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Rons Brushes - how to make them look "good"?

XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102
edited December 1969 in The Commons

Hello!

Recently I bought some of Rons Brushes. They are very cool for postwork. Especially these two are really great:

http://www.daz3d.com/rons-rain
http://www.daz3d.com/rons-hydro-explosion

because I love water effects :-)

But I have a problem with the useage. When I use these brushes in postwork (Photoshop Elements 11), they look good, but not good enough. They look something like water, yes, but far away from the quality in the promo images.

So, what is the secret to make them look good and real? Any special filters, layer modes or adjustments?

Any help is very welcome! Thanks.

Comments

  • LycanthropeXLycanthropeX Posts: 2,287
    edited December 1969

    how good you want them to look?

    Something_in_the_Drain.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 297K
  • XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102
    edited December 1969

    LycanthropeX said:
    how good you want them to look?

    As good as possible :-)

    I want them to look like real water. Like in the promo images. Like water that really belongs to the scene and not just a brush that was inserted and "looks like water". Hope you know what I mean.

  • LycanthropeXLycanthropeX Posts: 2,287
    edited December 1969

    i used Ron's splashes for the scene above

  • XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102
    edited December 1969

    Nice. So, what did you do with them after inserting the splashes on the render? This is my basic question.

  • LycanthropeXLycanthropeX Posts: 2,287
    edited December 1969

    wellllllllllll that scene was a serious cheat.

    i created a separate layer above the image, then painted ron's splashes in white on that layer, but i saved the layer as its own image in PNG format

    Then I imported both my original image, and the splash layer into Hit Film and used the splashes to control a displacement effect.

    so that one was a big time cheat

  • LycanthropeXLycanthropeX Posts: 2,287
    edited November 2013

    in effect, rather than seeing the brush, you are seeing the displacement effect in the shape of the brush

    i have another image that uses a ton of ron's brushes, but unfortunately i used them for about 3000 gallons of blood, so i don't think I can post that image here because of the TOS

    Post edited by LycanthropeX on
  • XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102
    edited December 1969

    I understand. Can something similar be done inside Photoshop?

  • LycanthropeXLycanthropeX Posts: 2,287
    edited December 1969

    I know I can do something similar in Paint Shop Pro, generally if PSP can do it then Photoshop can do it for sure

  • XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102
    edited December 1969

    Thats cool, I also own PSP X6. I love the filters in PSP :-) So, how do you do it in PSP?

  • Coon RaCoon Ra Posts: 200
    edited December 1969

    The brushes have no depth. Add the depth manually by dodging and burning splashes used on separate layers. Do not mind to use some different tones of a tint to add more feel of depth. Partial embossing of splash details may add a bit to realism as these details would get the sense of volume through the subtile light/shadow gradient effect.

  • LycanthropeXLycanthropeX Posts: 2,287
    edited December 1969

    ok Displacement maps in PSP are pretty easy, Open your image, create a new layer, paint your brushes in white, create a new layer between your brush effect and your image and fill it with black, save the white brush and black layer as a merged layer to Corel_04 folder in your PSP folder. Ok at this point you can make the black layer invisible, or delete it cause you are done with it. Keep the white brush layer but make it invisible for now, select your main image layer, click effects, distortion, and then displacement map. load the image you saved to Corel_04, make sure you are set to 3D map, adjust your blur and intensity, for this image i had blur set at 12 and intensity set at 3. click ok

    then i made the white brush layer visible again, set it to hardlight and adjusted the opacity.

    the displacement wraps the image around the shape of the brush a little to give it that watery distortion effect, this image isn't the best example, i threw it together quick just to explain how to do this.

    Dino-print-001-dis.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 468K
  • XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102
    edited November 2013

    Ok, I will try that.

    Thank you very much!

    Post edited by XoechZ on
  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,973
    edited December 1969

    Sveva has a Stamp Brush Tutorial at Rendo...

  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401
    edited December 1969

    Greetings,

    Taozen said:
    Sveva has a Stamp Brush Tutorial at Rendo...
    Have you actually gotten it? If so, how is it?

    It's in my wishlist, but I never get around to prioritizing it...

    -- Morgan

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,973
    edited December 1969

    Cypherfox said:
    Greetings,
    Taozen said:
    Sveva has a Stamp Brush Tutorial at Rendo...
    Have you actually gotten it? If so, how is it?

    I have it but haven't used it yet - bought CS6 a while ago but decided to wait with installing it until I've upgraded to Win 7.

    It looks great though with lots of illustrations, can't imagine you could want more from a tutorial. It gets lots of good reviews too.

  • LycanthropeXLycanthropeX Posts: 2,287
    edited December 1969

    what would be kool is if we got ron to make a tutorial on how he uses his brushes

  • ISIKOLISIKOL Posts: 386
    edited November 2013

    A good way to use ron brushes is with gradient maps above them...if i had to bet i think this is the way Ron is doing it..what is the procedure...

    Take for example a generic cloud brush
    In photoshop:
    Make a screen layer above your image filled with completely black
    Make a gradient map above the screen layer...use a gradient from complete black to red orange and then yellow
    Clip the gradient map with the screen layer
    Paint with white in the black screen layer...with the cloud brush

    See the result :) it looks better with dark backgrounds...


    P.s. You can check my gallery to see some examples..i use them all the time..i have a gallery here also..

    Post edited by ISIKOL on
  • LycanthropeXLycanthropeX Posts: 2,287
    edited December 1969

    I also use the brushes in combination with other programs and filters. I already showed one where i used the brush image and combined it with a displacement effect in HitFilm. I have also used them with plugins like Filter Forge or Eyecandy, Xenofex etc. Also I tend to use brushes for things other than what they were intended for. I often use wave brushes for mud splatter on vehicles, or blood spray, etc. Get creative in your thinking and you can do a lot with brushes.

  • luci45luci45 Posts: 2,780
    edited December 1969

    Ron's Flames has a tutorial with it. i just tried it out and it works great and can be applied to other brushes. basically he uses transparent layers of the same brush in different colors with above layers set to "color burn." The flame used yellow and orange (and optionally red.) Overlay and Soft Light work pretty well too.

    His promo shots for Ron's Angel Dust look like he used a gradient map on a layer as Isikol mentioned. I am going to try that next. Thanks, Isikol for the nice tutorial on Deviant Art for the war image, which is pretty spectacular.

    flame_1.jpg
    696 x 1200 - 180K
  • ISIKOLISIKOL Posts: 386
    edited December 1969

    Luci45 said:
    His promo shots for Ron's Angel Dust look like he used a gradient map on a layer as Isikol mentioned. I am going to try that next. Thanks, Isikol for the nice tutorial on Deviant Art for the war image, which is pretty spectacular.

    ;)

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