(upbeat music)
- [Helen] Hello and welcome
to this Design Cuts video tutorial.
Today, we're looking at demystifying
the mixer brush in Photoshop.
As always in this video,
I'll be using some Design Cuts assets.
I'll be using an illustration
from 550+ Hand Drawn Illustrations by Zeppelin Graphics.
Now, they're a whole series of illustrative elements
that you can use in this collection.
Some of them are shapes but I'm using an image
which is delivered as a PNG image.
I'll also be using a photo from this collection,
it's 100 Hi-Res Photos by Moonloop.
And these photos are just awesome.
I absolutely love these photos
so I'm going to be using one of those photos.
So, let's swing back to Photoshop.
The mixer brush first appeared in Photoshop CS5
but you may find that in later versions of Photoshop
when you open up the brushes flyout here
that the mixer brush tool doesn't even exist there.
If that's the case, you're going to need to begin
by putting the mixer brush back where it belongs.
Choose Edit, and then Toolbar.
If your mixer brush isn't here with the other brushes,
then it's going to be over here in the Extra Tools.
Drag down here to locate the brushes group here,
and drag the mixer brush which will be here over
and drop it in here so then it belongs with the tools
that it relates to, and click Done.
I don't need to do that my mixer brush is already installed.
Now, it can be very confusing
as to exactly what you can use the mixer brush with.
This is the mixer brush options
that are visible right now
'cause I have a mixer brush selected.
Then I'm gonna open this brush flyout panel,
I'm going to choose a different brush.
And you can see that the tool options changed immediately
because the brush that I'm using right now
isn't actually set up for the mixer brush.
We can do it but not this way.
So, when you're looking at your current brushes panel,
you're going to be looking for a brush
that has a little drop above it.
And that's a mixer brush brush.
This is not a mixer brush brush,
that's a different one entirely.
It uses the smudge tool not the mixer brush.
So, to start off with, make sure you that you locate
a brush that is actually a mixer brush brush.
Now, you'll find some additional mixer brushes
if you install a converted legacy tool presets
and the legacy brushes.
You do that from the flyout menu here,
choose Converted Legacy Tool Presets, install those.
And also install Legacy Brushes.
For the legacy tool presets,
they all have the little mixer brush icon telling you
which ones are preset for the mixer brush.
With the legacy tools themselves,
they don't have that little icon
but you can still select them.
And if you have a look up here,
if you can still see the mixer brush options,
then you're on a mixer brush.
But if you want to use the converted presets,
then just click on one here
and you'll get the converted presets.
Now, this one's a bristle brush
so it has this little indicator in here.
If they're not bristle brushes, they won't have that
but they'll still show up and work as brushes.
Now, the tool presets for the mixer brush
are really critical to understand.
The first one here just opens the brush settings panel,
so you can click it on and off
and that's really handy 'cause you might want to have
a look at or preset your brush.
This one is the reservoir so this controls the paint.
So, I'm gonna click here on load brush
and that's going to load this paint colour here.
But you can also click on this palette
and go and choose a different colour to use.
So, let's choose a sort of more red colour.
We'll also need to load the brush
because right now the brush isn't loading automatically.
So we're in effect using a cleaning brush
and then this we actually dip it
in the paint pot if you'd like,
then it's not loading with paint.
This is the dip in the paint pot icon.
So, this is loading the brush and so this will load
the brush every single time you make a brush stroke.
And this is to clean the brush one.
And so it's enabled, so our brush
is going to be cleaned right now,
automatically, every stroke we make.
So, it's never going to get dirty.
But if you paint like an artist,
you'll probably want your brush to be dirty
because that would happen if you put
a paintbrush through existing wet paint,
so you may want to disable that.
And that allows you to work with
what is in effect, a dirty brush.
Now, you've got a whole series of presets here
which control these settings here.
You can select any one of them to get this sort of effect,
the dry brush effect or a wet brush effect
but it also helps to understand
what these settings are actually doing.
The wet option is pretty important
because you would probably think
that that has to do with the paint on a brush
and it doesn't.
It has to do with the paint already on the canvas.
So, if we set this to 100% wet, then this paint
and this paint and this paint are wet
but because we've got sample or layers selected,
this paint is wet, too.
And this is treated as paint.
This is white paint.
So right now we've got oodles of wet paint in front of us
and that's because this setting for wet is at 100%.
Load is loading the brush and if you load the brush
with a very small value of paint, for example 1%,
then eventually it's going to run out.
Well, you hope it's going to run out,
because that may not be the case.
I'm going to make this canvas very dry,
so making wet zero, means I've got a dry canvas.
So I'm about to put paint down.
So, when I put paint down,
because I've only got a load of 1%,
you would assume that this brush
is going to run out of paint.
Now, not all brushes run out of paint at the same rate,
so let's go back here
and let's find a different mixer brush.
So I'm just gonna select this one here.
Let's just make sure it's a very small brush.
So I'm just adjusting its size,
using the brush settings panel.
We're on zero wetness and I'm going to do a load of 1%.
Now when I draw with this brush
you can see that it's running out of paint.
in fact this'll totally run out of paint,
and as much as I try and paint with it, it's not painting,
because we've also lost this reservoir setting.
So let's go to load brush and let's make sure
that we load paint after every time we make a brush stroke.
And so this is a load of 1% on that brush
at that brush size.
But this was a 1% load on a different brush
that behaves very very differently.
So, you're going to need to experiment with these brushes
to see if you want it to behave like this,
whether it's even possible and what sort of a load amount
you want for you brush.
Now because I made all this paint dry,
there's no option for mix,
but if I make it all wet again,
then we get some mix options.
And mix can be anything between zero and a hundred percent
and we're gonna start with a hundred percent.
And let me just make this brush a little bit bigger
as we do that.
So I've got a very small load on this brush.
All the paint is wet and mix is a hundred percent.
Let's see what happens, but before we do that,
let's just disable this airbrush option
and let's enable sample all layers.
So, we're sampling the current paint layer,
the paint layer below, which is white paint.
We have a 1% load on our brush, let's see what happens.
Well, we're getting a really high mixing rate
with the paint that's already on the art board.
And in some cases you wouldn't even get paint laid down.
All you would be doing would be pushing paint around
the existing wet paint.
Because setting mix to a hundred percent means
that most of the action is happening on the canvas,
not on the brush.
But if we take that back and make the mix 0%,
then all the paint is going to come from the brush
and very little is going to come from the canvas.
You can see a little bit's been pushed around,
but not a lot.
And again, every brush is going to behave differently,
as to how much it responds to this mix value
and a mix value of about 50%,
then we're going to be getting paint from the brush
as well as paint from the canvas,
but every single one of these brushes
is going to behave slightly differently.
Now if you want to use an airbrush effect, you can.
So we'll click on airbrush here.
I'm gonna set the flow to really really low.
I'm gonna turn wet off, so I'm just going to treat it
as if the canvas is dry
and let me just increase my brush size.
So if I just click, I'm going to paint a single stroke.
Now, it's moving because of the brush preset settings.
So let's just stop it from moving.
We'll turn off the shape dynamics for a minute,
so it's gonna paint just like that.
But if I press and hold, it's gonna get darker and darker
so that's the airbrush effect.
And we can control the initial amount
by setting a flow value.
And then as we continue to press on that brush,
then it's going to get darker and darker,
as if we're spraying the art board with an airbrush.
You can also have flow set to a low value
and it still works even without the airbrush option,
but it also works with the airbrush option.
And you'll probably wanna have
a reasonable flow on your brushes
so you get a fair amount of paint when you paint with them.
Now we talked earlier about dirty brushes,
so let me just size this brush down
and I've got some sort of dirty paint in here.
If I hold the alt key on a PC the option key on a Mac,
I can click on this to try and pick up this dirty colour.
Now I haven't picked up the dirty colour,
I've just picked up a solid colour.
And the reason for this is that load solid colours only
is enabled, so whatever I select over,
in terms of trying to load my brush with right now,
I'm only going to get a solid colour.
But if I disable that and go back and do my alt click,
then I'm picking up a dirty brush stroke.
And so now when I paint it's with a dirty brush.
And that dirty brush isn't going to disappear,
this is going to be the reservoir from which I'm painting.
So you can see that it's going to be possible
to sample paint, either paint that you've already laid down
or perhaps sample something from a photograph
and use that to paint with.
Of course we're getting white in here,
because we've got a white layer underneath,
and because we've got sample all layers enabled.
If I disable that and come and select the paint here,
then I'm getting a paint stroke
that has transparency around this,
so it's gonna paint again very differently,
cause it's not bringing white with us.
Having a white background
is going to be a little bit confusing
because the sample all layers tends to go on and off a bit
depending on what brush you're using and it can end up
with you picking up white paint
when you don't expect to be picking up white paint.
So if we have a look at our drop down list now,
we'll be able to select something like very wet,
heavy mix paint.
Let's go and load solid colours only
and let's go and pick up a paint colour
and pick up a sort of blue colour.
We're on a 50% load,
so our brush is going to run out of paint at some stage.
But let's have a look and see how it paints.
Because we've got wet set to a hundred percent,
the underlying paint is very very wet
and so we're picking it up as we move along.
Now this brush is not being cleaned
and because it ended up in a dirty area,
in a mix of paint, we can expect it
to start painting dirty all over again.
But after a while
because we keep loading fresh paint into it,
we're actually going to end up
with fresh paint on the brush.
Up until now, when we've been using the mixer brush,
we've been looking for brushes
that have this little mixer brush icon,
just immediately above them.
And we haven't been able to use brushes like this one,
because as soon as we select on it,
we lose all the mixer brush tools.
But If I go back to a mixer brush
and try and use one of these general brushes,
I am actually able to use it,
because these don't have icons,
they can be used as mixer brush brushes.
But what if I want to use this dry medium brush
with the mixer brush?
Well, as soon as I click on it
I lose my mixer brush options.
So we can use it, but this is how you're going to do it.
First of all you need to find a mixer brush.
So you get this mixer brush tools on the tool options bar.
And then just exit that brush panel.
Go to the brush settings and here in the brush settings
at the very top, are those brushes that we saw
in the brushes panel and this is the one
that I said I wanted to use but wasn't able to use.
Now, if I click on it, you'll see
that it's added as a brush that we're using,
but see how we've still got mixer brush settings.
So for brushes that you can't select
from this dropdown list here,
you can generally find them in this area
of the brush settings panel.
And when you select on them they behave differently.
So now we've got the brush that we wanted
and we can use that as a mixer brush.
So it's gonna have all the behaviours of a mixer brush.
For example we can take the load down to a very small value.
Let's make it load with colour every stroke.
And if we drag far enough on that brush,
it is going to paint around,
so it is actually showing up a 1% load as being something
that will eventually run out of paint,
but you can see it's running out of paint a lot later
than the brush over here did.
It ran out of paint much earlier,
this one is running out a lot later.
So one of the things that you need to be aware of
with the mixer brush is
that different brushes work very differently
and so you'll really need to experiment with it
to see what it's capable of doing.
You may recall that I mentioned earlier
that there are a couple of ways that you can paint
with the mixer brush.
You can use it to paint original paintings,
so that you're using it very much as you would
a standard paint brush, or you can use it
to paint photos and we're gonna look
at each of those applications very briefly.
I've got a cupcake here.
The line art is on the top most layer.
I've got a white background layer.
I'm gonna paint on this middle layer.
I'm going to select a colour to paint with,
so I'm going to do the cherry on top here,
so I'll select a sort of cherry colour.
And now I'll go and find an appropriate mixer brush.
And for this I'm going to use this fan brush.
So I'll select on it and just click away.
Now it's been preset as a blender,
so it's not gonna do much right now,
except just push pixels around
and that's not what we want to do.
So I'm gonna select here on load brush,
and I'm also gonna make sure that I only load solid colours.
Right now, I just wanna get some colour down.
So I'm gonna click here so that I'm loading the brush
each brush stroke, don't wanna clean it,
so I can just remove that.
Now, it doesn't really matter whether it's a wet
or dry canvas at the moment
cause I'm gonna deselect sample all layers
and I don't have any paint there anyway to push around.
So we can start by just sort of brushing paint in here.
Now, I'm using a mouse
and so I'm gonna change some of the brush settings
at this point.
Going to brush tip shape,
I'm gonna reduce the number of bristles
and make it less of a stiff brush.
Also because I'm using a mouse,
I want the angle jitter to vary a little bit,
and I'm gonna take this to initial direction,
so it's gonna follow me around a little bit as I paint.
So I'm just going to lay the initial load of colour down.
I'm not needing to cover this up entirely.
I'll go and get another colour to use,
cause I want to make a lighter spot over here.
So let's recheck everything here.
We're adding colour, the canvas is wet.
At the moment I don't really want it wet,
so I'm just gonna make it really quite dry
so that the colour I'm putting on at this point,
will actually go on.
And it won't be sort of mixed in yet.
So I've got that paint
and let's go and add some even lighter paint.
Again I'm just reducing the brush size each time,
using the open and close square bracket keys,
so that I can get the size paint area that I want.
And let's go for some dark area here.
Now at this point
I might start making it just a little bit wet
and see if I can get some colour in.
No, that's not working so I'm just gonna undo it.
Gonna leave it dry.
And get some darker colour in here.
Now let's zoom in.
You could leave this as it is, but you could also,
at this point start blending your colours
and for this if you want to blend things together,
you're just going to make changes
to the mixer brush settings,
so in this case we want it to be a hundred percent wet.
And we don't want much, if any, load at all.
And if we set mix to 100%,
then we're going to be pushing pixels around
that are already on the canvas,
this colour is going to be pushed around.
We wanna make sure the sample all layers
is not selected, we don't wanna be sampling all layers.
And we can also clean the brush and not load it.
So that means that our brush right now
has no paint on it at all.
But it's going to act as a blender,
so now when I start moving around in this area,
I'm actually just pushing existing pixels around.
So it's like sort of muddying the paint job if you like.
And so you can go through and sort of blend things together
much as you would do if you're working with a paint brush.
You may wanna decrease the flow a little bit
to see if that helps
to perhaps make it a little less intense of an effect.
So that's a way of laying original paint down
in an image and then pushing those pixels around,
once you've got the paint on the canvas,
to get the effect that you like.
The second way of using the mixer brush
is to do something like painting a photograph,
so I've got a photograph open here.
You can add a brand new layer to the image
and paint on that layer, but you might find
that there's a lag,
because you'll be using the sample all layers
and Photoshop will be sampling data
from this layer to paint on this layer.
And if you find that your computer slows down a little bit
you may be better off, actually making a duplicate
of the background layer
and just painting straight onto this layer,
keeping this background image,
just in case you need detail from that at some later stage.
This is the way I'm going to use it.
So I'm gonna target the mixer brush tool
and let's find a different brush to use here.
I'm going to use this one here.
It's a blunt round blender.
So, I'll select on it to target it,
but of course we need to set it up
to do what we want to do with it.
So I'm going to the brush settings here
and it's a little bit lack lustre right now,
so I'm gonna increase the number of bristles
and their length.
I'm gonna reduce the stiffness
so it's a little bit of a softer brush.
And I can also adjust the size of it,
but until we get it onto the canvas itself,
it's a little bit difficult to talk about size.
So I'm just gonna close that dialogue down.
Now, let's look at the actual mixer brush settings.
Well we don't want to sample all layers,
cause we want to use the paint from the layer
that we've created
and we're just going to put all our painting
onto this layer.
I do want it to be a hundred percent wet,
so that's treating this canvas like a wet image,
so I can push the pixels around.
In this case I don't want to lay down any colour,
so I'm going to set this up
more as a blender type painting effect,
so I have no paint here
and I don't think I wanna clean my brush either.
So I'm going to leave it a dirty brush.
In terms of load it doesn't really matter,
because I'm not really loading the brush anyway,
but I do want to mix
and I want to mix most of the background colour here.
So let's just increase the size of the brushes
in the open and close square bracket keys,
in this case the close square bracket key.
And let's do a brush stroke and see what happens.
Well, we're getting some really nice brush strokes here,
so I'm gonna need to be painting
a sort of horizontal direction to follow this waterline.
So I'm gonna bring some colour in,
from the right hand side of the image into the water.
And in a minute, I'm just gonna push it all back again.
So I'm getting this sort of painterly strokes
in this area.
Now, you can clean the brush if you want to,
so you could disable that icon up here
and so the brush is going to be clean each stroke,
so you're pushing clean pixels,
so you're not bringing any colour in
from the previous stroke,
but it's just a case of picking up a style that suits you
and a brush size obviously that suits you.
I'm painting with an enormous brush right now,
cause I just want you to see the effect.
I'm not actually looking at
completing a finished painting here,
but I just want you to see
that the brush strokes you can get.
To make this brush paint a little bit less intensively,
go back to your brush settings
and I'm going to decrease number of bristles,
so I want it to be a bit spikier.
I'm thinking that it's a bit too intense right now.
So now when I bring it in
it's painting a little bit more spiky.
And again I can reduce the flow
if I don't want quite so much paint to be pushed around
each time, so I'm getting a more subtle effect
and able to sort of pull these pixels in
to get a more interesting result.
It's going to be easier with a tablet,
but it's not impossible to get good results
with a mouse.
So that's how you might use a mixer brush on a photograph
but of course you can always pick up colour
and introduce colour into this image as well.
That's quite easily done by just selecting a colour
to paint with.
Let's go for a sort of lighter yellow colour.
Let's fill our well.
Got to fill it every stroke, I'm gonna leave it dirty.
I want the mix to be a about fifty fifty.
I don't want a very big load on this brush
until I've sort of tested it out.
And now we're able to introduce some colour
into the image, so colour that we have here
is now blending in with the colours in the photograph
and so we're able to sort of recolor the effect
or add more variety of colour than there was
in the original photograph.
And that's really part of what a painting is,
paintings have more colour, more rich colour generally
than photographs have cause they're photo realistic,
paintings are not.
So I hope that helps you see
how you might use the mixer brush in your own art work
in the future.
I hope that you've enjoyed learning
these Photoshop techniques.
Let us know what you think in the comments below
and give us a thumbs up if you enjoyed this tutorial.
Until next time, I'm Helen Bradley for Design Cuts.
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