Help with a Brush ?

[Madman!]

I have Painter 7 and when using the brushes if I'm using the airbrush or another brush and want to go to lets say the watercolor brush, I have to open the window and click on the brush I want. Is there any way to cycle though the brushes with a shortcut? and then do another shortcut to cycle through the styles on the brush? I have the card with a lot of shortcuts, but can't find anything close to that. If any one can help it would be much apreaciated.

[MindCandyMan]

I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for but you can create a temporary custom palette in painter. Chang the brush to what you want it to be then click on the square picture and drag it outside the brushes palette...when you let go it will create a temporary palette...you can add papers...etc...to the palette as well. You can also save the "style" of a brush...I can't remember how to offhand right now but look up brush style in the help and you should find it

[sandman]

Hi Madman,

In Painter 7, there is no short cut as far as I am aware to do what you decribe. A slightly quicker way to access a selectable list of all the brushes in the current selected category drawer is to control + click (with brush selected in tools palette) anywhere on the canvas. This brings up a contextual menu with a few other brush options including changing the brush size and restoring the default variant settings.

Using a Wacom stylus, you could also utilize the eraser end by selecting another commonly used brush (using the eraser end). You can then switch from one brush to the other by using opposing ends of the stylus.

If you feel like spending a lot of money, you could also have two or three seperate pens (each set and colour coded to a different one of your favorite brushes).

The best way to go may be to use a custom palette (as MindCandyMan describes). A custom Palettte can be saved and accessed via Window menu>Custom Palette for use in a later Painter session. Details on creating custom palettes are in the Painter manual and online help files.

I'm not sure what you mean by different styles of a brush. You can alter the brush settings and save the brush as a new variant in the same brush category (or even copy it to or create a new brush category). You can also save a brush as a look. In this case, the brush variant can have a paper texture, pattern, gradiant or nozzle assigned to it. Details on creating and saving brush looks are also in the Painter manual/ online help.

David

[MindCandyMan]

Nice sandman I didn't know you could save those custom palettes...that's sweet. Yeah I was referring to the brush look where you can have the paper texture incorporated...you know your painter 7 ...I'm coming to you with questions from now on hehe :chug:

[sandman]

Originally posted by MindCandyMan
Nice sandman I didn't know you could save those custom palettes...that's sweet. Yeah I was referring to the brush look where you can have the paper texture incorporated...you know your painter 7 ...I'm coming to you with questions from now on hehe :chug:

Thanks MindCandyMan, but I'm definately still a Painter student with lots still to learn. In fact, I'm learning a lot from the Painter courses I'm enrolled on at Jinny Brown's TutorAlley (e-mail jinbrown@pixelalley.com for details). Most of what I know has come from reading responses (many of which came from Jinny Brown) to questions posted in the various Painter newsgroups and forums. After a while, and a bit of experimenting as well, it begins to sink in and there's no looking back.

While I think of it, another neat trick you can do with a custom palette is to quickly switch between different brush libraries without having to use the 'load library' option in the brushes palette. All you need to have is at least one category icon in your custom palette taken from a brush category of each brush library you have or wish to include. If I remember correctly, when there are multiple brushes in a category drawer, then the brush loaded via the custom palette will be the original selected variant at the moment the custom palette icon was created. It therefore makes sense to have your favorite/most commonly used variant selected in each case.

David

[MindCandyMan]

That is a sweeeeetttt tip...how awesome. I am gonna try that out...thanks!

[Madman!]

thanks Sandman and MindCandyMan for the tips I will definitely try those things out.