Brush presets tech question

[Mechanize]

I am making a fiction map. I want a fast way to drop down mountains and trees and any repeating landscape. I figured a good way to do this would be to draw said tree or mountains and then set it to a brush preset, add some size jitter and spacing.

It works well except for 1 problem. The brush drops down images that are vaguely transparent so when 1 mountain overlaps another, it creates an overlay that looks horrible. As if the brush is 50% opaque.

Is there a better way to do what I am doing? Is there a setting that I am missing? Being able to do this will save me hours and hours of tedius work.

 

[NemesisWorks]

can you post 2 screenshots of what you want and what's going on ?

 

[Mechanize]

This is what I don't want. Basically even though the brush image was not transparent at all, the brush is transparent when I use it and when you overlap multiple opaque images, they thicken up at where they meet. If I posted a pic of what I want, it would just be a hand drawn mountain range with properly layered mountains that you can't see through.

And just to get the simple stuff out of the way, my brush flow and opaqueness plus layer opaqueness are all maxed. There has to be a setting somewhere for the brush that removes its transparency.

 

[Mechanize]

Does this make sense? I feel like a tard trying to explain this. I didn't go to school for this stuff so I don't know proper terminology and even how 10% of CS4 works lol. Is there a way to remove transparency from from images or from the brush preset? I am pretty sure that is my problem.

 

[Mechanize]

This is the image I made a brush preset from. I flattened it and saved it as JPEG ( the only thing I know to remove transparency). made a brush preset, and got the above effects in my previous post with the brush being transparent.

If I duplicated, copy and pasted the original image in new layers, and altered each images size and shape via transform, I could get my desired effect. But if I have to do 500-1000 of these I might cry lol.

This is why I tried to make a brush out of it.

 

[Paul]

One bunch of nanas, i cloned then grouped and duplicated four time.

 

[NemesisWorks]

Understood, This is what I call "difference between custom brush and custom patterns"

I see your problem, actually when anything a bit transparent overlaps a transparent object it goes like this, there's nothing wrong with your single brush stroke but the problem is between spacing of your brush, now you can do two things about it :

1. use brush spacing if it's okay with you.

2. or use a seamless custom pattern of that image

I just tried to demonstrate below what's happening with you :

 

[raikkonen]

What you need is called image sprayer. Theres no such thing in Photoshop. Corel Photopaint has got one.

 

[Mechanize]

Yes raikkonen that is exactly what I need. :banghead: I kind of thought I might have to switch corel. Never used it before. Hopefully it will be easy to pick up.

Even though I didn't get my answer, you saved me time screwing around with Photoshop. Thanks!

 

[Mechanize]

Actually, before I waste time and money on corel, does it have the ability to do size jitter and roundness jitter? That is what i was using to get random size and shape effects to make the mountains look a little more variated.

 

[raikkonen]

There's no size jittering afaik but you can put diffrent-sized images into spraylist so that they could be randomly distributed.
You can for sure use various images in one spraylist, not only the rocks.

 

[SCTRWD]

What you need is called image sprayer. Theres no such thing in Photoshop. Corel Photopaint has got one.

Lol, nice word for illustration, raikkonen

 

[raikkonen]

Yeah, X, Y and flipped rotated Z

 

[Mechanize]

I'm having a hard time learning a whole new program when being so used to photoshop for the last 10 years but I like this, it's exactly what I need. I got the sprayer to finally do what I want, now I have to figure out how to make a list to add variation.

Thanks a lot of your help!

 

[raikkonen]

1. Create a document with your objects (each one on a separate layer).



2.Switch to Image Sprayer tool.

3. Select all layers in objects panel.

3. Open Brush Settinsg docka.

4. In context panel select "Save objects as Image list".

5. Save CPT.

6. Open your target document.

7. Switch to image sprayer.

8. select custom sprayer.

9. Click "Load image list" and load ur cpt.

 

[SCTRWD]

Thats a shame Adobe never implemented such thing like true RGB "image hose" in PS. I don't know why, but it's really a deal breaker sometimes:frown:

Of course, there are some ugly workarounds to it but still... I just don't get it:frown:

 

[raikkonen]

Adobe intentionally limits the possibilities of each package (Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterFX) to separate target audience.

 

[SCTRWD]

Adobe intentionally limits the possibilities of each package (Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterFX) to separate target audience.

I understand this, but still this is just sad...:frown:

 

[Mechanize]

Got it!

1 more question... I promise.

Can you edit the image lists or do I need to edit the sources again and resave? When I opened the saved image list to change something, it seemed to lay out all of the images on a non transparent layer, but I am not sure if that was just how it looked or if it was an actual layer of color that would ruin my images.


I changed the mountains to more of an old school hand drawn ink map. I think I need to put some high lights on the sunny side of the mountains though. Seems... too 1 colored. Any opinions? 2 questions... I lied haha.

 

[raikkonen]

Your saved image list is a flattened image with alphachannel and slices. So to edit sprayer (eg to add some extra shapes) you need to change the source document and resave it.