Inconsistent Spray Patterns with Airbrush in CS4

[Pierre Elliott]

Hello everybody. I just wanted to congratulate you folks on the fine PS resources that you provide.

I'm having problems maintaining consistent performance as far as the density and consistency of the spray pattern is concerned.

A little Background: I'm an illustrator that paints with CS4, using a Wacom Intuos 4 with the standard stylus. I'm running CS4 on a MacBookPro 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4.0GB 1067 DDR3 memory.

Description of problem:

I select the 300 diameter airbrush from the brush menu and leave the presets at their default settings (i.e. only Other Dynamics and and Airbrush ticked etc). The only adjustments that I make after selecting the brush are to change the flow to 17% and to adjust the diameter of the brush on the fly as needed.

At first everything worked smoothly and i was able to get a luscious creamy spray that made it easy to draw metallic surfaces, and to render/blend colors/tones in a really slick manner.

Lately however, (and this is my problem) the brush projects a crude spay that is very dark (despite the 17 flow setting), crude and difficult to blend and draw with.

I've checked the brush settings and nothing has changed. In fact sometimes this change from fine spray to crude spray happens mid-drawing and back again.

I've experimented with all of the presets and brush tip settings but it never cures the problem. Then a couple of days the beautiful spray pattern returns, despite the changes that I'd!

Can someone please tell me how to get the airbrush tool to perform consistenly. It's turning me into a stress monkey!


Thanking you in advance,


Pierre

 

[Steve]

Have you checked the jitter settings?

 

[Pierre Elliott]

Hi Steve.

Thanks for responding.


Yes i have played with the jitter settings in the Shape Dynamics screen, experimenting with various settings i.e. size, angle, roundness. I can see that the brush mark shape changes in the preview window. Unfortunately airbrush seems to project too much ink - making feel more like a cheap magic marker than an airbrush (ink overlaps and blends crudely). I even toggle on the pen pressure/fade/off settings and still there is no improvement.

On thing to remember is that this particular brush has the 'shape dynamics' box unticked at default setting. Which is how I first started using it.

Sometimes when i reset the brushes the spray pattern returns to normal...but most of the time it doesn't

When using the airbrush it feels as though my lightest touch still yields way too crud a mark...never diffuse enough...

 

[Steve]

Hi Pierre

I'm not going to be much help here but the first thing I thought of was a problem with the pen or the tablet since the settings aren't changing mid stroke.
Does it also happen if you use the mouse?

 

[Pierre Elliott]

Hi Pierre

I'm not going to be much help here but the first thing I thought of was a problem with the pen or the tablet since the settings aren't changing mid stroke.
Does it also happen if you use the mouse?

Hi Steve,

Unfortunately your suggestion didn't solve the problem. plus it's hard to appraise that sort of thing with a mouse as pen pressure when using a stylus allows for more subtle tonal gradations. However it did get me to start thinking about the possibility of there being a problem with the stylus or the tablet. I bought them about 15 months ago. Or could it be a performance issue with mac. At any rate, i will post some pictures that i hope will illustrate the problem.

 

[Pierre Elliott]

Hi,

I decided that it would probably be best if i illustrated the problem rather than just explain it in words. To that end i have attached six pages from my sketchbook




You can see that the facture in the first three images are much sharper tighter more nuanced than the shading tones of the last three - where you can see a blurry line reminiscent of magic marker bleed. I really hope that I'm able to get to the bottom of this.

In fact things have gotten so desperate that as a work around (that sometimes works) I will open a file were the airbrush performed as required, save it as another name...erase the images and start drawing again.

It's not a hundred percent but the odds are slightly better than leaving things to chance.

How's that for being desperate and helpless, LOL!

Thanks in advance for your help


pierre

 

[iDad]

those almost look like a blur has been added

 

[Pierre Elliott]

those almost look like a blur has been added

Yeah iDAD, i see what you mean. I'm myopic and have always had a soft spot for the sfumato. But no blur effects added tho. I like to work this way because it feels like you're developing/sculpting your own photograph from scratch rather than drawing the picture with a hard line. It leaves room for spontaneity. Other times i kind of feel like the little bird in cameras in the Flintstones. LOL

 

[Pierre Elliott]

Update: I seem to have found a decent work-around for the inconsistency of the airbrush performance in CS4-5...

I've switched to Corel Painter 11. The airbrush spray in monochrome situations is silky smooth and you can get good photo subtle renditions of texture and tone with minimal futzing about with the brush settings.

That's the positive news. The less positive news is that when it comes to superimposing color for subtle glazes and velaturas, one senses that the color just sits on top of the previous color without altering the hue of the color underneath it....it just sits on top. This means that I will probably have to execute the underdrawing in Painter and color it in Photoshop CS4 because the color blending that occurs when you airbrush colors on top of colors in CS4 is just superb. Lets say you have a skin tone and you airbrush some black to modulate that skin tone...The black has a subtle impact on the red, blending it gradually through all of the tones visible in the color picker so from red to darker red to burgundy to brown then to black. Rather than covering the red in black.

 

[iDad]

wouldn't creating the layer in an overlay mode or another mode ie: darken, color, etc etc help?