Category: Tutorial

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How to Make a Photoshop Brush/Eraser toggle switch on your Stylus

1. Open Tablet Properties
2. Change one of the buttons to ‘erase’

Now when you are in brush mode and you hold down that button on your stylus, your brush will temporarily turn into an eraser! Just release it to return to brush mode and keep painting.

The temporary eraser will have the same settings as the last eraser you used

BONUS TIP: To do this without changing your preferences, just press and HOLD the “e” key to erase temporarily. Keep holding the “e” key until you are done erasing, then when you lift your stylus and then release the “e” key your tool will switch back to the brush tool!

I know you can flip the stylus over and erase, but why interrupt your flow when you can just press on a button?

BONUS TIP 2: Digital artist SyntheticGeek added this great tip for Wacom tablet users:

“I add Keystroke Modifiers to my Wacom Stylus buttons so I can more quickly use ANY brush preset as an eraser. One button to change it to a “Clear” GrutBrush and one to change it back. “Alt + Shift + R” will change it to a Clear (erasing) GrutBrush and “Alt + Shift + M” will take it back to “Multiply”.

NOTE; Not all GrutBrushes’ painting opacities are set to Multiply as their default, some are set to Normal, which would be “Alt + Shift + N”. (for Mac users Alt = “Option”). You can always just tap the brush preset again in the GrutBrushes Tool Panel. That way, you don’t have to wonder if its default was Normal, Multiply or Whatever. “

How to make a custom button that turns your Photoshop brush into an eraser
How to make a custom button that turns your Photoshop brush into an eraser

 

You could adapt it to any tablet or hardware that allows custom keyboard commands to be programmed to a button

 

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Adobe update breaks brush-to-eraser-tool hack Here’s a workaround

UPDATE 2020:  Simplest method of all…while painting, hold down the TILDE key: ` (usually at the top left of your keyboard while you are painting and your brush will turn into an eraser, with all the same properties, as long as you hold it down)

If, like me, you loved being able to select any tool (usually the eraser) and then pick from your most recent brushes to convert a paint brush to an eraser, or a mixer brush, or a smudge tool with all dynamic setting intact you can’t do this anymore with the latest Photoshop update (v 19) You can still use the clear mode trick to convert your brush to an eraser which I go over in the aboce video inclusing the keyboard shortcuts.

The keyboard shortcut I use in the video are
Normal Mode:
WIN: Shift+Alt+N
MAC: Shift+Alt+N)

Clear Mode (eraser mode)
WIN: Shift+Alt+R
MAC: Shift+Option+R

You can find the full list of brush mode keyboard shortcuts on the Adobe website here It’s a long list so search the page for “Use for blending modes”

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How to Install the Photoshop Plugin – 60 Second Tutorial

This Photoshop tutorial video will teach you how to install the free Photoshop CC plugin in less than a minute. Need to download some free Photoshop brushes to go with it? Try the free sampler set.

Note: this Photoshop plugin installation video was recorded on a Windows computer but apart from the the unzip/extract process being slightly different, all the rest is virtually identical

Any trouble check the help page or send me an email.

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How to Install New brushes into Photoshop automatically using the plugin (Video Tutorial)

One click installation of Photoshop brushes into Photoshop

Buying the Artbrushes Photoshop brushes Set gives you a free two month  membership, which includes all new brushes published in the Shop for 60 days, if you are a Photoshop CC user and are using the GrutBrushes plugin you can install the newest brushes without even leaving Photoshop. This 30 second tutorial shows how it’s done.

Tips:

  • The Photoshop brushes are always listed in order of publication, with the newest one shown first.
  • If you can’t remember if you installed the newest Photoshop brush, Click install and the plugin will let you know if you have it already.
  • The web panel is slow to load, you may think nothing is happening but it should load within about 15 seconds (im trying to change this)
  • The red play button will pop up a video preview of the brush in action.
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How to Save Sets of GrutBrushes in the Photoshop Plugin

With version 1.2.1 of the GrutBrushes Photoshop plugin you can now save custom sets of brushes so that they don’t all have to be in one big set.  In this short video I show you how to create a new set and how to modify which Photoshop brushes it contains.

If you have the GrutBrushes plugin already, you can download the latest one from your account page. If you don’t have it yet, the GrutBrushes Photoshop plugin is free for Photoshop CC 214/15 and you can get it here.

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How to Install Photoshop Brushes to the Plugin via the Web

If you have an active GrutBrushes membership you can add and install brushes directly into Photoshop via the GrutBrushes plugin panel using the “New” button.
You may think that it is broken, but it is likely just slow to load. I’m very sorry about that, but with a bit of patience, it is fast once it loads up. This 45 second video shows you how it’s done.

If you don’t see the screen with all the brushes, you can navigate to it in the menu by going to My Account > Members Brush Portal

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Site is Teetering, but here’s a quick tutorial video.

http://grutbrushes.wistia.com/medias/5rs9l20dzn?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=1020

Normally I’d be announcing the free brush of the week today (Week #52…1 full Year or free brushes!), but I was waiting until some really serious website problems were resolved. That doesn’t seem to be happening so my post announcing the free sampler set of 10 brushes and tools (6+4) which I’m releasing as a “Pay What You Want” product (i.e. free!) is delayed.  While waiting for someone to help me fix it I made this quick video shows how to install them into Photoshop using the plugin. Come and download it at your own risk as the site seems to be in danger of going down at any moment but while it’s up, you can get them here

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Getting The Most out of Your Photoshop Brushes – Exploring The Low Pressure Range

http://grutbrushes.wistia.com/medias/lpubpnx945?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=1020

Sometimes people ask me which brush I used to do the shading in this painting and when I tell them it’s the ‘Ocean Liner‘ brush they usually don’t believe me and I really don’t blame them because this is the stroke most people get when they use the ocean liner brush:

Brush stroke with average pressure applied
Photoshop Brush stroke with average pressure applied

The fact is that most Photoshop brushes have a wide range of looks that you can get simply by varying the pressure of your stylus and sometimes you can find some of the most interesting effects at the very low end of the pressure scale.

By charging the brush size slightly from 20 to 45 pixels and stroking ever so lightly, and lifting my stylus between strokes (this part is important!) I can begin to build up this nice texture.

[baslider name=”lowstyluspressure”]

Now I probably wouldn’t set out to create this with this brush but the point is to not accept your brushes at face value. Experiment and investigate how they behave at the very lowest stylus pressure ranges and you may discover that they, like you, have hidden talents.

 

 

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