Photoshop User - USA (2021-02)

SCOTT VALENTINE

PHOTOSHOP PROVING GROUND

Here’s a fun technique that’s both therapeutic and useful: painting abstract digital backgrounds! Digital

abstract backgrounds are extremely popular and, with the new AI-powered selection tools in Photoshop

for selecting subjects to place them on different backgrounds, you can’t go wrong having this trick in

your back pocket. The secret here is to not think too much about the results or process, and just let the

piece develop organically. And while the technique is easiest to do with a tablet such as a Wacom Intuos

Pro, you can get great results with a mouse or even a trackpad.

MIXER BRUSH FOR BACKGROUNDS

Portrait: ©Adobe Stock/Mike Orlov

We’ll create a custom Mixer Brush and use its ability to

paint with samples in a similar fashion to the Clone Stamp

tool. The main difference is that the Clone Stamp tool will

continuously sample your source material, while the Mixer

Brush will make repeated copies of the same sampled

region. Plus, the Mixer Brush has additional blending

controls that the Clone Stamp lacks. Ready to go?

PART 1: CREATE A CUSTOM BRUSH FROM

A STOCK IMAGE

Brushes are really like stamps, and darker areas will apply

more paint, with black being the most dense. White areas

of a brush won’t apply any paint at all. The actual color of

your selected region for creating a custom brush doesn’t

matter, just the gray or luminosity values. You can choose

to convert to grayscale for visualization, but it’s darkness

and density that matter.

Since these flames are against a black background

(see next page), I can simply invert the flame image

and then make a rough selection around the area

I want to use. I chose these flames for simplicity, but

you should experiment with all kinds of images as

sources. You can find this flame image on Adobe Stock

by clicking here.