Transcripts
1. ntroduction to Fresco's Brush Tools: Hi, I'm Lea with
assaulted image, and welcome to my class. I'm using Adobe
Fresco Brushes to transform your artwork
into stunning images. I've been working with
Fresco for a few years. I love its ability
to turn photos into creative and
pinkerly mixed media art. In this course, you're
going to learn how to use Fresco's powerful brush tools to enhance your floral and sli
photography and artwork. Class is going to focus
on using brushes, and it is not an in depth
look into Adobe Fresco, although I do think any
beginner can use this class. By the end of this course,
you're going to be able to apply the various brush
techniques to create beautiful, unique artwork from
your photos and art. If you would like to use
art that is created with a traditional medium
instead of photography, all the same principles
will still apply. However, all of my examples
will be using photographs. So in our class project, you'll apply the techniques
you have learned on your own images and share
your results with the class. So let's go ahead
and get started and play with some brushes.
2. Navigating Fresco's Brush Panel: So first, let's
go ahead and take a look at the Adobe
Fresco interface. When you open Fresco, you'll see your main workspace
in the very center. This is where all
the magic happens, and that is where we are going to put our photos
and work on them. To the left, you have your tool bar with the essential tools, like the brush, eraser, and the selection tools. To the right, you're going
to see your layers panel. This is where you'll manage and organize the different
elements of your artwork. But for this course,
we're going to be focusing mainly on
the brush panel. Brush panel is where
you're going to find all the brushes
we'll be using, including pixel brushes,
vector brushes, and my favorite,
the live brushes. Each brush type has its unique
abilities and settings, and we're going to explore
all of that in detail. Before we start
exploring brushes, let's go ahead and import a photo or a piece of
artwork to work on. So import a photo,
you're going to tap on the photo icon on the
toolbar on the left. You'll have the option to choose a photo from your device, the Adobe Cloud, or whatever other connected
storage you have. Select the photo that
you'd like to use. Once imported, your
photo is going to appear in the center of your
workspace as a new layer. You can resize or reposition it using the transformation
handles if needed. Recommend that you lock
this layer to keep your original photo intact
while you work on it. To do this, tap on the
layer in the layers panel, and then tap the lock icon. This ensures that any
edits you make will be on the new layers
keeping your original safe. So now that our photo
is ready and waiting, let's go ahead and jump
into our first brush type, which is the pixel brush. Looking over in
your left toolbar, you'll see the brushes
at the very top. Go ahead and select
that top one, which is the pixel brush. So there are so many types
of different pixel brushes, and they are great for adding. Texture, shading, and
details to your photos. These brushes behave a lot like your traditional brushes and
other digital art programs, creating raster based images. So if you use photoshop
or procreate, these brushes will work the
same as in those programs. Underneath the
pixel brush option, you will find the live brush. These brushes are
unique to Adope fresco, and they simulate real paint. They allow you to apply
watercolor or oil paint effects directly onto your photo, blending and interacting
with colors as you paint. These brushes are
perfect for creating painterly effects that
look natural and organic. So next, we have
your vector brushes. To access the vector brushes, tap on the vector brush
icon in the brush panel. These brushes create clean, sharp lines that are infinitely scalable without losing quality, making them perfect for adding precise outlines and
graphic elements. This selection here is smaller, but it is still very powerful. Now that you're familiar with
the different brush types, let's go over how you can change your basic
brush settings.
3. Mastering Basic Brush Settings: Now that you're familiar with
the different brush types, let's go over how you can change your basic
brush settings. You can find the
basic brush settings on the left side of the screen. Right here at the top is
the pixel brush icon. Below that, you have
the live brush, and below that is
your vector brush. Presco comes fully loaded with a variety of brushes for you to try out. So
you'll find brush. Sketching, inking,
painting, you name it, and there's probably a brush
in your library for it. I definitely recommend that
you go through and just try each of the brushes to see what kind
of lines you get. If you would like
to give yourself more working room
within the frame, you can always grab
that gray line at the top of the brush panel, move it somewhere
else onto the screen, that is a little bit easier
for you to work around. Now, if I select one
of those brushes and begin to use it, that
panel disappears. Say, I know that I'm
going to be using a number of these brushes
in my illustration. An option that I have to work faster is by grabbing
that gray line at the top of that panel and just moving that brush
panel somewhere else. Now I can select any brush, and when I draw with it, my panel stays open. So that way, I can move
quickly between brushes. You have two setting
options that are in common with all three
of the brush types. Those are color and size, and let's go over those first. So let's talk about color. This one's pretty
straightforward. Color you want to
use for your brush. Inside the color panel, you'll see a color
wheel where you can adjust hue, saturation,
and brightness. You can also use
the color picker to select a color
already on your Canvas. For this image that I have
already opened in Fresco, if I click right down
on here on the colors, you will see a palette
that has been pre made by Fresco when I
imported that picture. Now, I could have a variety
of pictures opened up, and each of them would
have their own palette. This is great because
you can quickly access colors from
your imported images. So to choose a color, go ahead and tap your color
wheel icon in the toolbar. If you prefer, you can
use the HSB sliders. That's your hue, saturation and value instead of
the color wheel. This is especially useful if you're working on web
or print projects, and you need precise
color control. Next setting that all three of your different
brush types have in common is your brush size. Adjusting the brush
size is simple, use the size slider located
in the brush settings. This controls the
width of your strokes, whether you need fine
details or broad strokes. Each brush type has
its unique strengths and creative possibilities, especially when you combine
them with photography. Let's take a closer look
at just our pixel brushes.
4. Creating Art with Pixel Brushes: The pixel brushes
are raster based. This means that your
image is going to be created by combining
tiny squares of colors, which we probably all
know are called pixels. These can create very detailed
and complicated images, but they will begin to pixelate as you increase the image size. They are really
great for creating photo realistic textures, which merges perfectly when you are actually using photos. It allows for a very
diverse techniques, such as stamp styled strokes, which you can see right here. And it makes pixel brushes ideal for getting texture
and color in your art. One of the ways
that you can blend your pixel brushes is by
utilizing the mixer brushes. You can find these
in your library, and they come automatically
with the Adobe Fresco app. You can use these
brushes to blend and mix multiple
colors on the canvas, and it will provide a very
natural blending effect, similar to what
you would get with a traditional paint medium. If you're using an apple pencil or a pressure sensitive stylus, then you can use that
pressure sensitivity to get kind of the
perfect blending of colors that you would like. This makes pixel brushes very
useful for artists who are aiming to achieve depth and soft transitions
in their artwork. Of course, you can
change your color and your size settings, but you also have an
option for smoothing. Smoothing is available for
both pixel and vector brushes, but not for your live brushes. It's a great tool for
refining your brush strokes. Increasing the smoothing
value helps you create more clean controlled lines by reducing basically the
wobble in the strokes. This really helps if you have shaky hands like I do and when
you're drawing free hand. Each brush allows you to
use a touch shortcut. And that is this little
circle right here. So when you hold down this touch shortcut while you're
using a pixel brush, it will turn your brush into an eraser that will match
the edges of your brush, and it will give it a
more cohesive look. If you double tap on
that same circle, it will switch between
the brush and the eraser. So go ahead and open up
your photo in Fresco. Feel free to use any
image of any subject that There's two main ways that
I tend to work with photos. One is using a non
destructive edit where I'm going to create a new layer
that's on top of the photo. So I'm not making any
changes to the photo itself. But you also have the choice of working right on
your photo layer. And that's great for
when you want to mix the actual pixels of your photo with the
pixels from your brush. First, we're just going
to start off with a layer over our photo layer. So go ahead and create a new
layer on top of your photo. Go to your Pixel brush library and select a pixel
brush of your choice. I'm going to go ahead and
start with a soft round brush because I feel like these work really well for smooth blending. You can also experiment
with other brushes later, but for now, let's
just keep it simple. With the brush selected,
let's focus on adding some subtle shading or
highlights. Tehan the depth photo. So first,
I'm going to lower my brush opacity to
around 30 to 40%. That way, the effect is
very soft and gradual. After that, choose
a color that's slightly darker than the
tones in your photo. I'm going to add a
bit of shadow to the underside of this flower petal to give it more depths. If you feel like the
effect is too intense, you could try
lowering your opacity and building up your
layers more gradually. Let's go ahead and
switch things up. I'm going to select a
more textured brush from my pixel library. You could try a charcoal
or a dry media brush. Use the eye dropper tool to pick a color from your photo
to match the tones. This works well for
adding grain to a flower or adding roughness to
a smooth background. If you feel like any of
the strokes are too harsh, you can always blend them
in using the smudge tool. You can find your smudge
tool in the tool panel. Now go ahead and just lightly blend the edges of your strokes to create a smoother transition between your photo
and the brushwork. Let's go ahead and experiment
with blending modes. You can play around
with overlay, multiply, or soft light to see how your brushtokes blend with
the photo in different ways. You want a more subtle effect, you can always adjust the
opacity of the pixel layer. Now, let's go ahead and do
all of this over again. But this time, let's work
directly on our photo. In order to do that,
you'll need to click on your photo layer so that a
drop down menu opens up. From that menu, you're
going to go down to the very bottom where it will say to convert to pixel layer. Go ahead and select
that, and that will allow you to work
directly on your photo. I am trying to blend my
brush strokes with my photo. I really like to use one of the mixer brushes as it allows those pixels from the photo to mix in with the pixels
from my brush. This can lead to a
very painterly quality and gives you so many options. Go ahead and experiment to see how those brush strokes
affect the photo. It's going to be very dependent on the brush that
you have chosen. So for this last example, I'm going to switch to
a more textured brush, and I am just going to add some texture into
my backgrounds. I like to use this
technique when I have photographed flowers on very dark backgrounds as it adds some visual
interest to the back. Feel free to experiment
with different brushes and blending modes until you get the look
you're going to. Now, let's go ahead and talk about the unique strengths and creative possibilities that
you have with the live brush.
5. Exploring Live Brushes for Painterly Effects: These brushes
simulate real paint, so you can get effects
like watercolors, blending and oils mixing
all on your screen. Live brushes are
perfect if you want to add a painterly effect
to your photos. Let's go ahead and try that out. When you select the
live brush in fresco, you are going to
be given an option between the watercolor
brush and the oil brush. Let me go ahead and talk about the watercolor brush first. The watercolor brush
is all about creating a fluid transparent effect that mimics the real behavior
of watercolor paint. These brushes blend
and they spread colors naturally just like actual
waters wood on paper, and they are so fun to use. The watercolor brush is
great for an artist who wants to replicate a
traditional watercolor feel. Digital painters who want to add a soft organic feel to their work can use
these brushes to blend with their
photography for creating soft backgrounds or subtle
gradients over your photos. I like to just do a gentle wash of color to add a
dreamy atmosphere. They're also great for adding abstract details like soft
splashes or blooms of color. Go ahead and experiment with each of the options
that you have within the watercolor brush as each one of them excels
for a different effect. Instead of smoothing, you'll
find a water flow option. Water flow controls how much water is mixed
with the paint. This influences how they
blend on the canvas. Lower flow settings create lighter, more
translucent strokes, while higher flow
settings result in bolder, more opaque lines. If you want more control over
how much the paint bleeds, you can adjust the
flow settings, and when you're happy
with your blend, you can dry the layer, which means no further
blending happens. To find the dry layer option, look at the right
side of your screen at the very bottom
of the tool panel. See a little icon. This
is lock transparency. Go ahead and click on that to freeze any additional blending. This is great when you want
to lock in in an effect. We're going to try to create
a soft flowing effect. I've got my flower photo open, and I'm going to add a
new live brush layer on top of that image. Remember that the water flow controls how much your
color is going to spread. Let's go ahead and
start with a water flow of 50% for a soft
blended effect, and a paint load to 30% for
a subtle touch of color. The cool things about the
live brush is how they mix. When you overlap brush strokes, the colors blend just
like real paint. I'm going to use a slightly
different shade to paint over this area of the photo and to blend it into the
existing stroke. You can use this for
creating a dreamy, abstract background
behind your subject, or you can go right
over your subject for a gradual change of color. If you want to tone
down the effect, you can play with the opacity
of the brush or layer. Now, let's go ahead and use our watercolor brush to paint directly on
our photo layer. If your photo layer has not been converted
to a pixel layer, that's the first thing
you'll need to do. Go ahead. Click on
that photo layer. Go down to convert to pixel
layer and select that. Now you'll be able to work
directly on your photo. So now when you use
the brush strokes, you are going to be
combining whatever color you have selected with
the colors of your photo. And now you can watch
how it blends into the edges of this petal
as I apply the brush. Generally, when I am using my watercolor brushes
on a photo layer, I am using it with clear water. I'm going to double
click on my shortcuts, and you'll see it
has turned blue, and now I'm painting
with clear waters. So the colors on my photo are going to be the colors
that are mixing together. Go ahead and try out different blending modes like overlay or multiply to see how the paint
interacts with the photo. This can give you all
sorts of different looks. Now, let's go ahead and
talk about the oil brush. The oil brush is probably
one of my favorite are designed to mimic the thick textured fuel of oil paints. These brushes allow for rich layered strokes that can be built up to create
depth and dimension. Again, go ahead and
experiment with all of the different brushes that
are in the oil brush library, and you'll see that
each of them has their own unique strength
and play around with them so you can discover
what is going to work best for you and your art. You can use brushes to add texture to your photographs
or even just to paint in an element like petals or leaves
or even an insect. You can give your
image a very tactile almost three d quality
with these brushes. So right now, I have a layer opened up on top
of my photo layer, and I am just going to paint
using a oil paint glaze. It's going to go right over
here with this yellow. So you can see it gives this oil paint look and
even has a texture to it. I am going to go ahead and
increase my brush size, and I'm going to
increase the flow. If I come down low, it will
make a very subtle effect. You will barely see any color. But if I come up to 100%, it's going to be
much more intense. I like to keep my flow
lower because I would rather build up my layers
gradually than all at once. Let's go ahead and talk
about the paint mix option, which is unique to
your oil live brush. The paint mix option
controls how much your colors blend
together on the canvas. This works in three main ways. First is blending colors
on a separate layer. When you paint on
a separate layer, the colors on that
layer blend together. For example, if I
start with yellow, it will gradually mix with
the nearby pink as I paint. If I lift the brush
off the screen, it reloads that paint brush, and I will start fresh with
the original yellow again. If I want to adjust the
paint mix setting here, it's going to change how much
the colors blend together. Let's take it to a very high and that's going
to give it a much smoother transition
between the colors. If I take it to a low
paint mix setting, it's going to give me
much more distinct edges. The way I tend to use it the most is by blending
it on a photo layer. So you have two options in using the paint mix
on your photo layer. First is just with color. If I have color on a brush, then I will be mixing that
color into the photos pixels. I didn't want to use any color, and I just wanted to mix the
existing pixels together. Then I can use a dry brush. Just like the watercolor brush, you can choose to use your
oil brush as a clear paint. You can get that
dry brush option by selecting that small circle so that it has that
blue around it. This option is going to mix only the colors
already in the photo, so it won't add any new colors. To use this, you have to convert your photo layer to
a pixel layer first. When using the dry brush, if I want more pink, I'll need to pick up
paint from a pink. I want to add the white, then I would need
to go ahead and drag my brush to
that white area. The color you first
touch is what is going to spread
across the canvas. So let's talk quickly about the smudge brush and how you can use it with your oil brush. Using the smudge brush
is a great way to seamlessly blend the edges of
your paint with your photo. You can create a smoother
transition between the two. Try gently dragging
the smudge brush along the boundary where
the paint meets the photo. Going to soften
those harsh lines and blur the colors together, which will give a much more
natural and cohesive look. You can adjust the strength
of the smudge brush, which will help you to control how much blending will occur. Lower the settings, to give a subtle blend and give
it higher settings, to create a more pronounced
painterly effect. This technique is going to help those painted elements feel more cohesive with
your original photo. So I really love the oil brush. It is definitely one of
my favorite brush types and I love the painterly
quality it creates. I encourage you to experiment with all the live brush options, both watercolor and oil, to explore the different
looks that you can achieve. Now let's move on to the
vector brush and see how we can incorporate it
into our photography.
6. Adding Bold Lines with Vector Brushes : Next, we have your
vector brushes. These brushes create
sharp lines that are infinitely scalable
without losing quality. Vector brushes are
ideal for creating clean shapes or even
graphic style art on top of your photos. To access those brushes, go ahead and tap on the vector brush icon that
is in your brush panel. The Vector brush offers
a straightforward set of options with the color and
the size and the smoothing. Now, the great thing about
vector brushes is that you will never get pixelation because they are
not raster based. So you can just keep making it to larger and larger and larger, you will never see a pixel. Now, there is a
drawback to this, and that is that you cannot blend colors with
a vector brush. If you really want to get
detailed complex colors, you will be better off using
the live or pixel brushes. Now, I admit that I don't
use vector brushes as much when I am combining my
photos with a digital medium. But I do like to use them to
trace over elements within my photo to create very
bold and clean outlines. I think this works especially well with subjects
like flowers and leaves because there are so many tiny little lines and details. You can adjust the brush size to control the thickness
of your outlines, and you can use
different colors to add contrast or to highlight
specific parts of really love to
outline parts of my image to create a graphic
and more illustrative look. First, go ahead and select the vector brush tool
from the toolbar. When you are using
the vector brush, it will automatically create
a vector layer for you. You do not have
the option to mix your vector brush
with a pixel layer. This means it will always
stay on its own vector layer, and you will not be
able to merge it with a photo or brush strokes from your pixel or
your live brushes. Let's begin by outlining
a section of this flower. Notice how the
lines are perfectly smooth and sharp as I
draw around the petals. This is perfect for
adding stylized details or creating illustrations
on top of photos. If I zoom in, you can see just
how sharp those lines are. If you want smoother lines, Fresco has a smoothing option. You can adjust the
setting to automatically refine any shakiness or uneven
strokes in your drawing. Let me turn up the smoothing to about 50% and see what
the line looks like. Now I'm going to go ahead
and take it to a 100%. And now down to 0%. You can see a clear difference
between those three marks. With a higher
smoothing percentage, you'll notice how much cleaner
and fluid my lines are. This is perfect for making
sleek curves of those petals. Now let's take it a little
bit further and use some bold graphic shapes
to compliment the photo. I'm going to use the
vector fill option to drop solid colors
into the background. I'll also adjust the brush size to create different
line weights. See how the thinner
lines add detail while the thicker ones create
a stronger focal point. You can really get creative with the shapes and line variations. Could also use the vector
brushes to draw patterns, designs, or shapes
directly onto your photo. One of the tools that comes with the vector brush is the
vector trimming shortcut. This allows you to
quickly clean up or adjust your artwork without
switching to a separate tool. To use it, you'll want to double tap your shortcut button. Tap it one more time
so that you have the blue circle around
the outside edges. Once you do that,
it will switch to the vector trimming From there, you can swipe across
any unwanted lines or overlapping shapes
to erase them neatly. Now, when you do this,
the lines will need to overlap or intersect
with each other. The trimming function only removes the parts of
the line that cross. Make sure your paths intersect where you want them trimmed. If the line you're trimming
has very few anchor points or it's made up of just one
long continuous stroke, then the tool may erase a
larger section than you want. To avoid this, try adding
more anchor points by picking your pen up while you're using it and creating
smaller segments. If you want to trim
multiple lines at once, just go over all of them in
one stroke like you see here. Is our look into vector, pixel, and live brushes,
and how you can use them to transform
your photography. Each brush type serves a different purpose,
whether you want graphic, painterly, or highly
detailed effects, you can mix and match
to suit your vision.
7. Customizing Brushes for Unique Effects: So now that we've used all the different types of brushes, let's take a look at how we can customize them to our own nee. You really like a look of one of the brushes that you've
made some changes to. You could have been working
with a pixel brush and could have adjusted the
smoothing or the flow, and you know that
you would like to reuse that specific brush. You have the ability
to save that brush. Just go down to the bottom of your brush panel and click the
icon with the paint brush. We'll open up another panel
called Brush Settings. At this point, you could go
ahead and save this brush as is by pressing the three dots
across from the brush name. Save as New Brush. Choose if you want to save
the color or not, and then pick the destination from where you want to save it. If you want to create a
new destination library for that specific brush, go ahead and press
that top option, new library with the plus sign. You can enter the name for the new library and press Save. Now it has saved that
brush to my library. We have this panel open, you could actually make even more custom
changes to that brush. If you're working
on a pixel brush, then you can change your
spacing and your angle. As you slide those sliders, you will see the changes
it would make to your brush stroke and the sample stroke at the top of that panel. If you open up the
shape dynamics, we'll see even more
changes that you can make, including jitter and diameter
and stylus pressure. You could go through
an experiment and get the brush how you want. I recommend that you
go ahead and open up that brush panel in all
your different types of brushes, pixel, and the vector and
the live to see just how drastically you can change
the look of your brushes. Would like to do
a bonus project. I do have a mini
challenge for you where you can create
your own custom brush. Use it in a quick
illustration or even just a single brush
stroke across your screen. Save that image and drop it into the project area and tell us what brush it originally was and what changes you made. Even if you choose not
to do that challenge, I recommend that you
still go and experiment to see what kind of
brushes you can create. So now is time to
put all of this into practice to create
our class project.
8. Adobe Fresco Class Project : Congratulations.
You have made it to the final lesson of our Adobe
Fresco course on Brushes. I hope you've enjoyed
learning how to use these brushes for your
photographs and art. Now it is time to
finally put everything you have learned into practice
on your final project. I'd love for you to go
ahead and take one of your own photos
or pieces of art, and it could be any subject
that you would like. And transform it using at least two of the
different brush types, so you could pick
a pixel brush and a vector brush or a live brush and a vector,
whatever you choose. Go ahead and get creative with at least two different
brush types. Here's a breakdown of
what you'll need to do. If you're going to
use a pixel brush, I recommend that
you start with that before the live or
the vector brush. Texture or painterly
effects, enhance the photo. Play with your brush and try blending not just
the brush marks, but the brush marks with
your actual photo pixels. From there, you can move onto the live brushes or
the vector brushes. Feel free to mix and match the different brush
types on the same piece. You can blend pixel textures with clean vector shapes or let the live brushes flow seamlessly into the photos
existing textures. You're using the live brushes, you could try adding realistic paint strokes or watercolors. Try blending them
into your photo to create a very vibrant
fluid background. If you're going to use
the vector brushes, I recommend you use those
to create bold outlines, graphic shapes or Cris details. Try blending brushes
in unexpected ways, using masking tools or even just adjusting the opacity to
get the look you want. Ahead and try whatever
you would like. You're not getting graded
on these. It's okay. If you make bad art, I
make it all the time, and it's a wonderful part
of the creative process. Remember, this is your chance
to experiment and have fun. The magic happens
when you play with the different tools and you push the limits of what they can do. Once you've completed
your project, I would love to see it, so please be sure to share it in the Skill Share
project gallery. It's a great way to showcase
your own progress and and you'll also get to see how other students approach
their own project. Let's inspire each other. Whether you're a
photographer, illustrator, or just someone who loves
experimenting with art. You now have some powerful tools to bring your creative
visions to life. I just want to take a moment to thank you for
taking this class, and I hope you walk away
feeling more confident in using Adobe Fresco in
your own creative process. I'm always here to help so feel free to leave comments
or questions. And of course, if you've
enjoyed the class, I would really appreciate it
if you could leave a review. It will help other people in the Skillshare community
to find this video. Thank you again, and I cannot wait to see
what you create. Until next time, keep
creating and stay inspired.