photoshop
A complete guide to smudging
Posted on June 21st, 2009. Written by JaspervD.
Don’t you just hate it when you read a tutorial and it says “now smudge your layer” without the tutorial writer ever explain how to smudge and what settings to use?
After reading this guide you will no longer have problems with this, just apply the things I will teach you in this tutorial!
I will first explain the basics of the smudge tool. After that I will show you some great smudge settings which you can use right away.
I will also show you how to create a base layer, this is the layer you will use the smudge tool on and it will strongly determine the way your smudging will look like.
At the end of the tutorial you will learn a couple of great techniques to enhance your just made smudge layer.
The smudge tool
Before we start lets give a definition of what the smudge tool does:
The transfer and manipulation of pixels, due to simulated abrasion or rubbing of a brush, to an adjacent area of the canvas
Sounds complex doesn’t it? Well actually it really is just some dragging with the mouse and photoshop does all the hard work so lets get started by exploring the smudge tool and its options!
Select your smudge tool.
smudge4
After you have selected the smudge tool, you will notice a new bar in photoshop:
smudge5
Using this toolbar you can change the way the smudge tool behaves, press 1 to load a different brush to use. Some brushes work great with the smudge tool, while others will look horrible.
The strength (2) will determine how much of the base layer is smudged, and how much is untouched when you use the smudge tool onto it, here is an example:
smudge3
The original picture
smudge6
A picture with 10% strength selected, notice how you can still see details of the original layer.
smudge7
The same picture, but now I used 100% strength, now you can hardly see any details of the original layer!
In this tutorial we will use
Posted on June 21st, 2009. Written by JaspervD.
Don’t you just hate it when you read a tutorial and it says “now smudge your layer” without the tutorial writer ever explain how to smudge and what settings to use?
After reading this guide you will no longer have problems with this, just apply the things I will teach you in this tutorial!
I will first explain the basics of the smudge tool. After that I will show you some great smudge settings which you can use right away.
I will also show you how to create a base layer, this is the layer you will use the smudge tool on and it will strongly determine the way your smudging will look like.
At the end of the tutorial you will learn a couple of great techniques to enhance your just made smudge layer.
The smudge tool
Before we start lets give a definition of what the smudge tool does:
The transfer and manipulation of pixels, due to simulated abrasion or rubbing of a brush, to an adjacent area of the canvas
Sounds complex doesn’t it? Well actually it really is just some dragging with the mouse and photoshop does all the hard work so lets get started by exploring the smudge tool and its options!
Select your smudge tool.
smudge4
After you have selected the smudge tool, you will notice a new bar in photoshop:
smudge5
Using this toolbar you can change the way the smudge tool behaves, press 1 to load a different brush to use. Some brushes work great with the smudge tool, while others will look horrible.
The strength (2) will determine how much of the base layer is smudged, and how much is untouched when you use the smudge tool onto it, here is an example:
smudge3
The original picture
smudge6
A picture with 10% strength selected, notice how you can still see details of the original layer.
smudge7
The same picture, but now I used 100% strength, now you can hardly see any details of the original layer!
In this tutorial we will use