I’ve had a general idea what these things did but wasn’t completely sure what their specific functions were. I decided to sit down and figure it out, and I have thrown together a short reference guide for anyone who is confused about them. I know there are multiple translations of SAI floating around, so if some of these terms don’t sound familiar, just know that I’m talking about the three settings that appear under the texture in the brush tool settings (note that this won’t apply to any tool types except for brushesand watercolor brushes).
I don’t claim to be an expert so if you find I’ve made a mistake, let me know so I can update it, thanks! :3
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BLENDING (Color Blending)
This controls how readily the brush will inherit any colors you are painting over with it. For example, a 0% blending setting will pick up no existing colors, treating it as if you were painting on a transparent layer. A 100% blending setting will ONLY pick up existing colors (provided there are any). So at 100%, the color you’re using won’t even show up, unless you move to a transparent area. Blending is not affected by transparent pixels, so if you’re drawing on a blank layer it will have no effect.
So you can see from this example that the color I’m using gets harder to paint as the blending increases and more of the existing green is absorbed, until at 100% it is just completely turning green.
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DILUTION (Opacity Mix)
This controls how readily the brush will draw on a blank (transparent) part of the layer. A 0% Dilution will result in the brush painting very easily onto a blank surface, while a brush with 100% dilution will literally not paint on blank parts of the layer at all. Dilution is ONLY affected by transparent pixels. So it won’t do anything if the whole layer is already filled in (even with white). Dilution can be thought of as the inverse of the Blending setting in some ways.
So in this example, you can see that as dilution approaches 100%, the color I’m painting with basically becomes invisible. In fact, if you were to switch to binary color mode and look at this layer, there would literally be nothing there anymore!
Keep this in mind – if you ever can’t paint for some reason, check your dilution setting, it might have gotten accidentally bumped to 100!
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PERSISTENCE
This one goes hand-in-hand with blending. Basically, it controls how easily a brush shifts color as you are blending from one color to another. Rather, how long it “persists” if you will. Like blending, Persistence is only really relevant when painting over existing color so it’s mostly unaffected by transparent pixels. Basically, the higher the persistence, the longer it will take for the color to shift as you make a stroke, and subsequently, from which color to which other color it is shifting is dependent on the blending setting.
So for this example I’ve done the same test with three different levels of blending. I turned off all pressure sensitivity (actually I just used my mouse) to emphasize the effects in a controlled environment:
If blending is at 0%, persistence fails to have any real effect. With pressure on, there is only the difference of having to push harder, but the results will be the same as far as I can tell.
At a happy medium of 50%, persistence increase causes the orange that the brush is picking up to last longer as it goes into the green, until it never shifts to blue at all.
At 100% blending, there was never any blue in the first place, because as we already know, full blending causes you to only pick up existing color. So the persistence setting changes only how fast the orange changes to green.
Persistence is dependent upon the blending settings, so having them somewhere in the middle will probably produce the most optimal results.
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CONCLUSION
Ultimately how you use these is up to you, and is largely dependent on what kind of brush you’re making and what it will be used for. And most of these settings are meant to be used together in unison, so play around with them a lot!
If you are confused, or not sure what settings you want or what settings you should be using, a safe bet is to put them all at about 50% – that will produce fairly average results that are easy to work with, and it’s easy to remember in case you want to experiment but don’t want to forget your settings in case you decide to switch back.
Hello everyone! A new upload of my brush set was long overdue so here’s a collection of 84 brushes I’ve used over the past year (and some for longer). It’s an entirely un-cleaned up package and a lot of them aren’t even named, so you get a really ‘authentic’ Ani experience, so to speak. I hope it doesn’t intimidate you. There are 84 individual brushes. Most of them are my custom, hand-made brushes scanned from blotches of ink and other things. There are also some default Photoshop brushes that are good for generic use. There are textured and non-textured brushes and some custom shapes. They were created with Adobe Photoshop CC 14.0 and any kind of compatibility with other versions is not guaranteed!
All I ask of you not to reupload these or claim they’re yours (or anyone else’s) and respect the effort I’ve put into these over the years, and have fun with them. You don’t have to credit me if you use them in your work but links back to me are appreciated.
Thanks! This is basically how I do it. You can mix and match and play around with these brushes (not included: Watercolour Huge Wash for splotches/tortoiseshell) to get the effect you want. Mr Natural Brush at any depth between 4 – 14 % is good for short hair fur with gradients (like in a grey tabby, usually ranging from black, brown and orange). Tabby stripes can be done with Deliciously Dry, Mr Natural (with depth), and Bone Dry.
Hello again guys! Here are some tips about brushes- once again, I’m no expert, so explore these points on your own! Some of these are a little more abstract, while others are to help deal with minor brush annoyances 😉
1. PHOTOSHOP BRUSHES are based on a “stamp” system, not a brush system like some painting programs. That is why photoshop brushes are great for things like chains and repeated patterns, but you have to fiddle with them a bit to make them look natural. 2. The first brush setting underneath the brush panel you must become familiar with is “transfer.” this tab plays with the opacity and flow of the brush. 3. As stated in previous tutorials, the essential hotkeys for brushwork are: [/]= brush size larger and smaller alt= eyedropper tool Numbers= opacity of brush Shift+Number= flow of brush 4. Brush icon not showing up/ behaving correctly? Usually one of four things: Caps Lock is on, Edit in Quick Mask Mode is on (which can be found on your left main tool panel), the brush blend mode is on a different setting (found next to opacity and flow), or you have something selected (crtl+d will do the trick). 5. DON’T knock the photoshop brush sets that come with the program. Many artists I know use these brushes while tweaking the settings. Consider utilizing settings such as dual brush and texture to make these ordinary brushes great. 6. Brushes with large amounts of detailed texture tend to pixelate and not work correctly when scaled down too far. 7. Trying to create a natural brush tip? Brush settings>Shape Dynamics> Angle Jitter> Control: Direction. This will make the brush more natural and dependent on how you stroke your pen. 8. Do you use a signature/watermark a lot? A certain shape or pattern? Make it a brush. 9. When changing things like opacity and flow in both the brush settings and the layer settings, Photoshop will sort of get “stuck” there, and you will see the number highlighted. Simply hit enter (don’t bother reaching for the mouse!) and it will go away. 10. Rotating the canvas will help you with your brushstrokes. Shift+R rotates the canvas in nice equal increments, and is a easy way to set the rotation back to 0. 11. Texture brushes just don’t look right? Make a selection, zoom out, and make the brush slightly bigger while you paint. Think of them as big sponges, not brushes.
Thanks again guys! I have a lot of tutorial requests from you, and I’ll be working through more soon!
Inspiration Haven 