The Image Manipulation Sore just released a new set of texture brushes and I think that they have a potential to be a game changer in how compositors work with overlays. Actually, I am not a big fans of brushes. I only use them on rare occasions and mostly for stamping things. Things like my watermark, or a (C) mark. But I think that this set of brushes may start a trend. If you’ve ever done any sort of compositing you know that using textures is not easy. (It is not very complex either, but just has too many steps). You need to select an overlay, bring it into photoshop as a layer, then move to screen mode. We show a good example of this in this photoshop power tip. Brushes, on the other hand are really easy, You select a brush and can just use it to paint a line or a surface on your canvas. If only there was a way to create textures in a similar manner to the way we use brushes.
And this is where the Magic Brushes come in. There are a lot of brushes out there – but these brushes are truly magic: they’re based on real high end textures and build by some of the best photoshop technicians.
What are the Magic Brushes?
The Magic Brushes make it easy to create textures in a composite. things like dust, smoke bokeh and debris, just by using the brush tool. Here are some animated GIFs to show how they work:
Here is why I think that these will catch on pretty nicely (taken from the product page):
You can create textures as big as you want (the only “real” limit is RAM)The textures are real. we took the photos ourselves. No cgi crap!Randomized attributes are controlled by pressureMakes it very easy to create layers and depthTotal of 60 different brushes
What’s in the package?
This package contains 60 brushes. But they are not just plain stamps, each brush is packed with pressure sensitive settings for graphic tablets. The pressure applied controls the shape, scattering, transparency, color and direction of of the brush. Pressure sensitivity is pure genius. It give you a lot of control and you can, for example, create many different looks without searching for stock photos. Hopefully, this will make a big shift in how compositors create complex textures. Here are some examples:
You can create a whirling column of dust around your modelOr you can raise a storm of rain, hail and snow in a move of wacom pen.Or you can create a stunning Bokeh just by waving a bokeh brush around.
Here is the complete set of the brushes:
And here is a video that shows how they work
P.S. Full Disclosure: Yes, we do own the Image Manipulation Store, so Magic Brushes is our product, but we really think it rocks. Check it out!
