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[ 97 ]The key word to understand here is Jitter. You’ll see it
all over the Brush Settings panel. The best word I can use to
describe Jitter is “variance,” which is all about making some-
thing inconsistent; and Jitter controls do exactly that. Each
Jitter control is basically a threshold for how much variance
you want to cause when the brush is being used.
For example: Size Jitter means to vary the size of the
brush randomly as you’re painting. You can influence this
by using the next control slider, Minimum Diameter, which
defines the minimum size to which the brush can change
while painting. By adding Angle Jitter (the random rotation
of the brush) and Roundness Jitter (compressing the aspect
ratio of the brush randomly as you paint), you can create
unpredictable organic forms with the brush.
Near the bottom of the Shape Dynamics options are on/
off checkboxes for Flip X Jitter and Flip Y Jitter: Flip X Jitter
randomly flips the brush horizontally, and Flip Y vertically.
It’s worth noting that the randomness will react relative to
how fast you paint with the brush and, with enough Jitter
settings and the human randomness caused when painting
fast, you’ll never see two brushstrokes that are the same.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT BRUSH TYPE
There are many brushes that come with Photoshop—too
many to mention here—but if you haven’t explored the
Brushes panel (click on the Brushes tab in the Brush Settings
panel), just note that many folders of brushes are available
to you containing more than the default that you see. In the
Brushes panel, you’ll find folders such as Dry Media Brushes
and Special Effects Brushes. If these aren’t enough for you,
in the flyout menu at the top right of the panel, choose Get
More Brushes, which will take you to the Adobe.com web-
site, and you can surf for even more options.
For selecting some grass from our photo, we’re actually
going to use the Grass brush, which is part of the default set
within Photoshop (it’s in the Default Brushes folder in the
Legacy Brushes folder). Dune Grass could also work, but the
regular Grass brush works more quickly for this technique.
After choosing the Grass brush, let’s go back to the Brush
Settings panel and add some Jitter controls.SETTING UP THE BRUSH
By default, the Grass brush comes with a lot of pre-existing
settings turned on, some of which we’ll need to turn off: For
example, on the left side of the Brush Settings panel, click on
the checkbox to turn off Color Dynamics and Transfer. Note:
Don’t click on the name, as that would take you to those
specific controls, which we don’t need to see.At the bottom of the panel is a preview representing
how your brush will look when used. The variance from
Jitter is good on this brush by default, but we want to
adjust it. So, click on the Shape Dynamics option near the
top left of the panel (click directly on the words, not the
checkmark), and adjust the settings here until your Grass
brush looks like it has some variance. In our example, we