HOW TO USE BRUSHES TO
ADD CREATIVITY TO A PHOTO
Photoshop provides you with infinite possibilities for creativity. All you need is a photo, your imagi-
nation, and—let’s be honest—a little patience. In this column, you’ll learn how to use brushes to mask
a photo so it looks similar to a watercolor. You’ll also add texture and a new background, all without
harming the original.Step One: Open an image in Photoshop. If you’d like to
download the low-res watermarked version of this image
to follow along, click this link, log in with your Adobe
ID, and click the Save to Library button. Double-click the
image in the Libraries panel (Window>Libraries) to open it
in Photoshop. To make it easier to work with the image,
increase the resolution of the practice file. (We normally
don’t recommend enlarging images, but this is only for
practice purposes.) Go to Image>Image Size, turn on the
Resample checkbox, select Preserve Details from the Res-
ample drop-down menu, set the Width to 2,400 pixels,
and click OK.
Shift-click to select all the layers in your document—
be sure to click near the layer name—and then choose
Filter>Convert for Smart Filters. This converts the layer(s)
into a smart object, which serves as a protective wrapper
for the original content. That way the filter we’ll run later
in this tutorial will happen to the wrapper and not the
layer(s) inside it. This also enables you to reopen the filter
settings after running it so you can fine-tune them, which
is incredibly handy.
If you’re starting in Lightroom, select a photo’s thumb-
nail and choose Photo>Edit In>Open as Smart Object In
Adobe Photoshop.
Tip: To access the original layers again—say, to fine-
tune an adjustment layer—double-click the smart object
thumbnail in the Layers panel and those layers open in a
new, temporary document. Make your changes, choose
File>Save (not File>Save As), then close the temporary
document.Step Two: Now let’s fetch some free brushes from Ado-
be’s website. To do that, choose Window>Brushes, and
from the flyout menu at the upper right of the panel
(circled), choose Get More Brushes. In the webpage that
opens, sign in with your Adobe ID, and click the blueLESASNIDER
Beginners’ Workshop
> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ APRIL 2020[ 68 ]
©Adobe Stock/Uros Petrovic