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224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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I think it might be useful to share tips and tricks for using those effectively
Greetings,
Yeah, I'm at 99 of his 106 items, but one's a bundle (that I have the parts of) and one's for Carrara. I only wish I could have a better feeling for what brushes I have available, with all of that. I do tend to use a much smaller set of his brushes than I have.
How do other folks who have a huge number of brushes handle the problem of knowing what brushes might work well for a scene, other than the ones you use often...?
-- Morgan
When I had more time I categorize my brushes using a complicated technique I learned on the web. Photoshop does not make this easy to do. I lost those and never remade them. But it is possible.
Now I just rename the sets based on themes like water and the name of the product. This puts them all in a group and makes themes either to find.
If I could make a request I would actually prefer smaller brush sets with a specific content in each. Say sweat drops in one muzzle flashes in another. Big brush sets I find cumbersome to use especially if they include a wide variety of subjects sorting them is hard in Photoshop so I would prefer not to have to do that
I have loads of story fragments and scenes jumbled in my head, so... nothing coherent.
If you've loaded a brush set twice is there an easy way to get rid of it, That drives me crazy !!!
Is there a Ron's brush set with footprints?
There is an organizer for brushes in Photoshop called Brushbox. I haven't tried it yet, so I have no idea how well it works: https://gumroad.com/l/brushbox
I've got around two thirds of Ron's brush sets and use them a lot, although plenty of postwork sessions don't involve them at all. My favourites are Ron's Space Brushes and Ron's Lights & Shadows, which get used often, but like others have said, I forget what's in a lot of the rest of the sets I own. Attached is a book cover I sold on a pre-made cover site - it consisted of nothing more than the use of a brush each from two of Ron's sets and a couple of fonts, and featuring no rendering whatsoever. It was just a spur-of-the-moment idea I got from looking at the plughole brush and I only put it together because my brain wouldn't let me get on with anything else until it was done, but the sale paid for both sets of brushes and more besides.
The only reason I haven't bought the rest of Ron's brushes is that I can't think what I'd do with them. If I had enough imagination I'd be in there like a shot. I wouldn't be without those I already own.
Being about to create groups then hide and collapse them would be great thanks for the link !!!
Might have a look around gumroad to see what else is there :)
I've got quite a lot of Ron's Brushes now, though not as much as some of you.
I used to be scared of this mysterious 'postwork', but a Dreamlight tut on using layers and Ron's brushes cured me of that.
Here are an older one with rain, and a newer one with smoke+light (pre and post versions)
Wow, thought I was bad coming in with 62 sets of Ron's brushes but see that's a lot less than a couple of the folks posting on this thread. I find the names for Ron's sets okay I just wanted to get them to show up near the front of my list and together instead of spread throughout my brush list. (I have a HUGH brush list so it helps to be as organized as possible without going overboard.) To get my brushes to show up together near the top of my list, I add a symbol to the start helps with naming convention. For example, I added @Ron's to the front of each of the names. You'll notice in my snip I have also renamed all of my original brushes by adding !PSCS5 to pop these to the very front of my brush list. It was a little time consuming to do but I think it was totally worth the effort. (Other symbols work ...each has it's place in the "peeking" order.) Edit: Just don't use the ~ symbol first as that keeps whatever item from loading in PS. This is useful if you want all you brushes or whatever loaded in the folder but don't want them to load each time PS opens.
Snip of a small section of my brush list so you get the idea what I mean...
(Tbe one that has mod at end of name is a duplicate set but has something in it that I added or modified in it.)
Wow, the before and after is amazing! Excellent illustration on the power of these brushes! Nicely done!
This looks great. I bought it and will give it a whirl and let you all know. If it does what it states, it will be useful to me especailly if it saves me time. But I won't have time to mess wtih it until later.
The checkout process is rather annoying so be forewarned. Multiple clicks and it had me worried I bought it several times. Fortunately, not.
We shall see. I have to read the pdf and such later tonight.
OK, using birds and fog is not exactly a HUGE brush use, but I did use them!
Greetings,
WOW it looks good, from the videos and screenshots I've seen. I'm super-jealous, because I don't actually use Photoshop, I use an awesome image editor named Pixelmator...but that brush tool makes me seriously consider subscribing.
-- Morgan
I picked up 2 free brushes from rendo and they work fine in Gimp (which is free) and others have said that many of Ron's brushes also work in gimp so that could save you from the subscription.
Okay my initial impression is favorable. There are some negatives though. I'll start with those.
1. Read the pdf. You MUST uncheck two tools for this to function properly. (I didn't. I suck at reading directions and the print is small) Don't be me, and read the directions first.
2. It seizes slightly. Not a lot, but occasionally the down scrollbar doesn't function. I think it is loading or accessing.
3. It is an installer putting unknown files somewhere on my computer. There is NO uninstaller. You input a license key to use it, so I'm not sure how it knows whether you have multiple copies installed. I would like to be able to uninstall it if I get a new machine. The instructions do not tell you how. Since I didn't have those two features unchecked, I would've liked to uninstall and reinstall. It doesn't allow that. I did however install it again. Hopefully it is happy with me. When I get more familiar with this I will definitly go looking for more detailed info on how to remove the software if I need to do so, so I can free up the license key.
4. I am not sure how the organizer works yet to sufficiently review the loading process. It will require more reading than I can commit to at present. There were times, when I didn't seem to do things properly and my selected presets were not saved. his is likely user error as I am still learning it.
I'm not sure because I didn't uncheck the initial things whether my experience is typical.
Now for the great goodness.
1. This lets you rename and group your brushes and export them to save into your brushes folder for quick access. You can say, go into a brush set, select all the muzzle blast, explosions, or whatever you want and save it as a file this application, and add and color code them, rename them, whatever your heart desires. You can multiple click. And also use different brush grousp. Then once you have them organized you can make your own individual files with only the ones you want in there. These are saved as ABR so you have a full file you can back up for later.
To me, that is worth the 15 bucks alone. I haven't used it all yet, and have encountered some issues such as the app failing to retain my selections on boot., but I don't have time to experiment more with it, but number 1 alone, is enough for me to use this. I can't tell you the many kludgy ways I have attempted to save and organize brushes. This will be a time saver for me.
That's good enough for me I'm getting. Thanks for the review, great help !!!
I can certainly guarantee I will use this product and get more familiar with it over time...
But exporting my brushes into saved files without fuss? Renaming them... Whoopie... I am freed at last from hunting and pecking and forgeting which ones I like... And yes, I finally kept a spreadsheet of the ones I liked.. Now no more! YEAH.
Oh, wow, thanks Wyn for reviewing that! I've been eyeing it for a while. Sounds like I need to take the plunge. I'm tired of searching high and low for brushes. It's almost as bad as content in DAZ sometimes, lol.
Shift Art Tutorials
For those interested in learning post work, I came across this incredible site through a Facebook Ad of all things: https://shiftart.com/
They have some great step by step articles here, and they give away this PDF with five lighting tricks in Photoshop that are actually very good (of course, you have to give your email address)
Afterward, they'll send you an offer for 10 lighting tutorials and then an offer to join the membership part of the site. The lighting bundle is a great sneak peek at what the membership is like. I was very impressed with the step by step tutorials. There are videos and written portions with screenshots of the layers and how to do things. Some even provide the original working files so you can follow along. I have learned more in a few weeks on this site than I have in many years of poking around in Photoshop, and I've been using that program for nearly two decades. Until I got into digital art, I was mainly just cropping, resizing and doing minor retouches. This site shows how to really get into all kinds of cool lighting effects and photo compositing. Worth a look, and I'm not affiliated with them. I'm just a happy customer. They post new tutorials every week and have over a hundred already on the site plus monthly contests and a private FB group.
I made these following along with two of the tutorials in the lighting bundle, Dark Forest and Day to Night at Bag End. I used Ron's brushes in both of them.
You can Reset the brushes and this might help have you tried this? I apologize if this is an obvious answer you have tried. It is from the 4 line menu on the brush preset popout and towards the top.
I was hoping someone knew thanks !!!
I just signed up for the free tutorials from Shift Art the other day. I haven't gone through them yet but the promise of the site makes me very, very excited. I've been wondering if it's worth the price though. I really wish it wasn't almost my entire art budget for the month as the only way to sign up. :-( I haven't gotten the offer for the lighting tutorials yet though....
I have a brush-viewing tool that lets me preview brush ABR files in the Windows File Explorer. But being able to collect all the water brushes I want to use into one ABR sounds fantastic. Hopefully I won't forget about the gumroad tool when the time comes... I guess I can always check this thread again, whee!
I just did another picture using the brushes, but it's just more fog (and hard-to-see particles and a wave turned sideways to make a trail...) so not that exciting. Plus I don't think I'm actually doing a good job integrating the fog. I bet I'd learn better tricks on Shift Art....
you can use his brushes with photoshop elements also and its a cheap one
someone knows the artist behind his promos ?
they are always excellent
The link should've been in the email. I just dug mine out, it's here: https://guides.shiftart.com/upsell15337596. ;
I like the image you posted above. There are tons of ways to blend fog (and everything else.) I use multiple layers and play with blending modes, opacity, layer styles, and masks.
@Ruphuss I think he uses multiple artists. There was one he shared the link to. She did the incredible firefly brush promos. I'm wondering if she did the glitter ones too. I'll see if I can find that one.
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Same here. Yeah, those are some of my favorite things too... layers, masks, and blend modes.
Even if you just took your image and it duplicated with the duplicate layer's blend mode changed to overlay, it would really add punch to your image and make those fog brushes sing. Overlay is going to be too stong on that front tree and that left hand side dark area but that's easily fixed by adding a layer mask and masking out some of the overlay effect with a soft brush and black paint. I've found what works for me is to add some gaussian blur to my mask after painting to get nice blended edge transitions. To add life to that front tree, add a blank layer; put it into overlay blend mode; add a white or maybe a pale sunny yellow paint with a soft brush to add light to the front tree...blur paint if desired. Use opacity or fill slider to control how strong the glow on tree manifests. Maybe hit up that trunk of tree next to and behind that front tree with a little paint to add some light to it too to bring it forward.
Great last page. All small men deserve their comeuppance.
I made these following along with two of the tutorials in the lighting bundle, Dark Forest and Day to Night at Bag End. I used Ron's brushes in both of them.
https://www.patreon.com/llynara
Llynara --- She also has a Patreon account that's worth supporting. Also, for all of us on Patreon, we should do the minimal and all subcscribe to each other's accounts.
https://www.patreon.com/llynara
If we all did a dollar a month, it wouldn't cost anything (as we're all trading the same dollar) but it would add subscibers to your roster.
Vendors should also have a Patreon to and do little things- like small products that aren't worth selling, but add value to their fan-base.
You do a set, make an extra texture set for Patreon..
Make something..add a few poses...
Nothing time-consuming, but you could even do it with insights....early info...etc....
If I ever have enough content and visibility, I'll probably do Patreon. I like the looseness of the set up.
But that's a ways off, if ever. :)