Psp9 and Psp X comes packaged with a new tool called the Oil Brush. This tutorial is a basic intro on how to use the oil brush by painting over an existing photo or image.
Download
Original Stained Glass Photo. Click the url and then right click on the photo and click Save Picture As. I use Windows XP. Your version may say something slightly different but you should have an option to save the picture. I'm working on getting stockphotosphere.com up and running again but it is a little lower on the priority list right now.
Open the stained glass image in Psp9 or PspX. Let's get it started in here!
1)Resize the photo to whatever size you prefer. I resized mine to 4 x 3 inches at 72 dpi/resolution.
2)Click on the pan tool (hand icon) and zoom in to about 300%.
3)Click on the Oil Brush tool to make it active. Set options as follows:
Shape: Round
Size: 5
Rotation: 0
Head tracking: track path
Head loading: 53
Viscosity: 50
Firmness: 28
Bristle size: 25
Auto clean: checked
Trace: checked
The important option to check is trace. The way that trace works is by using the pixels that are clicked on to provide the color so psp is using the underlying picture to paint with. The brush will now use the picture pixels and it will run out of paint just like a real brush would. So if you can't get any paint, the brush has either run out of paint or you had blank pixels that you began on.
4) We are going to be painting the squares. It's not a big painting but you will get used to the oil brush and see what effort a painting takes. Start with the first square of glass. Click your brush anywhere towards the top right corner of the square and hold the click while you make a sweeping diagonal brush stroke. Now do it again and again and again and I'm sure you've figured it out. It works just like a real paint brush and the strokes will track the direction you want. Paint the entire square and then paint all the other ones. Sometimes you can make a squiggly brush stroke to fill in some area and then go back and smooth it the way you want.
5)When you are done painting, click the selection tool and make rectangle selection out of the part of the glass you want to darken out (the hand painted and ribbed glass on the left). Once selected, click on your dropper tool and click on the black color to make it the foreground color. Now click the fill tool and fill the selected area.
6) Use the crop tool and crop it to where it looks like a pane of glass. Hope you enjoyed the paint brush exercise!
