Digital Art - It’s Not All About Photoshop
Not long ago when I decided to try my hand at real painting, I went into one of the prestigious art supply stores in Denver to buy paint and brushes. There were literally isles to choose from. Even though the colors had the same name there were probably eight different manufacturers and four different grades by those same manufacturers; same with brushes. The point of this is that no serious artist would expect that everyone paint with a single brand of paint or brush. But tell someone you are a Digital Artist, and the first thing they say is “Oh, did you do that in Photoshop?” While I have every respect for Adobe and their flagship product, there are lot more tools out there for Digital Artists to work with. Like an oil painter who discovered that one brand of their favorite color can totally change the character of their painting, I have found that each program can produce very different effects to an image.
Understanding How They Work
There are some fundamental ways that most programs get those painterly effects. Knowing these will help you to understand how to get the look you want. I’ve created a classification system for this to explain the concept..
Since most people will be starting with a photo, to directly manipulate, trace, or use as a reference for freehand “digital painting”, I’ll start with this. Your very basic alterations consist of changing lightness and darkness, contrast, color balance and hue, cropping, and sizing. This is Photoshop 101, and countless other programs perform these operations identically or slightly different ways. The results are pretty much the same. Beyond this you can get into Adjustment layers, actions, presets, and other more advanced tonal adjustments, but basically they are designed to optimize your photographic image – not significantly alter it.
Pixel Mushers
This is one of the ways that some programs will give you a “painterly effect”. Essentially they are taking the original pixels within a photo and use an effects generator to mush them around a bit. Usually they have names like Charcoal”, “Oil Paint”, or “Watercolor”, but the result is a far cry from this and the overall look is quite un-natural.
Mathematical Algorithms
Unlike simply manipulating pixels, this type of effects generator uses very complex mathematical algorithms and computer code to completely alter the pixels in a starting image in very abstract ways. The way these programs perform this is far beyond the capability mortal men to understand, but the effects can be quite interesting and unique.
Stroke Re-builders
This type of operation also uses an effects generator based on algorithms, but in a different way. They literally re-draw the starting image using brush or pattern templates. While these may take longer to complete the effect, the result is often a much more realistic painterly effect.
Draw it From Scratch
These programs use “Digital Brushes” or drawing tools to allow you to create digital paintings from scratch, or alter an existing image with your own generated brushstrokes. Most of these work best with some type of pressure sensitive tablet such as a Wacom Tablet, since the brush strokes respond to pressure, tilt, direction, and bearing. Since their inception in the 1990’s these have gotten very sophisticated in their ability to digitally emulate natural mediums such as oils paints, pastels, charcoal, pens, and even thick impasto paint.
Actions
When you talk about Actions, you are usually referring to subroutines that run in Photoshop, or other programs that directly support these adobe actions. They string together complex steps performed with the basic tools in Photoshop. Some can be very simple, but others involve a hundred or more steps and get can very complex. Luckily many are available to purchase at low cost so all you need to do is perform a few basic operations and then run the action to get a very complex effect.
Lines and Polygons
Finally there are some programs that do not work with pixels at all, but instead lines, polygons, and fills. These are called raster based programs since they do not generate or manipulate pixels at all, instead they create mathematical code. Many illustrators use these since images can be scaled up infinitely without losing any quality or definition, that you would typically see when work with pixel based artwork.
Conclusion
Just as many traditional artists may start with a basic set of paints, or other mediums and then branch out to a greater array of tools, Digital artists should not feel they have to be held down trying to master just one program. There is a wide universe out there and finding just the right set of tools to get the effect you want can be an exciting and rewarding adventure.
Understanding How They Work
There are some fundamental ways that most programs get those painterly effects. Knowing these will help you to understand how to get the look you want. I’ve created a classification system for this to explain the concept..
- Basic Alterations
- Pixel Mushers
- Mathematical Algorithms
- Stroke Re-builders
- Draw it From Scratch
- Photoshop Actions
- Lines and Polygons
Since most people will be starting with a photo, to directly manipulate, trace, or use as a reference for freehand “digital painting”, I’ll start with this. Your very basic alterations consist of changing lightness and darkness, contrast, color balance and hue, cropping, and sizing. This is Photoshop 101, and countless other programs perform these operations identically or slightly different ways. The results are pretty much the same. Beyond this you can get into Adjustment layers, actions, presets, and other more advanced tonal adjustments, but basically they are designed to optimize your photographic image – not significantly alter it.
Pixel Mushers
This is one of the ways that some programs will give you a “painterly effect”. Essentially they are taking the original pixels within a photo and use an effects generator to mush them around a bit. Usually they have names like Charcoal”, “Oil Paint”, or “Watercolor”, but the result is a far cry from this and the overall look is quite un-natural.
Mathematical Algorithms
Unlike simply manipulating pixels, this type of effects generator uses very complex mathematical algorithms and computer code to completely alter the pixels in a starting image in very abstract ways. The way these programs perform this is far beyond the capability mortal men to understand, but the effects can be quite interesting and unique.
Stroke Re-builders
This type of operation also uses an effects generator based on algorithms, but in a different way. They literally re-draw the starting image using brush or pattern templates. While these may take longer to complete the effect, the result is often a much more realistic painterly effect.
Draw it From Scratch
These programs use “Digital Brushes” or drawing tools to allow you to create digital paintings from scratch, or alter an existing image with your own generated brushstrokes. Most of these work best with some type of pressure sensitive tablet such as a Wacom Tablet, since the brush strokes respond to pressure, tilt, direction, and bearing. Since their inception in the 1990’s these have gotten very sophisticated in their ability to digitally emulate natural mediums such as oils paints, pastels, charcoal, pens, and even thick impasto paint.
Actions
When you talk about Actions, you are usually referring to subroutines that run in Photoshop, or other programs that directly support these adobe actions. They string together complex steps performed with the basic tools in Photoshop. Some can be very simple, but others involve a hundred or more steps and get can very complex. Luckily many are available to purchase at low cost so all you need to do is perform a few basic operations and then run the action to get a very complex effect.
Lines and Polygons
Finally there are some programs that do not work with pixels at all, but instead lines, polygons, and fills. These are called raster based programs since they do not generate or manipulate pixels at all, instead they create mathematical code. Many illustrators use these since images can be scaled up infinitely without losing any quality or definition, that you would typically see when work with pixel based artwork.
Conclusion
Just as many traditional artists may start with a basic set of paints, or other mediums and then branch out to a greater array of tools, Digital artists should not feel they have to be held down trying to master just one program. There is a wide universe out there and finding just the right set of tools to get the effect you want can be an exciting and rewarding adventure.