (File, Clone). On the clone, make a Liquid Metal layer. From the Map menu choose Clone Source, choose the Circle or Brush and drag to paint on the layer. For fairly flat drops use an Amount of 0.5 to 1.5. For the look of 3D water drops on a camera lens, move the Amount slider to between 3.0 and 4.0. For bubbles use an Amount of 5.0.

To design this striking beveled button Michelle Lill captured a custom-made environment map as a pattern, and applied it to the button graphic using the Reflection slider in the Bevel World dialog box. To learn more about reflection maps, turn to “Making an Environment Map” and “Applying an Environment Map,” later in this chapter.

You can color the objects on a Liquid Metal layer based on a clone source (as above) or on the current pattern. Begin by making a Liquid Metal layer. In the Liquid Metal dialog box, choose Clone Source from the Map menu. Select a pattern in the Patterns panel or open an image and define it as the clone source (File, Clone Source). Now use the Circle or Brush tool to apply metal to the layer.

Tearing, burning and beveling. The Tear, Burn and Bevel World layers require a selected “source image layer” to perform their effects. To Tear or Burn an image’s edges, begin by opening a file. You can select a layer in the image and apply the plug-in to it or you can reduce the image canvas to accommodate the torn or burned edge to come: Choose Edit, Transform, Scale—we scaled our image at 80%. The Scale command will automatically create a selection, and to float it to a layer, choose Layer, New Layer, and when the dialog box appears, click Commit. With the layer still selected, click the Dynamic Plug-ins icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose the Tear or Burn plug-in from the menu. To change the color of the torn (or burned) edge, click in the Color box and choose a new color. Bevel World allows you to create complex bevels quickly. You can apply a bevel to a “source layer” in an image or make a unique beveled frame for an image. Open an image you’d like to frame, choose Select, All and choose Bevel World from the Dynamic Plug-ins menu on the Layers panel. Choose your settings and click OK. To read more about Bevel World, turn to “Creating Beveled Metal” later in this chapter.

Athos Boncompagni used the Liquid Metal Brush tool to draw trees and falling stars for this wrapping paper design.

©CDM-F.LLI MAGRO (ITALY)

Creating a Seamless Pattern

Overview Set up and capture a basic pattern layout; check this pattern out of the library; add more elements, shifting the pattern as needed; capture the final pattern; save it in a pattern library.

CAROL BENIOFF

PAINTER’S AMAZING PATTERN-GENERATION TOOLS MAKE IT easy to build even a complex pattern tile. You can capture a very basic layout for your tile into a Patterns library and then “check it out” of the library to add complex elements. The new elements will automatically wrap from one edge of the pattern to the opposite edge as you paint, to make a pattern that tiles seamlessly! Cat Trio is a pattern created by Carol Benioff. See “Applying Patterns” on page 296 to see how Benioff used this and other patterns.

1 Setting up your pattern layout. To start the pattern files, choose File, New and in the New dialog box, set up a small image. Benioff’s image was 600 × 600 pixels.

Benioff’s three silhouette drawings of cats used to build the pattern tile

The final arrangement of the three cat silhouettes used in the basic pattern tile

First, Benioff created a new layer by choosing New Layer from the Layers menu and made a quick outline sketch of a cat silhouette using the Real Variable Width Pen variant of Pens. She repeated this process twice to complete the outlines of the cats. Benioff then filled the outlines with the same solid red hue using the Paint Bucket. She cleaned up the edges, alternating between the Eraser and the Real Variable Width Pen variant of Pens. Next, Benioff arranged and scaled the three cat silhouettes until she was happy with the arrangement. She then flattened the image by choosing Drop All from the menu on the right side of the Layers panel.

Use Painter’s brushes to draw your own pattern layout.

2 Capturing a pattern. With your basic pattern layout complete, capture the layout as a pattern tile as follows: Choose Window, Media Control Panels, Patterns to open the Patterns Control Panel. From the Patterns panel menu, choose Capture Pattern. In the Capture Pattern dialog box, set up any Horizontal or Vertical Shift that you want for your pattern and watch how your element repeats as you experiment with the Bias slider. Benioff chose a Vertical Shift and set the Bias slider to 56%. Name your pattern and click OK to accept. The working pattern will be saved to the current Patterns library.

Setting up the Vertical Shift in the Capture Pattern dialog box

3 Embellishing the tile. To access Painter’s automatic seamless tiling feature for developing the pattern tile, make sure that your new pattern is selected in the Patterns library and choose Check Out Pattern from the Patterns panel pop-up menu. A new Painter window will open with the pattern tile in it.

Choosing Check Out Pattern from the Patterns panel

Pressing Shift-spacebar and dragging in the image to shift the pattern

By working in this “checked-out” pattern window, you’ll be able to embellish your tile without having to do a lot of retouching on the edges. Notice that you can shift the pattern tile and view the repeating element: If you press the spacebar and Shift key, the cursor will change to a hand, and you can drag in the image window to shift the pattern so you can see the offset that you built in step 2.

Now, you can paint to embellish your basic layout, turning it into your final pattern tile. Benioff used the Flat Color variant of Pens to draw the large and small circles in various hues. Because of Painter’s seamless wrap-around feature for checked-out patterns, her brushstrokes automatically wrapped around, and there were no obvious edges as the pattern repeated.

As you paint, shift the pattern continually (with the Shift key and spacebar) to check the design and make sure that it’s balanced. Benioff’s last step was to use the Paint Bucket to fill the background with the current color, a light yellow-green hue.

4 Capturing the final pattern. When your pattern is complete, add the final tile image to the Patterns library: Choose Capture Pattern from the Patterns panel pop-up menu. In the Capture Pattern dialog box, leave the Shift and Bias settings as they are, give the pattern a new name (Benioff named hers “Cat Trio Yellow BG”) and click OK.

Saving the completed pattern using the Capture Pattern dialog box

5 Saving your pattern in a library. Continue to make more patterns if you like, following the instructions in steps 1 through 4. Then, store your new pattern(s) in a library for safekeeping: From the Pattern Libraries panel pop-up menu, choose New Pattern Library, and in the New Library dialog box, name the new library and then click OK to save it. The new library will appear and it will contain one swatch. To copy an item from the current pattern library, click on the pattern thumbnail and drag and drop it into the new library. Dragging and dropping removes the pattern from the default library and moves it into the new library.

Dragging and dropping the new patterns into the newly created Benioff_Patterns library

Applying Patterns

Overview Make selections based on a reference image, place each selection on its own layer and fill it with patterns; add corresponding solid-filled layers; adjust the Composite Method and transparency of each layer.

CAROL BENIOFF

YOU CAN APPLY A PATTERN TO AN EXISTING IMAGE, selection or layer with Cloning brushes, with the Paint Bucket tool (by choosing Fill With: Source Image in the Property Bar), with any of the special effects features that use a clone source (such as Original Luminance or 3D Brushstrokes) or by choosing Edit, Fill, Fill with Pattern (Ctrl/-F). Carol Benioff built the framed image above, Conversing, using a reference monoprint titled Conversation 6, filling selections based on the shapes in the reference image with a variety of illustrated patterns she created for this image.

1 Making the patterns. Benioff used a variety of brushes and methods to create the six patterns that are used in this image. For this project you can create your own patterns or use Carol Benioff’s pattern library that is located on the Painter Wow! CD-ROM. To create the Circles & Circles pattern used in the inner frame, Benioff began by filling a circular selection with black. Then, she added solid colored spots to the black. She duplicated the spotted circle, changed its size, position and color, captured it as a pattern and then enhanced it using Painter’s pattern generation tools. Benioff drew the stripes for the MultiStripes pattern with the Felt Art Marker variant of the Markers and then added additional color with the Paint Bucket. Benioff used the Real Soft Pastel variant of Pastels to draw the question mark and exclamation mark patterns. To embellish this final pattern, she used a variety of paper textures and colors. You can create your own patterns, store them in a pattern library and then use them to create your own image. (See “Creating a Seamless Pattern on page 294 for more information.)

Four drawings used to create 4 of the 6 patterns used in the final image.

2 Using a reference image, selecting and filling. Benioff began by opening a reference image. Using the Magic Wand tool with the Tolerance set to 24, she clicked on the background mauve color. She cleaned up the selection using the Polygon Selection tool while holding down the Shift key to add to the selection, or the Option/Alt key to subtract from the selection.

The reference image with the mauve background selected.

Selecting the Horses + pattern and sizing it down to 9 percent.

The Horses + pattern layer is set to Color.

The frame patterns with the drop shadow applied to inner frame’s fill.

Next, she created a new layer by selecting New Layer from the Layers menu. With the selection active, she filled the selection with a solid color. Then, she duplicated this layer (Layers, Duplicate Layer) and chose Reselect from the Select menu. Benioff chose the Paint Bucket tool and set the Fill pop-up menu to Source Image and the Tolerance to 8 in the Property Bar, and then she filled this selection with the Horses + pattern. Next, to create a unique mix of colors between the solid and pattern layers for the background, she set the Composite Method for the Horses + pattern layer to Color in the Layers panel.

Benioff repeated the process for the outer frame of this image using one variation. After she filled the outer frame with the Cat Trio Yellow BG pattern, she set the Opacity to 65%, prior to setting the Composite Method to Multiply.

To build the inner frame, Benioff created a new selection using the Rectangular Selection tool and then created two layers using the same selection. She filled the first layer with a solid color, filled the second layer with the Circles pattern and set the Composite Method for both layers to Multiply in the Layers panel. To set the inner frame away from the image and its outer frame, Benioff added a drop shadow. She selected the inner frame layer filled with the solid color and chose Effects, Objects, Create Drop Shadow; adjusted the offset, opacity, radius and angle settings to create the desired drop shadow effect and then clicked OK.

3 Filling the figures. Next, Benioff added more interest to the figures. She selected the left figure in her reference image and cleaned up the selection using the same method described in step 2. Then, she created a new layer (Layers, New Layer), filled the selection with a solid color, duplicated this layer (Layers, Duplicate Layer), and activated the same selection by choosing Select, Reselect. She filled the second selection with the Questions pattern, with its size set to 10% in the Patterns panel, and set the Composite Method for this Layer to Multiply. She repeated this same process for the figure on the right, but filled the pattern layer with the Exclamations pattern.

Using the Paint Bucket to fill the left figure selection with the Questions2 pattern

4 Filling the border around the figures. The last shapes Benioff filled were the rough-edged borders around each figure. She used the same method she described in step 3, but this time she used the MultiStripes pattern for both figures. Again, she set the Composite Method for the Pattern layer to Multiply, which makes the white background of the pattern transparent, while at the same time mixing the color of the pattern with the solid color layer that was filled using the same selection.

Filling outlines with the MultiStripes pattern.

Draping a Weave

Overview Paint a grayscale file that will be your source image; fill a clone of that file with a weave; use a combination of Glass Distortion and Surface Texture to wrap the weave around the source image.

CHER THREINEN-PENDARVIS

YOU CAN USE PAINTER’S WEAVES, located in the Weaves panel, to fill any selection or document, using either the Fill command or the Paint Bucket tool. Weaves can be used in fashion design and they make good backgrounds for scenes, but their flat look can be a drawback. To create the appearance of fabric—to hang behind a still life, for instance—we added dimension to a weave by “draping” it over a painted form using a powerful Glass Distortion displacement effect along with Apply Surface Texture.

1 Making the form file. Think of the form file as a kind of mold—or fashion designer’s dress form—over which you’ll drape your fabric. Create a grayscale form file that has strong value contrast and smooth dark-to-light transitions. As a reference for our 500-pixel-square form file, we draped fabric over a chair and sketched it in Painter, and then cleaned up the sketch with the Digital Airbrush variant of Airbrushes. Since any hard edges in the form file would make a noticeable break in the weave’s pattern, we softened the image with Effects, Focus, Super Soften. We used a 7-pixel Super Soften setting on our file.

The grayscale form file with strong values

If you don’t want to paint the form file, here’s a fast, but less “organic” way to create it. Open the Make Paper dialog box by choosing Window, Paper Panels, Papers and then choosing Make Paper from the pop-up menu. In the Make Paper dialog box, choose Line from the pop-up menu. Use a high spacing setting to make vertical lines and set Angle at 90°. In the Save As field, type a name for the new paper. Choose your new paper in the Paper Selector and then choose black in the Color panel. To apply the new paper, choose Effects, Surface Control, Color Overlay, Using Paper, at 100% Opacity and then click the Hiding Power button. To blur the image, use Super Soften as described above.

2 Making a clone and filling it with a weave. Choose File, Clone to make a duplicate of the form file with identical dimensions. Now choose a weave from the Weaves panel, accessed by choosing Window, Media Library Panels, Weaves. (We chose the Stylish Plaid weave.) Fill the clone file with your weave (Ctrl/-F; Weave, 100%).

The Stylish Plaid in the Weaves panel

Filling the clone with the weave

3 Initiating the distortion. Here’s where the movement begins. Choose Effects, Focus, Glass Distortion, Using Original Luminance. Now let Painter know the direction that you want the fabric to go when it overlies the form file. When a clone image is displaced by Glass Distortion using Original Luminance, the distance each pixel moves is based on the luminance of each pixel in the source file. We chose Vector Displacement to move pixels in a specific direction, and used the Amount slider to get a moderate “ripple” effect in the Preview (we chose 1.57), leaving Variance at 1.00. To establish the direction (and make the light areas move up and to the right, and dark areas move down and to the left—based on the form file), we moved the Direction slider to 90°. We added a Softness of 20.2 to smooth any rough edges that might be caused by the distortion of the weave. Experiment with your settings; the Softness, Amount and Direction may change based on the size of your file. For a clean image, choose Good from the Quality menu.

Applying Glass Distortion to the weave

4 Adding highlights and shadows. Using Apply Surface Texture adds to the illusion of folded fabric by contributing highlights and shadows based on the form file. Choose Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture, Using Original Luminance. Experiment with your settings—paying special attention to how the lighting controls affect the look—and click OK. We set Softness to 23.0 (to smooth the image and slightly increase the depth of the folds), Amount to 125%, Picture to 100% (to make the image lighter while maintaining weaving detail), and Shine to 0% and then chose the 9 o’clock Light Direction button.

Adding highlights and shadows to the distorted image using Apply Surface Texture

Creating an Impressionist Look

Overview Combine Glass Distortion and Surface Texture special effects to transform a photo into a painting, creating brushstrokes and building up paint.

PHOTO AND ILLUSTRATION: CHER THREINEN-PENDARVIS

BY COMBINING TWO POWERFUL EFFECTS, Glass Distortion and Apply Surface Texture, you can create an Impressionist look with textured highlights and shadows—turning a photo into a painting. This effect can be applied to an entire image, a selection or a layer, giving you much more flexibility than you would have in the darkroom working with diffuser screens and masks.

1 Choosing an image. Choose an image with a strong focal point and good highlights and shadows. You can achieve good results with either crisp or soft-focus images.

The original photograph

2 Initiating strokes. Choose a coarse paper texture—large organic textures with a broad tonal range help to emulate the look of paint on canvas. We chose River Map from the Branched Textures library (located in the Paper Textures folder on the Painter 12 DVD-ROM). Then we used the Paper Scale slider on the Papers panel to scale it to 70% to complement our 1200-pixel-wide image. To diffuse or break up the image into paint-like strokes on paper, apply the Glass Distortion dynamic layer: In the Layers panel, click the Dynamic Plug-ins button and choose Glass Distortion from the pop-up menu. In the Using menu select Paper. Choose subtle settings—our settings were Softness, 2.7; Amount, 0.72; and Variance, 1.00; Click OK to apply your settings.

Applying Glass Distortion to the photo

3 Adding texture and shadows. To add realistic relief, choose Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture. (If the Commit dialog box appears asking you if you’d like to convert the dynamic layer to an image layer, choose Commit.) In the Using menu choose Image Luminance. Use subtle-to-moderate Surface Texture settings to avoid a harsh look and to preserve the original image. We used Softness, 0; Amount, 65%; Picture, 100%; Shine, 5%; and Reflection, 0. (To raise the highlights, we turned on the Inverted check box.) Choose a light direction that is consistent with the lighting in your photograph, and click OK.

Adding highlights and shadows to the distorted image with Apply Surface Texture

Symmetry with Kaleidoscope

Overview Use Kaleidoscope in combination with Pastels brushes to paint a simple mandala.

CHER THREINEN-PENDARVIS

USING THE KALEIDOSCOPE PAINTING TOOLS, you can make creative symmetrical images. When you paint a brushstroke in a kaleidoscope segment, similar brushstrokes appear in each of the other segments. From three to twelve mirror planes can be chosen and you can rotate or reposition the mirror planes. Pastel Mandala was created using the Kaleidoscope tool and Pastels brushes.

1 Setting up the Kaleidoscope. Open a new file by choosing File, New and set up a square image, ours is 1200 × 1200 pixels. The Kaleidoscope tool resides under the Mirror tool in the Toolbox. When the Mirror tool is chosen, you can also switch to Kaleidoscope mode using the button in the Property Bar. Choose the number of Kaleidoscope segments you want (we used nine).

The Kaleidoscope settings in the Property Bar and the segments

2 Drawing with a grainy pastel. With the Kaleidoscope mode enabled, choose the Grainy Square Pastel variant of Pastels and choose a vivid orange color in the Color panel. Starting in the center of your image, draw a wavy line. As you draw, you will see Painter mirroring your drawing in the other segments.

Painting with the Square Grainy Pastel

For flexibility, add a new layer to your image: click the New Layer button on the Layers panel. Choose a bright blue color, and then choose the Artist Pastel Chalk variant of Pastels. Draw thinner wavy lines from the center out. When you are satisfied with the drawing, merge the layer with the canvas by choosing Layers, Drop Layer.

3 Vignetting the mandala. Next, we gave our mandala a soft circular edge. Choose the Elliptical Selection tool in the Toolbox and position it in the center of the drawing. To draw a circle from the center out, press the Shift key and then Alt/Option, and drag the selection out to the size that you want. When the selection is as you like it, give it a soft edge. Choose Select, Feather and enter 20 pixels in the field. Next, to remove the color outside the circle, choose Select, Invert Selection and then press the Backspace/Delete key. The final image is shown above.

Strokes are removed outside the selection

Setting Text on a Curve

Overview Set the text; choose a Curve Style; use the Shape Selection tool to finesse the length and shape of the path; adjust the text on the path.

PHOTO AND ILLUSTRATION: CHER THREINEN-PENDARVIS

IT’S A SNAP TO SET TEXT ON A CURVE in Painter. The Text controls in Painter enable you to create a Bézier path for the type baseline right in the image window. Here’s a quick method, applied to a comp for an advertising layout:

1 Setting the type and applying it to a curve. For this technique you can begin with a new blank image, or start with a photo, as we did. Choose the Text tool in the Toolbox and open the Text panel by choosing Window, Text. Choose a font and size and set your type. We chose the typeface Hobo Std Medium, because its shape and playful feel would work well with the Curve Stretch curve style we planned to use.

We set type using the Hobo Std Medium font and used the Curve Stretch style

Click on the Curve Stretch button in the Text panel (the button farthest to the right in Curve Styles), and you’ll see the text curving around the baseline of a newly generated path in your image. The Curve Stretch curve style distorts the letters to fit the spaces in the curve. The slight distortion adds to the ripply underwater effect. To reposition the text layer on the image, use the Layer Adjuster tool.

2 Adjusting the path. To change the shape of the path, choose the Shape Selection tool in the Toolbox (it’s the hollow arrow), select the text layer in the Layers panel and click on an end point. Pull on the end point to lengthen the path. To change the shape of the curve, drag a control handle in the direction that you want the curve to go. As you manipulate the path, aim for gentle curves so the type will flow smoothly.

Using the Shape Selection tool to pull an end point and lengthen the curve

With two more points added, the curve is taking shape.

To add more anchor points (for instance, to make a gentle wavy line, like we did), choose the Add Point tool (it’s nested under the Shape Selection tool in the Toolbox) and click the baseline curve. To remove a point, choose the Remove Point tool (it’s also nested under the Shape Selection tool in the Toolbox) and click the anchor point. Use the control handles on each anchor point to finesse the curve. To adjust the position of the text on the path, use the Centering slider in the Text panel. We set Centering at 5%.

Making an Environment Map

Overview Choose a file and resize it; make a selection; use Quick Warp to bend the image into an environment; capture it as a pattern.

MICHELLE LILL

YOU CAN USE PAINTER’S QUICK WARP FEATURE to bend any image into a useful environment map, an image that shows an environment as if it were seen through a fish-eye lens or reflected in a shiny metal sphere. Multimedia designer Michelle Lill creates her own environment maps—like the one above on the left—and uses the maps to enhance images by applying them as she did in the image on the right.

1 Opening an image and making a selection. Open the image that you want to use as the basis for your reflection map. To conserve disk space and optimize performance, Lill recommends that a reflection map image be a square that is 300 pixels or fewer. Using the Rectangle Selection tool, make a 300-pixel-square selection (holding down the Shift key as you drag to constrain the selection to a square), as you check the Width in the Info panel. If you need to move or scale the selection, use the Selection Adjuster tool. (Turn to “Transforming Selections” in the beginning of Chapter 5 for more about manipulating selections.) Copy the selected area (Edit, Copy), and paste it into a new file by choosing Edit, Paste into New Image.

Michelle Lill’s original photo

Making a square selection on the image

2 Bending the image. To get the “fish-eye lens” effect that adds realism to the environment map (since most surfaces that reflect their environment are not flat), Lill chose Effects, Surface, Control, Quick Warp and selected the Sphere option. She used the default settings of Power 2.0 and Angle Factor 2.0. The effect was applied to the entire canvas.

Applying the Quick Warp Sphere option

3 Saving the image as a pattern. To save the map into the current Pattern library, capture it as a pattern: With the environment map image open, select all, click the button on the right of the Pattern Controls panel and choose Capture Pattern from the menu. Name the map when prompted and click OK. The environment map is now a permanent member of the library. Now you can use the map to enhance special effects—as Lill did in her illustration above. To read a step-by-step description of how Lill used the custom environment map to enhance an image, see “Applying an Environment Map” on the next page.

Naming the environment map in the Capture Pattern dialog box

Applying an Environment Map

Overview Open a file and set type shapes; convert the shapes into a layer; add an environment map, dimension and a soft drop shadow to the type; add a border to the image.

MICHELLE LILL

TO CREATE THE TITLE DESIGN SUNSET PARK, designer Michelle Lill used a custom-made environment map in combination with one of Painter’s most powerful and versatile tools, Apply Surface Texture.

1 Opening an image and setting the type. For this example, Lill began by setting 60-point Arial Rounded MT Bold text on top of a photo. Begin by opening a background image (Lill’s image was 1800 pixels wide). Select the Text tool and choose a font in the Property Bar. For the best results, choose a bold font with a broad stroke and rounded corners. Position the cursor in your image and type the text.

Choosing a font and size in the Text panel

The text set on a layer over the image

The selected Text layer in the Layers panel

When you’re finished setting the text, select the Layer Adjuster tool and drag to reposition the text layer to your taste.

2 Selecting the reflection map. Load the Reflection Map pattern that you created in “Making an Environment Map” on page 303 by opening the Patterns panel and choosing it from the Patterns picker. Lill used her own pattern, made from the same Sunset Park photo she used for the background.

Choosing Lill’s custom-made environment map in the Patterns panel

3 Adding reflection and dimension to the type. To achieve a strong reflection in the type and a realistic 3D look, Lill used two applications of Apply Surface Texture. First select the text layer in the Layers panel to make it active. Then click on the right arrow of the Layers panel and select Convert to Default Layer from the menu. Next, choose Select, Load Selection and load the transparency mask for the text layer. In preparation for accessing the type forms within the Apply Surface Texture dialog, save the selection as a channel by choosing Select, Save Selection. (Lill named the channel “Sunset Park.”) Now choose Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture. To reflect the environment map onto your type, use these settings: In the Using menu choose the text channel you saved to restrict the reflection to the type. (Lill’s channel is named Sunset Park.) Move the Reflection slider to 100% (so the environment map shows up) and move the Softness slider to the right (to scale the reflection map). Adjust the other settings to suit your image. The Apply Surface Texture dialog box is interactive, so you can scale your pattern while viewing the reflection map in the Preview window. Lill’s Apply Surface Texture settings for the first application are as follows: Softness 25.0; Amount 200%; Picture 100%; Shine 40%; and Reflection 100%. To shine a light from below that is consistent with the position of the sun and its color, click the bottom Light Direction button and then click the Light Color button and choose a light yellow. When the settings are as you like them, click OK.

Michele Lill’s Red Rock environment map

Settings for the second Apply Surface Texture application showing dimension on the type

Now add a realistic 3D look to the text by choosing Apply Surface Texture a second time. This time, check the Inverted box (to add a second light source); decrease the Reflection slider to 0% by moving it all the way to the left; and decrease the Softness to about 10. Lill’s second Surface Texture application settings are as follows: Using, Sunset Park channel; Softness, 10.0; Amount, 100%; Picture, 100%; Shine, 40%; and Reflection, 0%. Click OK.

4 Adding a shadow and a soft black border. Next, Lill added a black drop shadow to her text, adding to the 3D look and giving her image more contrast. To generate the shadow, she chose Effects, Objects, Create Drop Shadow. In the dialog box, she specified settings for the X and Y coordinates to fit her image as follows: X-Offset, 0; Y-Offset, −10; Opacity, 80%; Radius, 10.0; Angle, 116.0°; Thinness 45%. She checked the Collapse to One Layer box to combine the text and shadow.

Setting up an automatic drop shadow

The Sunset Park image with the drop shadow applied to the text layer

Then, to finish the image with a more graphic look that would complement the shadow, Lill added a softly feathered black border to her image. To create her border effect, begin by choosing Select, All. Then from the Select menu choose Select, Modify, Contract. In the Contract Selection dialog box, type in 40 pixels. Now choose Select, Feather and set the feather to 36 pixels. Finally, Lill filled the selected, feathered edge with black. Begin by choosing black in the Color panel. Choose the Paint Bucket, and in the Property Bar make these choices: Click the Fill Image button, and from the Fill menu choose Current Color. Click inside the active selection with the Paint Bucket tool. To finish, Lill adjusted the position of the text a little bit higher in the image to complement the darker clouds.

Creating Beveled Metal

Overview Open a file and build a background; set text; convert the text to a layer; bevel the forms and apply a reflection; add a shadow.

CHER THREINEN-PENDARVIS

PAINTER’S BEVEL WORLD DYNAMIC LAYER allows you to try an endless variety of custom bevels on a selected layer quickly, without time-consuming masks and channels. To create this three-dimensional chrome title, we applied effects that included custom lighting, a complex bevel with a reflection map and a shadow.

1 Creating a background with lighting and texture. Begin by creating a new file with a medium blue background (our file was 1000 × 700 pixels). To add depth to the background, we applied overhead lighting that would complement the bright, shiny metal to come. Choose Effects, Surface Control, Apply Lighting and in the dialog box, click on the Drama choice. To shine the light from overhead, click the small circle and drag it so that it points upward. Increase the Brightness to 0.75 and set the Distance to 1.41.

Creating an overhead spotlight based on the Drama light

Applying a stucco texture to the background

To add a stucco texture to the background, choose Worn Pavement in the Paper Selector and then choose Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture. Set Amount to 100%, Shine to 0% and click the 12 o’clock light direction button. Leave the other settings at their defaults.

2 Setting the type and adjusting the tracking. Now that the backdrop is finished, you’re ready to create the type. Choose a color that contrasts with the background in the Color panel. This will automatically fill the text with color as you type. The contrasting color will make it easier for you to see your type as you adjust the spacing between individual letters. Select the Text tool in the Toolbox and in the Property Bar, choose a font and size. Click in the image with the Text tool and enter the type. We set 72-point type using Helvetica Neue Condensed Black. (If you don’t have the typeface we used, choose a bold font with broad strokes to accommodate the beveling effect to come.) If you need to adjust the spacing between the individual letters, open the Text panel by choosing Window, Show Text and move the Tracking slider to the left to adjust it to your taste.

The selected type and the background with texture and lighting

3 Beveling the type. With the layer still selected, click the Dynamic Plug-ins button at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Bevel World from the menu. When the Commit dialog appears, click Commit to convert the Text layer to a default layer. To build a 3D effect with a smooth stamped shape that would show off the reflection map we planned to add, we used these settings: Bevel Width slider to 5% (for narrower sides and a broader top); Outside Portion, 15% (for a small bevel outside of the original pixels on the layer); Rim Slope, −0° (for a flat top); Cliff Portion, 50% (the vertical distance between the base and rim); Cliff Height, 50% (the height of the sides); Cliff Slope, 45° (the angle for the middle of the bevel); Base Slope, 45° (the angle of the outermost portion); and Smoothing, 25% (to smooth any ridges, while retaining the tooled shapes). For the Light Controls, we set the Light Direction at 90°, Light Height at 42°, Brightness at 1.45 and Shine at 95%. Ignore the outside color, because it will disappear when the reflection is applied. Leave the dialog box open.

The rough bevel generated by the Bevel World layer default settings

Our settings in the Bevel World dialog box

4 Achieving the chrome effect. The secret to achieving this chrome effect is choosing a bright, shiny environment map in the Patterns panel, and then going back to the Reflections slider in the lower part of the Bevel World dialog box. We chose an environment map that included metal reflections and warm colors. To apply the reflection map that we used, you’ll need to load the “Wow emap” library. Locate it in the Wow! Patterns folder on the Painter Wow! CD-ROM and copy it into the Painter 12 application folder. To load this library, choose Window, Patterns to open the Pattern Libraries panel. From the panel’s pop-up menu choose Open Library. Navigate to the “Wow emap” library in the Painter application folder, select it and click Open. Back in the Pattern Library panel, choose “Wow! Sunset.” Now move the Reflection slider in the Bevel World dialog box to the far right (we used 100%). Your type will magically change to shiny metal! Click OK to close the Bevel World dialog.

We used “Wow! emap 4” from the Wow! Patterns on the Painter Wow! CD-ROM

5 Adding a shadow. To increase the depth of our image, we added a drop shadow using Painter’s automatic drop shadow feature. To build your shadow, select the beveled layer and choose Effects, Objects, Create Drop Shadow. In the dialog box, we used these settings: X-Offset, 0; Y-Offset, 10; and increased the Opacity to 100%. For a softer shadow, we set Radius to 20.0 pixels, and we left the Angle (114.6°) and Thinness (45%) at their defaults. (A low Thinness setting creates a streaked look similar to a motion blur.)

The Drop Shadow dialog box with settings for casting the shadow directly below the metal type

Creating a Circular Panorama

Overview Shoot a series of photos for a panorama and stitch them together; capture a pattern; use a Pattern Pen to stroke a circular selection; touch up areas and add clouds to the sky.

JOHN DERRY

WITH THE GROWING POPULARITY of digital photography, it’s become easier to create panoramic imagery. By combining a linear photographic panorama with the Pattern Pen, you can create a very unique variation—the circular panorama.

John Derry has been passionate about photography for more than 30 years. He enjoys creating panoramas; however, he wanted to give some of his imagery a new twist, as shown here in Bonfante Gardens. After a lot of experimentation, he discovered how to create a circular panorama using the Pattern Pen in Painter.

1 Creating a panorama. A digital panorama is created by stitching together several photos that have been carefully shot as a set of overlapping images. Stitching refers to the process of matching up image elements in the overlapping areas of the adjacent photos. Derry manually stitched the images together in Painter, with each photo element on an individual layer. He used layer masks, cloning and Airbrushes to match up the edges. When it was complete, he flattened the file. For more information about layers and layer masks, see Chapter 6, “Using Layers.”

The original photographs

Arranging the horizon of the photographs

The completed linear panorama

2 Converting a panorama to a pattern. When the panorama is ready, you can capture it into the Pattern library so that it can be used by the Pattern Pens. (A Pattern Pen uses the Current Pattern as its media.) Open the Patterns panel by choosing Window, Media Control Panels, Patterns. Now, make a selection around your image by choosing Select, All and then choosing Capture Pattern from the pop-up menu on the Patterns panel. Give your new pattern a name and accept the default settings. The selected image will appear in the current Patterns library.

The flipped linear panorama

Capturing the original panorama into the Patterns panel

Derry also created a second version of his linear panorama with the sky at the bottom so that he could try them both out with the Pattern Pen and then decide which image worked the best. To flip your panoramic image, choose Select, All and then Select, Float to put it on a layer. Then, choose Edit, Flip Vertical. Now, make a selection around the panorama (Select, All), choose Capture Pattern from the pop-up menu on the Patterns panel and name the pattern. The new pattern will appear in the current Patterns library as before.

3 Making practice strokes. With both versions of the panorama captured as patterns, you are now ready to test the patterns using the Pattern Pen. Open a large, new file about 3000 pixels × 3000 pixels. Select the Pattern Pens category and then choose the Pattern Pen variant. Draw a few practice strokes with both versions of the pattern image.

Test strokes painted with the Pattern Pen, using the original panorama pattern (left) and the flipped image (right)

4 Stroking a circular selection with the Pattern Pen. Next, open a new 3000 × 3000 pixel image. In this step you will create the circular selection that the Pattern Pen will follow when you use the Stroke Selection feature. Select the Oval Selection tool in the Toolbox and press Shift, and then draw a circular selection. (Derry made the circle about one third of the width of the image.) Now, use the Oval Selection tool to reposition the active selection into the center of your image. (For more information about selections, see Chapter 5.)

The Drawing modes are located in the Navigator panel settings pop-up menu.

The stroked circular selection painted with a 500-pixel Pattern Pen, using the original panorama pattern (left) and the flipped image (right)

Before stroking the selection with the Pattern Pen, you must first set the Drawing Mode to Draw Anywhere, because the Draw Inside mode will automatically be chosen when you make a selection, and it will constrain the media to the inside of the selection. The Drawing Modes are located in the Navigator panel (choose Window, Navigator to open the panel.) To access the Drawing Modes, click the Navigator Settings (gear) button on the Navigator panel and from the pop-up menu choose Drawing Mode and then Draw Anywhere. Draw Anywhere will allow the media to be painted on both sides of the selection border. Now choose Select, Stroke Selection, and marvel as the linear panorama flows from the Pattern Pen in a continuously repeating stroke.

The final size of the circular panorama is controlled by a combination of the circular selection’s diameter and the current size of the Pattern Pen. The goal is to make adjustments until the linear panorama is wrapped around the circle with the two ends slightly overlapped. You will need to experiment to find the desired settings.

If the linear panorama imagery repeats, try increasing the size of the Pattern Pen using the Size slider in the Property Bar. It’s a good idea to adjust the size value in regular increments. Derry started with a 500-pixel brush. When he needed to adjust the brush up or down in size, he did so using increments of 50 pixels. For instance, his resized brush increments varied like this: 1050, 1100, 1150 pixels and so on.

You might also want to adjust the size of your selection. By doing this in regular increments, you can estimate your additional adjustments more accurately. Open the Info window (Window, Info) and select the Selection Adjuster tool (Toolbox). Hold down the Shift key and click and drag on one of the corner handles outside of the selection to adjust the selection’s size. Watch the Info panel, noting the numeric Width and Height readout as you adjust the selection. Derry repeated the Stroke Selection and Undo commands (using a combination of brush and selection sizing adjustments) until he arrived at the result he desired.

5 Hiding the flaws. When the linear panorama is correctly wrapped into a circle, there will be a flaw where the two ends meet. This flaw can be repaired in a variety of ways. You can use Painter’s cloning features to clone bits of imagery over the flaw. You can also use the Lasso tool to draw a freehand selection around a bit of imagery and then copy and paste it into an area to cover the flaw.

Using the Soft Cloner variant of Cloners to complete the unfinished area

6 Painting the sky. To complete your circular panorama, you’ll need to paint over the blank area inside. Derry created a layer, sampled a blue color in the sky with the Dropper tool and then used a large airbrush to feather in a completed sky area. To complete the effect, he painted a few faint clouds.

The airbrushed sky added to the center

The clouds added to the sky

7 Making final adjustments. Take a good look at your final circular panorama and decide whether there is a subject element that you’d like to position at the bottom of the composition. Derry wanted to position the tower element at the bottom. Use the Rotate Page tool (located in the Toolbox under the Grabber hand) to preview the various degrees of image rotation. Then, for the actual rotation, use the Oval Selection tool to select the panorama and copy the image. Choose Edit, Paste in Place to put the copy of the panorama on a new layer and then choose Edit, Free Transform. Press the Ctrl/ key and drag a corner handle to rotate the layer and then choose Commit Transform. Finally, drop the layer by choosing Drop from the Layers panel menu. To add a soft edge treatment to your image as Derry did, use the Magic Wand (Toolbox) to select the white background, and then choose Select, Feather (using about 30 pixels). Finally, press the Backspace/Delete key to clear the area and leave a soft edge.

The final rotated image with the soft edge

Creating a Color-Adjustable Leaf Brush

Overview Paint a background, tree and branches; draw leaf elements using values of gray; capture them as an Image Hose Nozzle; load the Nozzle and adjust it; decorate the tree with colored leaves.

JOHN DERRY

THE IMAGE HOSE IS A UNIQUE BRUSH that uses multiple elements as its medium. Small painted elements or masked photographic elements can easily be captured into an Image Hose Nozzle file. John Derry and Mark Zimmer invented the Image Hose. They received a patent for it, and the Image Hose made its debut appearance in Painter 3. As Painter has evolved, Nozzle files have become easier to build.

Many kinds of illustrations employ similar visual elements. Illustrating a tree, for example, can require the rendering of many small leaves. When painted using conventional media, the leaf elements must be individually created, and this can be a tedious, time-consuming process. For the fanciful illustration Tree, John Derry created a set of leaves and then used them to quickly decorate the branches of the tree. He was also able to use the Nozzle that he had built on future illustrations.

1 Setting the stage. Derry wanted to create a stylized illustration of a tree in a landscape. He painted the background using two layers, and he used a modified Clumpy Brush variant (Oils) to paint the grass and sky.

Painting the sky using an Acrylics brush

The completed landscape background

Open a new 1200 × 1000 pixel file, and choose a bright blue color in the Color panel. Now, choose the Clumpy Brush variant of the Acrylics. Add a new layer to your image by clicking the New Layer button on the Layers panel. Use quick, loose brushstrokes to paint the sky. As you work, vary the value of the color by choosing subtly lighter or darker values in the Color panel. When the sky is as you like it, add a new layer, choose a green color and then paint the grass using loose strokes. To suggest the shadow patterns on the grass, vary the value of the color as you did for the sky.

2 Painting a bare tree. With the background finished, Derry used the Scratchboard Tool variant of Pens to draw the tree’s trunk and branches. Then, he painted the bark and the shadows.

The painted tree trunk and branches

Next, add a new layer for the tree. Choose a rich brown color, and use the Scratchboard Tool variant of Pens to paint the trunk and branches. When you have completed the base color for the tree, enable the Preserve Transparency check box in the Layers panel so that the new paint that you apply will appear only within the existing tree shape. Use varied brown colors to paint the bark and shadows on the trunk and branches.

3 Creating the leaf Nozzle. Now that the stage was set, Derry was ready to build the leaf Nozzle. He began the Nozzle by creating six leaf elements that would form a layer group that could be incorporated into an Image Hose Nozzle. To match the brush work on the tree, he used the Scratchboard Tool to illustrate the leaves, with each leaf on its own layer. Derry drew the leaf elements using values of gray, rather than color, so that later he could take advantage of the Image Hose feature that allows you to add variable color to the Nozzle elements.

The painted leaves

Grouping the selected layers

Choosing the Make Nozzle from Group command

The Nozzle file created by the Make Nozzle from Group command

Begin by opening a new file (Derry’s measured 500 × 500 pixels). Add a new layer for your first leaf. Disable Preserve Transparency in the Layers panel and then use the Scratchboard Tool to paint the leaf with values of gray. Repeat the process of adding a new layer and then painting each leaf on its own layer. When the leaf layers are complete, Shift-select them in the Layers panel and group them using the Group command found in the Layers panel pop-up menu. Next, convert the layer group into a Nozzle. Open the Nozzles panel by choosing Window, Media Library Panels, Nozzles. Next, from the Nozzle panel pop-up menu choose Make Nozzle from Group. This command organizes the layer group into a grid that can be used by the Image Hose to read the individual elements. Save the Nozzle file in RIFF format. Now you are ready to load your new nozzle into the Image Hose.

4 Loading and adjusting the Image Hose. To load the newly created leaf nozzle into the Image Hose, click the button to open the Nozzle panel pop-up menu, choose Load Nozzle from the pop-up menu and navigate to where you saved the file. Now, select the Image Hose in the Brush Selector and choose the Spray-Size-P Angle-D variant. This variant uses pressure (P) to vary the Nozzle’s element size and the direction the stroke is painted to express the angle (A) of the element. When Derry tried out the variant on a test image, he found that the leaf elements were incorrectly angled for the tree. He corrected this by experimenting with the Angle of the brush using the Angle panel of Brush Controls. When he arrived at a setting that he liked, the pointed ends of the leaves were positioned away from the brushstroke direction as it was drawn. This enabled drawing the leaves from the outer periphery into central areas of the tree, with the leaves pointing outward. Open the Angle panel of Brush Controls (Window, Brush Controls, Show Angle) and experiment with the Angle slider.

Adjusting the Angle in the Angle panel. The Expression menu is set to Direction.

The leaves pointing outward

5 Controlling the nozzle color. Because Derry chose to create the leaf elements using values of gray, he could mix any color with his Nozzle elements. He used the Grain slider in the Property Bar to mix color with the luminosity of his nozzle elements. Click on the Additional Color (back color square) in the Color panel and choose a dark green hue. In the Property Bar, experiment with the Grain Setting (Derry used 39%).

Adjusting the Grain slider in the Property Bar

The dark green color chosen as the Additional Color and the dark green leaves

The lighter green color chosen as the Additional Color and the light green leaves

6 Painting the leaves. When he painted the leaves, Derry wanted to create highlights and shadows in areas of the leaves. To accomplish this, he painted the leaves on three separate layers, using a variety of greens that would simulate the variations in highlights and shadows.

Painting the shaded leaves

The leaves painted and adjusted

Paint each series of leaves on its own layer so that you will be able to adjust their opacity or make tonal adjustments later. Add a new layer for the shadowed lower leaves. Choose a dark yellow-green in the Color panel and spray these leaves onto the layer. When you have the lower leaves as you like them, follow the same process. Use a new layer and lighter greens to build each of the remaining levels of tone.

With the three leaf layers painted, Derry was now ready to make final adjustments. He selected the top leaf layer and adjusted its tonal values using the Effects, Tonal Control, Brightness/Contrast command. The final image on page 311 shows his hand-rendered illustration. He dramatically reduced the tedious process of leaf creation by using the Image Hose.

Gallery

Multimedia designer Michele Lill creates custom marbling designs that can be used in card-making, quilting, scrap-booking and many other crafts. She makes note cards and other items and also sells her marbling designs to artists.

Lill created Rainbow Blobs as a 12 × 12-inch design. To begin, she opened a new 12 × 12-inch file using a resolution of 300ppi. A custom-made blob image is the basis for all of her marbling designs. She also incorporated a reflection map into the generation of the blobs. She opened a small square photo (approximately 400 × 400 pixels) and used the Effects, Surface Control, Quick Warp feature to create a reflection map. Then she captured the image into the current Pattern library by choosing Select, All and Capture Pattern from the pop-up menu on the Patterns panel. (For more detail about reflection maps, see “Making an Environment Map” on page 303.) To generate the blobs, she chose Effects, Esoterica, Blobs. In the Create Marbling Stone Pattern dialog box, she chose Pattern from the Fill Blobs With pop-up menu. Lill experimented with the Number of Blobs and Size settings until she achieved an effect that she liked. For Rainbow Blobs, she applied the Blobs effect several times, using three different reflection maps, including a varied number of blobs and size settings, until the pleasing result with a veined pattern was created.

To create a series of prints for cards and calendars, artist Anne Syer transformed several of her close-up flower photographs using the Woodcut feature in Painter. The large image shows Syer’s Pansy; the smaller images are from her Begonia Woodcut series.

Syer began each image by opening a digital photograph she had shot of a flower. She selected Effects, Surface Control, Woodcut. In the Woodcut dialog box, she set the Black Edge slider to about 9%, set the number of colors (N Colors) to about 14 and kept the Heaviness at 50%. The Black Edge setting brought out the detail and delicate texture of the begonia petals in the black portion of the effect. The limited number of colors posterized the colors in the images.

To clean up some of the lines and to add detail to the black areas, Syer used the Opaque Round variant of Oils. For more depth in the color areas, she added a new Watercolor layer by clicking the New Watercolor Layer button on the Layers panel, and then she painted washes of similar hues using the Simple Round Wash and Wet Flat variants of Watercolor. After Syer completed her washes, she merged the Watercolor layer with the Canvas by choosing Drop from the Layers panel pop-up menu.

To add more rich color to her image, Syer selected solid areas of color using the Magic Wand and Lasso tools. Then, she applied a custom linear gradient that she had built using two colors from the image. (For information about making a custom gradient, see Chapter 2.) She repeated this process several times until she achieved the harmonious colors.

Illustrator Philip Howe was commissioned by the Harvey and Daughters agency to create this richly textured photo-collage painting for H & S Bakery. The completed illustration was used for a trade show mural that was more than 18 feet wide.

First, Howe built a photographic composite using several photos that his team had shot of the breads. Then, he tightly rendered the stands, windows, walls, floor, oven and other elements to give the illustration the look of an old world bakery. At this point, Howe’s client decided that he wanted more of a painted look, so Howe used Painter to create the illusion of a painting. He made a clone of the photo-illustration by choosing File, Clone. To create brushstroke effects, he used a smeary custom cloning brush (similar to the Oil Brush Cloner variant of the Cloners) to paint over every inch of the image, building expressive brush work. Then, he enhanced the brush work using special effects.

Howe began the process of building relief on the image with distortion. He applied Effects, Focus, Glass Distortion Using Image Luminance and the Refraction Map Type. Then, to give the relief highlights and shadows, he applied Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture, Using Image Luminance.

The combination of powerful effects created a heavy-looking texture, which he wanted to subdue in a few areas. Howe saved the painted, textured image as a Photoshop file. Then, he copied and pasted the image as a layer over the tightly rendered photo-illustration. He added a layer mask to the texture layer (click the Create Layer Mask button on the Layers panel), and he softly airbrushed areas with black paint to hide portions of the texture layer so that the breads would appear more photographic, because they were revealed through the texture layer.

Michael Bast creates illustrations for commercial products and packaging. To begin this package illustration, Bast drew a sketch using pencils and paper, and then he scanned the drawing. He opened the sketch in Painter and cut it to a layer by choosing Select, All and Select, Float.

Before Bast began to paint his illustration, he used the Oval Shape tool to draw circular shapes for the body of the snowman, using the sketch as a guide. Then, he converted each circular shape into a selection by choosing Shapes, Convert to Selection, and he saved each selection as an alpha channel by choosing Select, Save Selection.

To paint the sky, he targeted the Canvas and applied a two-point gradient using cool, light-to-medium blues by choosing Edit, Fill, Fill with Gradient. Then, he used the Digital Airbrush variant of Airbrushes to paint wispy white clouds.

Bast planned to paint the popcorn snowman and fields using the Image Hose, so he created a custom popcorn Image Hose. To begin, he photographed individual popcorn kernels, and when the photos were ready, he opened them in Painter. He selected each kernel in its source file, copied each silhouetted image and then pasted it into his working file as a layer. Next, he arranged the popcorn image layers into a pleasing order in the Layers panel and grouped them by Shift-selecting them and choosing Layers, Group. He opened the Nozzles panel by choosing Window, Media Library Panels, Nozzles, clicked the button in the upper right of the Nozzles panel and from the pop-up menu he chose Make Nozzle from Group. He sprayed varied sizes of the popcorn onto the image, using smaller kernels to suggest distance and keeping larger kernels for the foreground. To paint the snowman, he loaded each circular selection and loosely used it to constrain the spray. For more information about using the Image Hose, see “Creating a Color-Adjustable Leaf Brush” on page 311. As a last touch, Bast created a deeper illusion of space by adding a new layer and using the Digital Airbrush to paint a soft-edged, pink gradient behind the snowman.

“I am interested in how we can connect with the world beyond our own individuality—how we can connect with the past and with each other living in the present,” says artist Cynthia Beth Rubin. Trees and Rocks in the Glen, State IV was created by Rubin using on her own photographs of Glen Helen Woods near Antioch College in Ohio and scans of her pen-and-ink drawings on paper. Trees and Rocks in the Glen, State IV is a member of the Glenn series, which Rubin has added to, for more than forty years.

Although she does most of her compositing in Photoshop, Rubin uses Painter extensively to bring out textures in her images and to enhance the color and lighting. When an image is complete, she saves a copy of the image as a TIFF file and opens it in Photoshop for printing.

In Trees and Rocks in the Glen, State IV, Rubin captures the mystery of the wooded glen, playing the tree and rock forms against the textural illusions in repeated imagery of the woods and sky. To add texture and lighting to the foliage, rocks and ink drawing elements, making them look more three dimensional, she used the versatile Apply Surface Texture, Using Image Luminance feature.

For Giant, artist Joyce Ryan was inspired by her son Lucas playing the stocksman Holdyn Twist in the Georgia Renaissance Festival. She began by photographing Lucas in costume. Back at her studio, Ryan opened the portrait in Painter and chose File, Quick Clone to make a clone of the image with an empty canvas, with Tracing Paper turned on. Using the Watercolor Wash Cloner variant of Cloners, she softly painted suggestions of the photo imagery into the clone, beginning with very low opacity (about 9%). Ryan built the image gradually, varying the opacity and turning Tracing Paper on and off, as she worked. Then she modeled the forms and subtly brought out details using a smaller Watercolor Wash Cloner. With each stage of the painting, she built up glazes by drying the Watercolor (Layers, Dry Watercolor Layer). Then she applied more Watercolor strokes for added depth and richness. When she was satisfied with the modeling, she dried the wet Watercolor wash, and then she converted the Watercolor layer to a default layer by choosing Convert to Default Layer from the pop-up menu on the Layers panel. To smooth areas, she used the Just Add Water variant of the Blenders and to define highlights, she used a small Bleach variant of the Erasers. To finish, Ryan added texture to the brushstrokes, using Apply Surface Texture, Using Image Luminance and subtle settings.

Home is artist Chet Phillips’s interpretation of a quote from Jean Cocteau—“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little they become its visible soul.”

Phillips began by drawing an expressive black-and-white illustration with the Scratchboard Tool variant of Pens. Then he cut the black-and-white drawing to a separate layer by choosing Select, All, then Select, Float. Next, he composited the layer using the Gel Composite Method, chosen from the Composite Method menu in the Layers panel. To begin building the background, he selected the Canvas in the Layers panel and chose Effects, Fill, using a cream color. Then he painted with various Pastels brushes to color the background. For richer texture, he layered color onto the image using the Artist Pastel Chalk variant of Pastels. To achieve an interesting randomness to the texture, Phillips opened the Random panel of the Brush Controls. In the Random panel, he toggled the Random Brush Stroke Grain on and off as he worked. This technique is most noticeable in the sky and foreground. Then Phillips merged the layers by clicking on the black-and-white drawing layer name in the Layers panel and choosing Drop from the pop-up menu on the Layers panel. For the look of an antique woodcut print, Phillips applied subtle paper textures to the image using special effects. He sampled a brown color from his image using the Dropper tool and chose Effects, Surface Control, Color Overlay, Using Paper and the Hiding Power option, with a very low opacity setting. He then applied several additional applications of Color Overlay with different textures using the dark brown. The built up Color Overlay applications simulated the texture that a wood block print receives when it rubs against the grain of the wood.

Artist Chet Phillips created Duchesse La Bat as a member of his series Union of Superlative Heroes, in which Steampunk superheroes inhabit a Victorian society in an alternative world.

Phillips began by making a black-and-white line drawing with the Scratchboard Tool variant of Pens. Then, he lifted his drawing to a separate layer by choosing Select, All, and then Select, Float. So the white areas of the layer would appear to be transparent, he set the layer to the Gel Composite Method, chosen from the Composite Method menu in the Layers panel.

In preparation for painting, Phillips built masks for the skin, elements of the clothing and background and saved each one as an alpha channel in the Channels panel. Next, Phillips created a colored, textured surface for his painting. He selected the Canvas in the Layers panel and chose Edit, Fill, Fill With Current Color, using a creamy yellow color. He chose a light brown color in the Color panel and chose Effects, Surface Control, Color Overlay, Using Paper and the Hiding Power option, with a very low opacity setting. Then, he painted over the background with Pastels variants. To avoid a set pattern from emerging, he constantly changed the size of the paper grain, using the Size slider on the Papers panel.

For the Duchesse, Phillips loaded each selection in turn, and used the Artists Pastel Chalk variant of Pastels to model the forms in color. When painting the clothing, he used a variety of custom textures, and the default Small Dots texture when painting the skin. When the modeling was complete, Phillips added touches of varied color to the background using a large Artist Pastel Chalk.

Filmmaker, painter and printmaker Elizabeth Sher traveled to the Crusaders Palace in Rhodes, Greece, where she saw a mosaic of the Medusa. Inspired, she created Me Dusa, an installation piece that she exhibited at the Oliver Art Center, C.C.A., in Oakland, California. Sher has used Painter in her teaching at C.C.A. and in her own work since Painter 4.

Sher began by scanning a photograph of the Medusa mosaic and a 4 × 6-inch portrait of herself, using the same scale and resolution. She opened the scan of the portrait in Photoshop and used the Quick Mask function to isolate her face from the rest of the photograph. Then, Sher opened the scan of Medusa in Painter, and she created a Color Set from the image. She chose Create Color Set from Image in the pop-up menu on the Color Set panel. Next, Sher opened and made a Clone (File, Clone) of her face image. Then, she chose Canvas, Make Mosaic and enabled the Use Tracing Paper button to keep the image of her face visible. She selected a tan grout color to blend with the face tiles. Then she mapped the size, shape and tone of the tiles to the contours of her face as she carefully built the mosaic.

With the face mosaic completed, Sher copied and pasted it as a layer over the Medusa mosaic photograph. She reduced the opacity of the layer in the Layers panel so that she could see underneath it to align the two images. When the alignment was complete, Sher used a variety of brushes to add translucent glazes of color to integrate the two images. To smooth out the rough transitions, she used a variety of the Blenders brushes.

The circle image was printed with an Iris printer onto treated canvas at the Lightroom in Berkeley, California. Sher cut and mounted the printed piece onto cotton canvas, and then she painted the marble floor with acrylic paints to complement the 4 × 6-foot canvas. The final piece was shown on the floor with rocks and sand covering parts of the image, as a re-enactment of the uncovering of the mosaics in Petra, Jordan.

Mary Beth Novak creates textile designs that are used in a variety of products—from bedsheets to bath accessories. From concept to production art, Novak uses Painter, Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia FreeHand. Using Painter gives her greater flexibility and the ability to create hand-drawn textured looks in her textile designs.

Incorporating Painter into her process has pushed her textile designs to a whole new level. Novak says, “I use a lot of the different brushes, and I use the Distress feature all the time to give things a hand-drawn look. Painter has really gotten us to a whole new plane with our prints at Room Creative. Usually, I am able to get a more hand-done look than if we had painted all the layers on paper and scanned them in.”

For the Sanjay bedding print (above), Novak sketched the flowers, leaves and paisley in pen and ink and then scanned her sketches at the scale they would be in the final print. To begin building the flower element in Painter, Novak opened the flower scan in Painter. She selected the white background, and then inverted the selection. Novak copied and pasted the selected flower onto a new layer, leaving the original scan intact. To constrain her brush strokes to the shape of the flower, she checked the Preserve Transparency checkbox in the Layers panel.

Then, using the Magic Wand tool she selected some of the interior shapes of the flower. With the selection active, she painted into the selected area with the Spatter Water Variant of the Digital Watercolor brushes.

Novak then distressed the selected area of the flower layer by choosing Effects, Surface Control, Distress. In the Using pop-up menu, she selected Paper, and then she chose a custom paper that looked like an irregular water texture. The Distress effect converted the selected areas of the image into black and white. She alternatively selected the black areas of the pen sketch and applied variations of the Distressed Effect to this portion of the image as well. She continued selecting portions of the flower, painting and distressing the image till she was satisfied with the result. She duplicated the original scanned flower again, and repeated this process, creating another variation of the flower image. Novak used this same technique on the scanned image of her leaf sketch.

The colors Novak used in the Painter file were for visual reference only. Textiles are printed with 6 to 12 custom spot colors (Pantone textile colors), each of which can be mixed by overprinting to make other colors. At this point, Novak saved the layered Painter file in Photoshop format, opened the image in Photoshop and saved each layer as a separate TIFF file. Using FreeHand, she imported each of the files (as layers) into one FreeHand file so that she could reassemble the leaves and flowers in the correct order and then color them using the Pantone textile colors that she had selected to use in the design so the colors would blend as she planned.

The ability to pull out elements, scale, rotate and change colors easily is essential to Novak’s creative process. To complete the Sanjay bedding print, Novak combined the multiple variations of the flowers and leaves in FreeHand. She created her final pattern for printing as a 25¼″ repeat design in FreeHand.

Leviticus, I Love You is a children’s book by Mary Minette Meyer and Beth Prince of RainboWindow. The illustrations above show two spreads from the book that were conceptualized by the mother and daughter team and painted by Beth Prince. “Since these are illustrations for a children’s book, we decided not to overthink each page, but to color within and outside of the lines, using different brushes to achieve the look we desired,” says Prince.

As they began each spread, Meyer drew sketches using conventional pencils and paper, and Prince scanned them for import into Painter. Next, the women assembled large rocks in their photo studio and shot photographs of the rocks using even lighting. After that, Prince used Painter’s paper texture creation features to capture textures from the photos of the rocks. For more information about capturing and working with your own paper textures, see “Applying Paper Textures” on page 112.

As inspiration for the lobsters and other characters, the team shot photographs to use for reference. Then, they drew and painted the mother and child lobsters and other animals in different poses, as well as several arrangements of rocks, using primarily Watercolor brushes. For instance, Prince used the Simple Round Wash variant of Watercolor to lay in base colors on the herring. When she wanted to paint with more texture on the lobsters and seafloor, she used the Diffuse Grainy Camel. Prince also employed Painter’s special effects to add richness and texture to the scene elements. For instance, she applied three-dimensional texture to the rocks by choosing Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture, Using Paper. After creating all of the characters and scene elements in Painter, she printed the illustrations and cut them out by hand in order to physically place them into scenes.

“Once the author and I agreed upon how a page would look,” says Prince, “I used Photoshop to assemble the elements in each scene using layers.” To complete the illustrations, Prince added layer effects such as the drop shadows, and she also set the text for each spread using Photoshop.

David Purnell is the proprietor of the New York West Medical Illustration Studio in Minnesota. Inspired by a series of postage stamps featuring insects, he created his own Imaginary Insect.

Purnell began by making a custom Pattern Pen, based on the Pattern Pen Masked variant of Pattern Pens. First, he chose the Pattern Pen Masked in the Brush Selector. Then he opened the General panel of Brush Controls and set the Dab Type to Projected, Source to Pattern and Opacity to 100%. In the Dab Profile panel, he set the Brush Profile to Medium Profile.

Purnell created each wing on a separate layer. Using his custom Pattern Pen, he tilted his stylus to about 45° relative to the tablet surface and tapped it once to create each wing. The more extreme the stylus-to-tablet angle, the longer the wing.

For the head and body of the insect, Purnell used the same technique that he used for the wings, but with a different pattern. He added a new layer and used the Pattern Pen to build the left half of the head. On that same layer, he painted the eye using the Digital Airbrush variant of Airbrushes. Then, he copied and pasted the left half of head onto another layer, flipped it horizontally and positioned the right half relative to the left half. He grouped the two layers and collapsed the group into a single layer.

To create the background, Purnell added a new layer and filled it with white. To build the border of the image, he added another new layer and used the Digital Airbrush and a medium gray to paint the irregular border. Then, he created the fractures by scrubbing over the gray areas with the Shattered variant of the FX brushes. To finish, he adjusted the layer’s opacity to 12% and set its Composite Method to Gel.

Person Pill #4 is a member of a series of images and one-of-a-kind Iris prints created by renowned artist and photographer Laurence Gartel. The series of Iris prints was purchased by Scripps Research for their collection. “The images were inspired by a friend and colleague who is a medical doctor who invented a pill that adjusts the patient’s dosage,” says Gartel. “His invention inspired this body of work.”

Gartel began Person Pill #4 by modeling the head and shoulders using the 3D program Poser. When he was happy with the composition, he saved the file in TIFF format so that he could work on it in Painter. Next, Gartel opened the file in Painter and used the Mosaic tool to add color and a variety of tiled textures to the image. To begin the mosaic, he chose File, Clone and made a clone copy of the image, and then he saved the clone with a new name. Working in the clone file, he chose Canvas, Make Mosaic and in the Mosaic dialog box, he turned on the Use Tracing Paper button and then clicked the Apply Tiles button. So that he could lay down tiles using the color from the original image, or the Clone Source, he turned on the Clone Color button on the Color panel. First, Gartel applied tiles along the perimeter of the larger shapes—for instance, the outline of the head and shoulders. Then, he added tiles to outer edges of the image. When all of the edges were established, he carefully applied tiles to the interior of the figure and to the background. To suggest motion and to add interest to the background, he created a curved design using larger tiles. When Gartel was happy with the mosaic design, he clicked OK to exit the Mosaic dialog box.

To achieve the repeated pattern of smaller tiles in the background, Gartel opened a small new image, and laid colored tiles into the image and then captured it as a pattern. Then, he selected the remaining background area and filled it with the pattern of small tiles. Finally, he added three-dimensional highlights and shadows to the tiles by choosing Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture, Using Image Luminance, with subtle settings.

To create the surreal photo-collage Motorhead, Laurence Gartel began by scanning each of the source photos into Photoshop, where he made selections to isolate the subjects from their backgrounds. He opened a large new blank file, copied each component image and pasted it onto its own layer in the composite. He used several machine elements to assemble the motor on the woman’s head. He used the Move tool to position elements until the composition seemed balanced. When the photo-collage elements were in place, he saved the image as a Photoshop file. Then, he opened the working composite in Painter.

To create a flashy surreal look, Gartel added several Liquid Metal layers by clicking the Dynamic Plug-ins button at the bottom of the Layers panel and choosing Liquid Metal from the menu. He used the Brush tool in the Liquid Metal dialog box to paint three-dimensional chrome brushstrokes of different thicknesses on the woman’s face and neck. To reposition the chrome and metal elements, he used the Liquid Metal Selection tool (arrow). He applied Standard Metal and Chrome using the pop-up Map menu in the dialog box. The “live” nature of the Liquid Metal dynamic layers allowed Gartel to finesse the Liquid Metal until he was satisfied with the effect. When these elements were complete, he converted the dynamic layers into image layers by choosing Convert To Default Layer from the Layers pop-up menu.

Gartel also created many of the supporting elements with Liquid Metal. To create the transparent figures in the lower left, Gartel added a new Liquid Ink layer, and painted the figures using Standard Metal. To achieve a glassy transparent look, he adjusted the Refraction slider. For the background behind the woman’s head, he used the Liquid Metal brush on yet another layer to draw curved shapes that frame the head. To complete the image, Gartel painted accents on the face using the Impasto brushes, including the Smeary Round variant. He also adjusted the Opacity and Composite Method in the Layers panel for a few of the layers (for instance, the light blue and gray Liquid Metal drawings on either side of the woman’s head).