Photoshop® Elements 8 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Painting and Drawing with Elements

In This Chapter

• Making pencil sketches and brush strokes

• Using Brush presets

• Creating basic and custom shapes

• Understanding vectors

• Setting Geometry options

Feel free to keep on your street clothes for this chapter on drawing and painting. The tools you work with in Elements are self-cleaning and don't require that you wear a smock. Painting is one of the basic skills you need to have down pat in Elements. After you get familiar with the technique of painting strokes and working with brushes, you're well on your way to mastering more-advanced skills, such as retouching, which come easier to you if you already have some strong painting skills under your belt.

In tandem with painting, of course, comes drawing. The Elements shape tools add an important dimension to your drawing capabilities. This chapter introduces you to a plethora of tools and techniques. We start with painting and then move on to drawing. Master both, and they can serve you well.

Introducing the Pencil and Brush Tools

The Pencil and Brush tools are like chocolate and mint. Not only do they work well together, but they also share many important attributes. Just as important, however, are their differences. You can access these tools in the Tools panel. Press the B key to make the Brush tool appear by default. By pressing Shift+B, you can toggle between the Brush tool, the Impressionist ...