Photoshop painting - written tutorial

I wrote a little tutorial with tips about how to paint in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet.

It's not difficult to paint in Photoshop, but it's pretty essential that you choose the right settings in your Wacom configuration and Photoshop before you start.

Of course, different artists will use different settings that they are used to. I will explain two different methods and their benefits.

But first, let's make sure our Wacom tablet is set up properly.

Go to your Wacom settings, to the "Mapping" tab. Make sure "Force Proportions" is turned on. What this does is, it makes sure you are using the Wacom in the same aspect ratio as your screen. That way your brush strokes correspond with what you see on your canvas in Photoshop.

Next, and this is kind of up to individual preference, you should make sure the "Tip Feel" is set up properly in the Pen tab of your Wacom settings. This is the sensitivity of the pen to the pressure you put with your pen. It's important mainly when you are blending values. More on that later. The important thing to note here, is that this is a setting you will probably come back to as you become more experienced using the Wacom pen, and are able to paint with very little pressure. You may nudge it further to "Soft" as you get better pressure control with your hand.

Speaking of blending, which is where you blend values together, the way I like to do that is to set the Brush settings in Photoshop like the above screenshot. "Smoothing" is on, and "Other dynamics" has "Flow Jitter" set to Pen Pressure and most importantly for blending, "Opacity Jitter" is set to Pen Pressure. This means that you control the opacity of your strokes with your hand. It takes a little practice, but once mastered you can blend very easily by ALT-picking from a value, and just applying it again with less pressure to get a lighter value.

On the other hand, if you are not blending but are drawing, the above setting may suit you better. The only difference here is that "Opacity Jitter" is turned off. This ensures that the lines you paint will have a 100% value. You can still control the opacity with the number keys: typing "1" will give you 10% opacity, "2" will give 20% and so on. There are artists who exclusively paint like this, even when blending. In my experience it's faster to use your hand to control the pressure, but everybody has their preferred way. There's no right or wrong.

These are really the essential things to know for painting in Photoshop. If you can draw on paper, you most definitely can paint in Photoshop. Even if you can't draw very accurately yet in Photoshop, painting is more forgiving. Just make sure you don't draw strokes that are too long: short, quick strokes are good to build stuff up. And very importantly, FINISH what you start! A painting can look like crap in the beginning, but just building it up by spending time on it, it will become nice. It's hard, especially in the beginning phase, not to lose confidence. But really any crappy painting can become great, it you just spend enough time on it. In the beginning, it will be a ridicilous amount of time, but it will get faster as you get experienced. Just make sure you finish every painting in the beginning, and make them as good as you can. When they are done, work on them some more. A classic beginner mistake is to stop too early.

Please leave comments if you have questions or want to share your tips about Photoshop painting below. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

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