Worth1000 Photoshop Tutorials.pdf

Airbrushing an Image in Photoshop or PaintShopPro

Easier than it looks. Honest!

By CardinalCyn Paginated View

Ok, you asked, you got it, but I have to warn you, this is my first tutorial, so it could very well suck. The purpose of this

tutorial is to give you the basics of airbrushing a drawing from start to finish in Photoshop or PaintShopPro.

Page 1 : Getting Started

This tutorial will basically show you how to start with this :

(click for full size image)

and end up with something like this:

(click for full size image)

although, for purposes of this tutorial, I recreated the image in Photoshop LE to get useful screenshots, rather than try to

pick the original .psd apart to show what I did, so the final image will be slightly different than this one. The tutorial is done

in Photoshop only because that is the more commonly used program used here; the original was created in PaintshopPro

v6, and can just as easily be done with it- most everything used works the same in both programs.

You need to know very few techniques for this tutorial-- airbrush, smudge, layer masking, and layer blend modes. Thats

pretty much it. You already know how to do all that stuff, but I'm going to overexplain it all anyway, so let's get started.

Page 2: Setting up your layers

Your first layer is blank. Its best to start with white for contrast; you'll change it later, and you could make it green, or blue,

or whatever, but don't start with a dark colour, or you wont be able to see your line drawing clearly on top of it. The

second layer is the line drawing. You'll set the blend mode to Multiply.

Duplicate this layer, and set it to Color Burn. Now go back to the first linedrawing layer, and add a new layer, Normal

mode, so that it is sandwiched between the two line drawing layers, like so:

On one of the line drawing layers, select the contour of the line drawing, (Yes, you can do this very quickly by tapping an

outer line with the (gag) magic wand. Shutup, there's no shame in it, it's a line drawing for pete's sake, it doesnt have to

be subtle. Fine, just spend a half an hour going around it with your polygonal lasso, see if I care.) go to Select> Inverse,

then switch to the colour layer. Add a mask to this layer. In PSP, you'd hit it with the wand, Select>Invert, switch to colour

layer, then go to Masks>New>Show Selection.

Now copy this layer, five times. Name the copies "skin", " hair", "clothes" and "gun" if you are writing a tutorial for other

people, otherwise, just leave them as "copy" because, heck, you can remember which layers got what on it without

switching back and forth 500 times can't you? Yeah, me neither, but I do it anyway.

(in Photoshop)

(in PaintShopPro)

Ok, ready? Cause now we're to the fun part.

Page 3: Skin layer

Click on the skin layer, and make sure you are editing the image, and not the mask. Pick a big brush, a light skin tone,

and start colouring. The whole thing. You dont have to worry about getting good coverage in areas that will be covered by

clothing or hair, but do try to overlap a little. When you've got a light tone pretty evenly down, switch to a smaller brush,