Making And Using A
Swirly Brush

PSP8 and PSP9

*NOTE*
Sometimes the links for filters change, it's difficult (and a lot of work) to
keep changing them on individual pages, so I have created a page with
links to filters and programs that I have used in my tutorials.
That way it is easier for me, because when there are changes I will
only have one page to update and hopefully better for you, because I'm
less likely to miss a page out when doing the updates :)

You will find links to filters/programs used in this tutorial Here
the link will open in a new window

Filters and programs used in this tutorial :-
Paint Shop Pro
Dragonfly's Sinedots II

Materials :-
There is a text file included in the zip, if you don't know where to place the items.
My Ribbon-trail.cfg Here

An image to frame.
The one that I was is from Ramblings and Roadtrips part of
Kingdom Graphix.com, but the site isn't available any longer

Some images have been made smaller to shorten file size

Please Note*
My tutorials were written for people to learn
from, so PLEASE DO NOT SCRIPT THEM.

Step 1.
Open a new Image 100 x 150 with a transparent background
Go to Effects...Plugins...Dragonfly...Sinedots II...
If you are new to sinedots and don't know how to open
the .cfg files and the presets that they contain,
click HERE for more information

Open the 'ribbon-trail' preset and click ok.

This is the shape that I am going to
use to make the brush tip.

Go to File...Export...Custom Brush...
Tick the 'save variance' box, the step can be left at
the default value of 32. Give the brush tip a name, fill
in any other information that you want to and click ok.

Now that you have the brush tip saved you can close the image.

Step 2.
You can use the brush tip for painting with as it is, but
we are also going to make a preset using the brush variance
palette, that will use this brush tip to paint a swirly line.

Open a new image for trying out the effects that we are going
to apply to the brush. It needs to be fairly large, mine is
500 x 400 with a white background. Add a new raster layer.
In the materials palette choose different colours for the
background and foreground, the choice of colour is yours.
Use plain colours with no texture.

Press b on the keyboard or click on the paint brush
icon to activate it and choose the Paint Brush.
Then on the tools options palette, click on the brush tip
dropdown box to display your brushes and choose the
ribbon-trail (or whatever name you called your brush).
Mine is circled in the screenshot.

Step 3.
At the moment the brush tip is larger than we want, so on
the tool options palette change the size to about 50.
Change the step size to about 16, to make the images
that the brush paints closer together.
These sizes are only a suggestion, so feel free to
experiment. You can make adjustments at any time.

We haven't added the swirl yet, but let's take a look
at what the brush does at the moment. Click down with the
brush on the left of the image and drag to the right

You can also try painting from top to bottom, or bottom to
top. When you have finished, hit delete, or go use psp's undo
function to return to a blank canvas (if you prefer you can
close the image and open a new one).
You can do this at any time during the next few steps,
at the moment we are only testing the appearance of
the brush before we decide which setting to save.

Step 4.
Now we will give the brush a swirl.
If the Brush Variance Palette isn't already open, open it
either by going to View...Palette... and choosing it from
the dropdown list, or right clicking on the toolbar and
choosing from the list of palettes.

This is a screenshot of the top part of the brush variance
palette, there's a section at the bottom not shown here.

There are a lot of possibilities for experimenting in the
Brush Variance Palette and I'm not going to cover them all
because I hope you will go on to do some experimenting of
your own, but we will try out a few ideas that we could use
to make our swirly brush. I am going to look at the
'Color Blend' 'Size' and 'Rotation' sections
(not necessarily in that order).
Let's look at rotation first.

Click on the dropdown window next to 'Rotation'. I'm
using a regular mouse, so I am going to ignore the options
marked with * and look at some of the other options.

The 'Normal' option doesn't rotate the brush at all.
Paint across the image and then downwards. Whichever
direction you paint in the brush stays the same way up.
Try changing the Rotation to 'Direction' and then painting
across and downwards again and you will see that the brush
now turns to face in the direction that you are painting.

Interesting, but not the swirly effect we are looking for,
so let's try changing the Rotation to 'Repeating Fade in'.
Drag the brush across your image.

That's more like it :) The brush tip is rotated in a
repeating pattern. Drag the brush in the opposite direction
and see what happens. It's the same pattern, but upside down.
Try painting from top to bottom, or bottom to top.

Changing the Rotation to 'Oscillating Fade' and paint
across your image. This also rotates the brush in a repeating
pattern, but alternates the direction of the rotation.

Because the rotation goes in both directions the
pattern will be the same whether you paint from
right to left, or from left to right.

Both the 'Repeating Fade In' and the 'Oscillating Fade'
options would work well on our brush.
For now change the rotation back to 'Normal'
and we will take a look at 'Size'.

Don't forget that at any time your image starts to fill up
too much while we are trying out these brush variances, you
can delete what is there and paint on a fresh canvas.

Step 5.
Click on the dropdown box next to 'Size' and
from the options select 'Repeating Fade In'

The brush size now fades in, in a repeating pattern.
If you want to make the rate of the fade slower or quicker,
you can adjust it by changing the 'Fade Rate' in the bottom
section of the Brush Variance Palette.

The Default value is 100. To slow down the rate, increase
the number and to speed it up, decrease the number.
Try 50, or 200 and see what happens.

When you have finished experimenting, change the
Fade Rate back to it's default value of 100.
When we changed the Rotation back to 'Normal' we lost the
swirly look of the brush, so before we check out the
'Color blend' section, let's put it back.

For now select 'Oscillating Fade' in the Rotation section
and select 'Repeating Fade In' in the Size section.
This is the effect that it produces.

Now open the dropdown window next to Color blend.
Select 'Oscillating Fade' and drag your brush across
and down your image. The colour fades from the backgroud
colour to the forefround colour and then fades back to
the background colour again.

'Repeating Fade In' is very similar, but it fades from
the background colour to the foreground colour, then
repeats from the beginning instead of fading back.

At this point I will leave you to experiment with all the
brush variance settings (including those that we haven't
covered here). Try using different combinations.

Beside each section in the brush variance palette there is
a box named 'jitter' this adds some randomness to the effect
applied to each section. The higher the figure the more
random the effect, so you can include more variations to
your brush by putting a number into the the boxes provided.
The higher the value the more random the jitter will be.
You can also adjust the settings on the Tool Options Palette.

When you have found a combination that you
want to save as a brush preset, go on to step 6.

Step 6.
These are the brush settings that I used for
my brush. You can use these ones if you want
to, or you can use your own.

On the Tools Options Palette:-
Size=50, Step=16,Density=100,
Rotation=0, Opacity=100,
Blend Mode=Normal

On the Brush Variance Palette:-
Color blend=Repeating Fade In
Hue=Normal
Saturation=Normal
Lightness=Normal
Size=Oscillating Fade
Opacity=Normal
Thickness- Not applicable
Rotation=Repeating Fade In
Density=Normal
All Jitters=0
Fade Rate=100
Position Jitter=0
Impressions per step=1

Click on the Presets icon

On the dropdown panel click the save preset icon
at the top right and type a name for your preset
in the dialogue box that appears.

Your preset will be added to the list, ready for
the next time that you want to use it.

Brushes have 2 parts, the 'brush' and the 'brush tip'
both of these are saved in the brushes folder.
As we are making a preset to determine the action of the
brush (in this case the swirl etc) the brush now has a third
part to it, the 'preset' which is saved in the presets folder.
If you want to share your brush preset with others,
don't forget to give them the brush tip and brush,
as well as the preset and tell them to put the
brush script and brush tip in the brushes folder and the
preset in the presets folder.

Step 7.
We will finish this tutorial by using our brush
to add a decoration to a simple frame.

Open the image that you wish to frame,
duplicate it (shift+D) and close the original.
The image that I used was larger that I wanted
so I resized it to 323 x 203.

Go to Image...Add Borders...
Add a symetric border of 5 pixels, using a colour
that is not around the edged of your image (when
we select the border in the next step, we don't
want parts of the picture selected with it).

Step 8.
Using the Magic Wand,
Mode=replace, Match mode=RGB value,
Tolerance=0 Feather =0, Outside
Click on the border to select it, then go to,
Effects...Texture Effects...Sculpture...
These are the settings that I used, but you can choose
one of the presets from the dropdown list at the top of
the dialogue box (or a setting of your own) if you prefer.
If you are using PSP9 and haven't got the Gold pattern,
you can use Citrus peel instead.

Because my picture is very dark I didn't add a cutout,
but depending on your image, you may want to add one.
If so, go to Selections...Invert...
Selections...Float...
Effects...3D Effects...Cutout...
(these settings are just a suggestion, you
can apply your own instead if you wish).
Horizontal=3, Vertical=3, Opacity=45,
Blur=8.91 Colour=black.
Repeat the cutout changing the Horizontal
and Vertical figures to minus 3(-3)

De-select

Go to Image...Add Borders...
Add a symetric border of 35 in black

Go to Image...Add Borders...
Add a symetric border of 5 in any
colour except black
Select the border with the Magic Wand, go to
Effects...Texture Effects...Sculpture
and apply the same sculpture preset as before.

De-select
Now we have a very simple frame, which we will
decorate with our new brush.

Step 9.
Press e on the keyboard to activate the
Eye Dropper (or click on it with the mouse)

To select the foreground and background colours
for your materials palette, use the Eye Dropper
(left click to select the foreground and
right click for the background).

Activate the Paint Brush and if your swirly brush
preset isn't already selected, click on the presets
icon and select it from the list.

Add a New Raster Layer to your image.
You can paint all the way around the picture, or just
in certain areas and if you want the brushstrokes to be
larger or smaller, you can change the size.
If you want to keep your brushstrokes in between
the narrow gold borders the brush size needs to
be lowered to 35 (the border size), or less.

For my decoration I left the brush size at 50
Click once at point 1 (see the screenshot below),
then holding down the shift key click at
point 2 and point 3.

This is the result

Do some experimenting and see what you can come up with.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
Thankyou to my very helpful testers
To see my other tutorials click Here

If you wish to contact me you can find an email address to use included on my Site Map
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