Hi everyone, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today we're going to talk about
the Symmetry feature in Photoshop CC 2019.
Now if you have an older version of Photoshop CC, you will have this option.
And I'll show you how to find that in Photoshop.
But now in CC 2019, it's available all the time up in the corner where I'll show you.
If you have CS 6, I do not think this is available to you.
There are some workarounds that you'll just have to Google how to do that.
But it's not available in the same state that it is now in CC.
So let's get started.
Okay, I'm going to create a new document.
We'll make it 600 by 600.
And I'm going to put the resolution at 150.
If you go higher, I've noticed it really slows down my computer to use these tools.
In Photoshop CC 2019, if you hit B for the Brush tool, you'll see this little butterfly
up here, and these are all the Symmetry tools.
If you have an older version of Adobe CC, you can either go to Edit>Preferences, and
then Technology Previews or Photoshop CC Preferences and Technology Previews.
And then it'll be an option in here.
You can just click 'Enable Paint Symmetry'.
But if you're in the most recent version, it'll already be up here, and it's always
up there now if you're on the Brush tool.
OK, so first, I'm going to change the background to Gradient.
And we'll just choose one of these.
And now I'm going to add another layer because I like to draw on a separate layer than my
background layer.
So let's go ahead and click B to get our Brush tool.
And then we'll choose this butterfly up here.
So first, we'll choose this Vertical.
As soon as you choose that, this vertical line will appear on your canvas.
And you can size it up, you can actually rotate it if you want to, but you probably want to
keep it at least somewhat centered in the middle of your canvas for drawing purposes.
So now we can either hit the checkmark or hit Return on your keyboard.
And I've chosen a Hard Round brush and I want to increase my smoothing to about 30%.
But that's totally up to you.
I just like to be a little smoother when I'm drawing.
And now you can kind of see what's going to happen.
It's just going to symmetrically reproduce what you're creating, which is pretty handy.
Alright, I'm going to hide this layer, and we'll add another layer.
And then we'll go back up here.
The Horizontal tool works really similar to the Vertical tool, so I'm not going to show
you that, but I'll show you the Dual Axis.
So I'm going to hit Return, and then we'll just draw, and it's a pretty expected result.
So you can come up with some pretty interesting stuff.
All right, let's add a new layer.
And we'll try another one.
The Diagonal is just basically the Horizontal that has been rotated.
So I'm not going to show you that one either.
But the Wavy Line... this could be interesting if you're looking to do some type of rope,
maybe.
If you don't like to see this blue line through here, you can come up here and go to 'Hide
Symmetry'.
And it'll still react the same way.
But you don't have that guide there to sort of hinder you if you don't like that kind
of thing.
Okay, we'll create a new layer, and I'll get my Brush tool.
Now all these others work very similar.
So I'm not going to show you those.
But the Radial one is pretty awesome.
On this one, we have a Segment Count option.
So we can bump this all the way up to 12 if we want, and I'll hit Return.
And now you can see what the possibilities are with this.
It's pretty nice.
And all the lines go the same way, whatever way you're drawing them, so that's kind of
cool.
And don't forget, if you have a current subscription, you get Kyle Webster's brushes that you can
play around with too.
I'm gonna make this a lot smaller.
So you can try kind of, you know, playing around with those.
Alright, let's add another layer and hide that old one.
And now I'm going to grab the Mandala Symmetry tool.
And we'll also bump the segments way up on this one.
And with Kyle's Spatter Brush, I can really get some interesting stuff going on too.
If we hit 'Erase', we can switch to the eraser, and it'll erase the same way.
So that's really nice.
We can also use the Pencil tool.
Now, if you're using Kyle's brushes, some of his are used with the Mixer Brush and like
the Smudge tool, and you cannot use those brushes with the Symmetry tool.
But if the tool that's highlighted when you click on the brush is using the Brush tool,
it'll work fine.
I'm going to choose Kyle's Screen Tones for this one.
We'll make it a lot smaller.
And as you can see, it's getting really, really complex.
As I mentioned before, you have all of these options available to you, but you can also
create your own path, and I'll show you how to do that.
We're going to get a new layer here, and I'm going to draw with the Pen tool.
I'll just do something like this.
And now we have a Work Path over here.
And I don't know if you've noticed, but in the Paths there is one of your paths (if you've
been messing around with this), that will have a little butterfly on it.
The other paths won't.
So this is sort of like your current one that you're using.
I'm going to double click this Work Path, and just hit Return.
I'll hit B to activate the Symmetry tool.
And now we can say 'Selected Path' here.
Now that little butterfly has moved from this one to this one, and so it's recognizing the
path that you just made as the current path.
So I'm going to hit 'Return'.
And now we can use this the same way that we did for that other.
Now it doesn't know what to do with the corners very well.
So sometimes it gets a little weird around those.
So keep that in mind when you're drawing your path.
So that's the ins and outs of using the Symmetry tool.
If you liked this video, please click on the 'Like' button, and I'll see you next week
with another graphic design tutorial.
Thank you!!!