| Sometimes when applying filters to a photo in Adobe® Photoshop® it's hard to get just the effect you really want. Wouldn't it be great to have a paintbrush you could adjust in different ways and use to paint stylised brush strokes similar to the way you might paint on a canvas? If you've already been introduced to Photoshop's history brush tool, it's time for you to meet its artistic cousin, the art history brush tool. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use this dynamic brush to produce painterly effects without having to specify colours or apply individual brush strokes.
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| Figure A: This is a nice photo, but let's change the mood with a hand-painted effect. |
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Open a colourful RGB Photoshop file
You'll see the effects of the art history brush tool best with lots of colours, so open a colourful RGB Photoshop file, like the one shown in Figure A. Then, choose Window > Show History to bring up the History palette. By default, it opens with a snapshot showing the original state, called the Open state. It's important to remember that when you close and save a file, Photoshop deletes all the states and snapshots from the History palette.
Select the art history brush tool from the toolbox, and then press Enter to display the Art History Brush Options palette, as shown in Figure B. You're going to use the current, untouched state of the photo, the History palette's Open state, as the basis for what you're going to paint with the art history brush tool.
Fill the image with solid white
Before painting, create a canvas to paint on by filling the image with solid white. At this point, all you'll see is a white field; but don't worry because the information you need to create your image is still there in the History palette's Open state.
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