Creating the Right Skin Texture
by: Ma. Carla Balattan
Making 3D imagery more lifelike/realistic in Photoshop need custom brushes that, as much as possible, conjure up skin texture like the look of body hair, the skin’s surface and it’s structure. Thanks to the continuous creations of custom brushes collection in Adobe Photoshop, this purpose will be achieved.
In the article by Dave Nagel at
http://photoshop.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=27156-0, a new series of custom brushes that focus on the creation of textures to be used in 3D imagery has been launched. The first selections were several brushes designed to simulate the appearance of body hair. Such brushes would definitely give the imagery more lifelike in appearance. They have aptly termed it as texture brushes.
Skin texture brushes may not only end with having body hair simulation but also with other elements that may create the effect of other skin textures like smooth skin or rough skin that vary from that with pock marks, pimples, scars and blemishes.
It is then, exciting to note further development and expansion in the custom brushes focusing on the creation of right skin texture for more realistic imagery in Photoshop. Twenty (20) new texture brushes, covering skin textures called NagelSeries 20 are launched for generating a variety of skin textures. There is a custom brush for somewhat smooth skin to skin with freckles, blemishes and pock marks. According to Nagel, the collection is fairly large, consisting of some pretty complex elements that allow you to build up skin textures rather than simply applying them as you might a pattern overlay.
This variety allows for much more skin texture modifications and is very helpful specially when you’re painting on UV maps. In the site, Nagel gave several examples of skin textures created using the custom brushes using several different colors and blending modes. The examples were built up with deep blue base and a secondary deep red layer. Lighter skin tones were then, painted over to achieve desired effect on each. To strengthen the details, color and linear dodges were used in the brushes. Color and linear burns are also added.
You can also tone down the results of the examples given after painting the skin texture and adjusting brightness and contrast. If smoother skins are needed, harsh blending modes should not be used as applied in the examples. This only proves the variety and innovativeness of the new brush collection on skin texture.
You only have to understand that these brushes support Photoshop CS and will not work in Photoshop 7 and below. They are compressed in a Zip archive and you can use any Zip utility to decompress them. The brush file is NagelSeries 20.zip. to decompress it, you have to double-click the file. After decompressing the file, to become NagelSeries20.abr, you could already move it into the Brushes directory of your Photoshop Cs folder (/Adobe Photoshop CS/Presets/Brushes/).
After this download process, you can now use your new custom brush collection! Launch Photoshop, open the Brushes palette and click on the flyaway menu at the top right. Here, you will find the new brush collection and install by simply selecting it. By selecting, the new brushes will appear at the bottom of the list of available brushes.
Surely, you’ll be very eager to start now. Start downloading these new custom brushes and create the appropriate skin texture for your image!-30-
About The Author
Lala B. is a 26 year-old Communication Arts graduate, with a major in Journalism. Right after graduating last 1999, she worked for one year as a clerk then became a Research, Publication and Documentation Program Director at a non-government organization, which focuses on the rights, interests and welfare of workers for about four years.
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