PaintShop Pro’s Brush tools offer countless ways to work creatively with your images.
For example, you can apply soft- or hard-edged brushstrokes of any color or material,
paint with another image as a source, retouch images to correct colors or contrast, replace colors, or paint with picture tubes.
And of course, you can also create and save your own brushes.
But in this tutorial, we are going to be using PaintShop Pro scripts and brushes from Corel ParticleShop
to create an image that would be almost impossible to achieve using standard brushes.
ParticleShop is the most revolutionary brush plugin on the market
with living physics-inspired brushes that produce unique results every time.
ParticleShop brushes work not only within PaintShop Pro,
but also Corel Painter, Corel PHOTO-PAINT and CorelDRAW,
as well as Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Lightroom.
The images I’m going to be working with today were taken close to where I live and are of the Avebury stone henge,
a neolithic site over 4000 years old now.
These stones are mysterious enough, but with a PaintShop Pro script applied and brush work from the ParticleShop,
I’m going add even more magic to this scene.
Before we start working with ParticleShop I am going to apply a script to my image.
In this case one of the Night Effect scripts.
But before I apply the script I’m just going to duplicate my original image
by right-clicking on it in the Layers palette and choosing “Duplicate”.
This way I’m ensuring that I’m working in a non- destructive manner and always have my original image to fall back on if I need to.
If your Script toolbar isn’t yet open within PaintShop Pro,
simply open it by clicking on an empty space here, choosing Toolbars and then Script.
As you can see, PaintShop Pro comes with dozens of scripts pre-installed,
but you can also purchase additional Script packs from shop.learn.corel.com.
In this case, I’m going to be using a Night Effect script which comes in three flavors.
With a full moon, a crescent moon, or no moon.
I'm going to go for the full moon.
What does a script do exactly?
A script applies any number of adjustments or effects instantaneously, when you click the “Run selected script” button.
This saves you having to recreate an effect step- by-step manually in PaintShop Pro and is a huge time-saver.
But the result will depend on the image you start out with, which is why I like to run a script,
check what the result would be and then undo and adjust my image if necessary,
so that I’ll get the best possible result when I run the script.
As you can see, I took this photo on a rainy, overcast day.
Let’s run the Night Effect and check what the result would be.
I can see that the overall effect would be too dark,
which is why I’m now going to undo and make some quick adjustments
to brighten parts of the image.
The sky is coming through fine in the Night Effect, so I’ll just adjust the rest.
I'll start by using the Auto Selection tool to select the stones and the landscape.
Next, I'll use the Freehand Selection tool, set to "Remove" mode, just to tidy this up a bit.
I’ll now adjust the Brightness and Contrast.
Next, I'm going to select each stone and apply some Local Tone Mapping to really bring out the structure of the stones.
Once I've reapplied my Night Effect script, which is giving me a much nicer result now, I'm ready to move on to the ParticleShop brushes.
But before I do this, I'd like to make some adjustments to my Moon.
As we can see here, the Night Effect script has created some additional layers.
So I can select my Moon layer and using the Pick tool, adjust it's size and position.
I'm also going to adjust the transparency of this layer to make the Moon appear further away.
Finally, before I really do move on to my ParticleShop brushes,
I'm just going to erase that part of the Moon which should be hidden by clouds, to make it appear more natural.
Now for the exciting part! I'm now going to launch Corel ParticleShop.
You can find ParticleShop (once it's been installed), under Effects > Plugins > Painter...
But in order to see this plugin, you must first point PaintShop Pro in the right-direction,
by going to Preferences > File Locations...
Selecting Plug-Ins...
"Add"...
and then pointing the programm to the path where the plugin is located.
Before we launch ParticleShop, we need to make sure that we have the right layer selected.
At the moment, the Moon layer is selected but I want to actually paint on the whole image, so I'll select the next layer down.
Before the ParticleShop window is opened,
you'll be asked if you would like to return to the application to create a copy of the original image.
But as we already did this at the beginning of our tutorial, we can launch straight into ParticleShop.
When ParticleShop first launches, you are greeted by a Welcome screen that will display all the brush packs available.
Corel ParticleShop initially installs with a Starter Pack containing 11 particle brushes.
If you no longer wish to see this screen on startup,
just uncheck the box "Show this at startup".
Here we can see examples of the brushes that come with the "Light It Up" brush pack.
Use the mouse wheel to zoom and the space- bar to switch to the panning tool, to get your image in the correct position.
I’m now going to take you on a quick tour of the ParticleShop interface.
Starting with the Brush tool. The Brush tool will paint with whichever brush you've selected from any brush packs that have been installed.
The Eraser tool will erase parts of the brush strokes, without erasing any of the image.
The Blender tool lets you to soften parts of the strokes, allowing them to blend in more with the background.
Next we have the familiar Eyedropper tool for picking up colors from the image.
And the last tool here is the Color Wheel, which lets you choose a color for your brush strokes.
Clicking on the pin here, lets you toggle whether the Color Wheel is pinned to the desktop or not.
The Undo button lets you undo up to 32 brush strokes.
While the Reset button will undo everything and take you back to square one and your blank image.
Depending on the brush you choose, various settings will appear in the Property bar.
Here we have the Brush size.
If you are using a graphics tablet, a Wacom tablet for example,
enabling this icon will increase or decrease the brush size, depending on the amount of pressure you use.
The next setting is the Brush Opacity.
Making changes here affects the transparency of your brush strokes.
And the opacity level can also be made to respond to pen pressure.
The Glow setting add a luminous shine to your brush strokes and I normally leave this checked.
If after making changes to your brush, you'd like to get back to its original settings, just click on the "Reset tool" icon.
So let's get painting!
I'll start by painting with my mouse as I know that not everyone works with a graphics tablet,
but at the end, I’ll finish off with a few brush strokes made with a pressure sensitive stylus,
just so that you can see the effects.
I'm going to start off with a brush from the Starter pack that comes with ParticleShop.
The Starter pack contains 11 brushes, with sample brushes from the other available packs.
I'm going to start off with the Debris brush, to add an eerie green glow to the base of my stones.
Next, I’ll grab the Blender tool the soften the edges here a little.
Let's try out some of the other brush packs.
The "Light It Up" brush pack contains natural lighting effects,
such as long-exposure light-streaks, and phenomena like lightning bolts, electricity, lens flares and plasma.
I'm going to add some laser beams to the tops of my stones.
Because I'm using a mouse, the longer I hold down the left mouse-button, the stronger the effect will become.
If I click quickly with the mouse, I get a much subtler effect.
Let's move on to the "Spaced Out" brush set.
These brushes let you create sci-fi art and instantly generate the look of astronomical imagery
like nebulae, auroras, star fields, comets and more.
For now, I'm just going to use the Star Field brush to add some distant stars to my image.
The Atmosphere brushes offer more graceful strokes that float, move, glow,
and stream to perfectly capture and mimic the look and feel of upper atmospheric reality.
I'm going to use the Sun Rays brush to increase the feel of energy that I have going here.
And lets add a couple of Sprites...
The Dust and Debris brushes work with texture.
From dust balls to tangles these brushes bring an unusual touch of fantasy to your work.
I'm going to use the Scratchy brush to get swirls of energy moving around my stones.
The brush options here, allow me to adjust not only the size and opacity, but also the number of bristles.
With the Eraser tool, I'm going to remove parts of the brush strokes.
For the last couple of brush strokes, I’ve switched over from mouse to graphics tablet,
as you can see from the new cursor.
The Fantasy Fabric Brush Category adds flowing, textured elements with creative flair,
ideal for adding finishing touches to fine art photography for example.
When using ParticleShop brushes with a pressure-sensitive stylus,
make sure that you activate the stylus icon for size and, or, opacity.
I'm going to make the final touches to my image, using the Silk Scarf brush.
It's now time to save our work.
I have two choices, I can merge the ParticleShop brushstrokes with my image,
or, I can save only the brushstrokes, in which case these will be placed on a transparent layer.
I'm going to merge the brushstrokes with my image.
And here is the final result. Let's check out the before and after effects.
You don’t have to be a professional photo-editor to achieve mind-blowing effects with ParticleShop brushes.
It’s so easy now, and real fun to create chaotic storms, hairy creatures, flowing gowns or sci-fi superheroes.
For more information about ParticleShop brush packs, visit www.painterartist.com.
Thank you for watching!