by
David Nagel
Executive
Producer
dnagel@digitalmedianet.com
If
there's one thing lacking in the most popular image editor in
the world, it's paint capabilities. Sure, you have a tool shaped
like a paintbrush and one that functions like an airbrush, but
paint functionality in Adobe Photoshop is incredibly limited.
And yet,
there comes a time in even the least creative art director's
career when he or she needs to create original art, whether
it be a concept sketch or just text that needs a little more
treatment than might be found in his or her font collection.
Enter Propeller Paint Engine for Adobe Photoshop.
What
it does
Propeller Paint Engine is a plugin module for Adobe Photoshop
that essentially acts like an application within an application.
Its primary function is to provide tools for painting in a way
that emulates natural media, and it also provides some more
fanciful tools for painting with organic material, objects and
effects patterns. So the tools range from watercolor to pencil
to charcoal and licorice vines to fire to fern leaves.
You access
the paint tools simply by selecting the Propeller plugin from
Photoshop's Filter menu. A new interface then pops up containing
all the tools and your current layer.
The
Propeller Paint Engine interface. Click image for larger view.
Once there,
you simply select your tools and get to work. When you're done,
you click OK, and your painting is applied to your layer on
top of what was already there while preserving whatever transparency
that was there as well.
What's especially
nice about this plugin is that you can use any image as a brush
or brush pattern. The paint engine will allow you to bring images
in and then "track" them as you paint, meaning that
it follows the direction of your strokes, as well as pressure
and tilt, if you happen to be using a pressure-sensitive and/or
tilt-sensitive tablet and stylus.
A
sampling of some of Propeller's preset brushes.
