Using Brushes and the Color Dynamic Preset to Color Templates

Audience: Beginners
Category: Photoshop Elements Tips
Operating System: Windows 7
Software: Photoshop Elements 12

There are almost as many ways to color ScrapSimple templates as there are templates! We know we can clip a paper to a template and adjust Blending modes. We know we can use the Paint Bucket tool and create a “wall” of color. How about brushes? Of course, we can use these, too! “But how?” I hear you ask. “There are too many! I don’t know how! Where do I start?”

Well, stay tuned. I will not be going through all the brushes you can use or suggesting my favorite Boutique picks because I want you to be able to go away and try this now — to feel inspired and have a go at it right away. I have chosen to use Brush #54 from the Wet Media Brushes which come as a standard part of Photoshop Elements 12.

This brush is ideal for loading more than one color at a time. However, to enable both colors to come through with one stroke, we need to tweak some settings first.

When you select brushes from your Tools panel, you are given a Brush Settings menu.

And a submenu under Brush Settings that looks like this:

The most important sliders we will focus on today are Hue/Jitter and Spacing.

Hue/Jitter: This setting controls how quickly Photoshop Elements switches between the chosen foreground and background colors. Higher values result in a faster change from one color to the other. Lower values result in a slower change.

Spacing: This setting relates to how far apart pattern marks appear when making a stroke. Higher values mean the marks are further apart; lower means the marks are closer together.

My screenshot shows some examples of what happens when we play with the sliders:

Now to use these ideas with the June ScrapSimple Club:

Setting Hue and Spacing both to 50 and a brush size of 600 pixels, I selected a light blue and white as my paint colors and started painting on a new blank layer. Part of the way through, I switched foreground to background colors by using shortcut X (or you can click on the small double-headed arrow near the swatches). This allowed me to switch from blue to white as my foreground color and add a little extra white where it was needed.

I placed my newly painted page over the ScrapSimple background. To allow me to show the wonderful texture of the ScrapSimple paper, I played with Blending modes, settling on the following:

I painted in each of the flowers using the same technique and Blending modes. Using a large brush means the recoloring is quick and easy, and switching foreground and background colors allows more precise and more balanced coloring.

This super-fast and super-easy technique can be used for many things, but it is perfect for recoloring ScrapSimple templates. Be sure to try out how easy this is and to post your pages in the Scrap Girls Gallery for us to see!

 Supplies used:

Tutorial written by Jody West

Creative Team Member Andrea-Rose Hutton had this to say about Cindy’s ScrapSimple Club:

Right now I LOVE LOVE LOVE Cindy’s club! I especially love the papers with the painterly textures – I will be using them a lot with other collections, because they give a great texture to everything I apply them to.

Join the ScrapSimple Club and each month you will receive a huge stash of coordinated templates ready for you to color and customize.

Every month we spotlight a different Scrap Girls Designer, so you can discover great new looks. All of the club content is brand new and designed especially for the club. You won’t believe everything you can get with a subscription that costs just $6.99 (or less) a month.