Digital painting issue I've had for awhile

[KaIez]

Hello fellow artist !!
So I've had this really annoying issue that involves digital painting (on photoshop) and blur. Whenever i attempt to mix colors, or pretty much paint in general, my pieces always come out blurry.

Here's one of my older pieces to show an example
http://kaiez.deviantart.com/#/d578res

I've progressed a bit over time with this piece
http://kaiez.deviantart.com/#/d5h23p1

What would be some tips to kind eliminate the blurriness of my pieces?  

[T Y M A H]

Instead of using blur, use the smudge tool (if you have that? I'm used to using gimp). But Smudge tool is great for blending. :3  

[Rosilien]

There is a function called Feather under the Selection menu. Lasso the spot you want to make softer, feather it by 10-50 pixels depending on its size, then use the Gaussian Blur filter.  

[suri bee]

I never really use any of the fancy tools in photoshop...either I'm too lazy or stubborn I don't know. To blend my colors I paint with opacities to try and blend as close as I can like a traditional painting.  

[thatgeek]

ELIMINATE blurriness by:

heart Crank up the opacity of the brush you use. If you use it on low opacity, you have to go over the same area to make it darker, thus making that area blurry as well.

heart Adjust the hardness of your brush. If you're using PS, your best bet is to switch to a brush with harder edges (a big sized pencil tool vs airbrush), just because I never us PS and I don't know how to change the hardness of a particular brush. I know you can, but it is a different process depending on the version...

heart Use a subtraction method. If you really want sharper edges, go at the edges from both sides... This is a mega hassle for a bigger picture, and is really only if, for whatever reason, you can't do the first two. By this option, I mean you draw and fill in a blue circle on a white background. The blue circle is fuzzy around the edges, so you use white to go around the edges and, hopefully, make it sharper. It might not work all that great but it's worth a shot...


Some other tips are you can draw in a less-sketchy manner. If you draw by going over a line a few times or an edge a few times, that will make it blurry. Use less strokes to make a line and it'll be sharper.

You can decrease the size of your brush. It'll make the edges of the brush sharper. Technically.


Personally, I'd suggest moving to a less-complicated program if you don't use the fanciness of PS. PS is good for after effects, not so much for straight drawing, unless you're really familiar with the tools. I use Paint Tool SAI, it's really easy to use, really friendly interface and much, muuuuch less steep learning curve.  

[RyumeiX1]

thatgeek

ELIMINATE blurriness by:

heart Crank up the opacity of the brush you use. If you use it on low opacity, you have to go over the same area to make it darker, thus making that area blurry as well.

heart Adjust the hardness of your brush. If you're using PS, your best bet is to switch to a brush with harder edges (a big sized pencil tool vs airbrush), just because I never us PS and I don't know how to change the hardness of a particular brush. I know you can, but it is a different process depending on the version...

heart Use a subtraction method. If you really want sharper edges, go at the edges from both sides... This is a mega hassle for a bigger picture, and is really only if, for whatever reason, you can't do the first two. By this option, I mean you draw and fill in a blue circle on a white background. The blue circle is fuzzy around the edges, so you use white to go around the edges and, hopefully, make it sharper. It might not work all that great but it's worth a shot...


Some other tips are you can draw in a less-sketchy manner. If you draw by going over a line a few times or an edge a few times, that will make it blurry. Use less strokes to make a line and it'll be sharper.

You can decrease the size of your brush. It'll make the edges of the brush sharper. Technically.


Personally, I'd suggest moving to a less-complicated program if you don't use the fanciness of PS. PS is good for after effects, not so much for straight drawing, unless you're really familiar with the tools. I use Paint Tool SAI, it's really easy to use, really friendly interface and much, muuuuch less steep learning curve.

I'm kinda a new artist. But i know how to draw and ink. I'm not tht good yet, but I am getting into painting. How much is it to start with Photoshop, or any other art program I could start out with? All I use now is Paint on my computer. I'll show you a picture. If it doesnt show, you can try to email me: megWrunner@yahoo.com  

[thatgeek]

RyuujiXMeg1

thatgeek

ELIMINATE blurriness by:

heart Crank up the opacity of the brush you use. If you use it on low opacity, you have to go over the same area to make it darker, thus making that area blurry as well.

heart Adjust the hardness of your brush. If you're using PS, your best bet is to switch to a brush with harder edges (a big sized pencil tool vs airbrush), just because I never us PS and I don't know how to change the hardness of a particular brush. I know you can, but it is a different process depending on the version...

heart Use a subtraction method. If you really want sharper edges, go at the edges from both sides... This is a mega hassle for a bigger picture, and is really only if, for whatever reason, you can't do the first two. By this option, I mean you draw and fill in a blue circle on a white background. The blue circle is fuzzy around the edges, so you use white to go around the edges and, hopefully, make it sharper. It might not work all that great but it's worth a shot...


Some other tips are you can draw in a less-sketchy manner. If you draw by going over a line a few times or an edge a few times, that will make it blurry. Use less strokes to make a line and it'll be sharper.

You can decrease the size of your brush. It'll make the edges of the brush sharper. Technically.


Personally, I'd suggest moving to a less-complicated program if you don't use the fanciness of PS. PS is good for after effects, not so much for straight drawing, unless you're really familiar with the tools. I use Paint Tool SAI, it's really easy to use, really friendly interface and much, muuuuch less steep learning curve.

I'm kinda a new artist. But i know how to draw and ink. I'm not tht good yet, but I am getting into painting. How much is it to start with Photoshop, or any other art program I could start out with? All I use now is Paint on my computer. I'll show you a picture. If it doesnt show, you can try to email me: megWrunner@yahoo.com

I don't see a picture.

If you're relatively new, I'd say don't get photoshop. If you don't know your way too much around art programs, don't get photoshop. Photoshop can be so complex and hard to understand that it's considered a skill to put on your resume if you do know how to use it. It's a pain in the butt for anyone new to digital art programs, and can slow a new user down with all the fancy filters and tools.

Personally, I use Paint Tool SAI. It's by Systemax, and you can easily look it up on Google. It's lightweight and easy to understand; it doesn't have all those crazy tools and extra things. A lot of people use it these days, and it's only about $50, compared to photoshop, which can run for well over $100.

If you know your way around Microsoft Paint, you'll find the transition to SAI muuuuch easier than photoshop. The tools are all straightforward and you can probably find some easy tutorials online, too.  

[RyumeiX1]

Ok thankyou, for your advice! I will try out the SAI, and try my best. ThankYou very much. 3nodding  

[G.L.U.E.]

turn up the opacity and flow. use a hard brush when refining your painting (press f5 to bring up brush options press brush tip shape and change the spacing to 1) and use a softer brush for blending. When selecting an area via marquee tool, lasso tool w/e turn off anti-aliasing. (Anti-Alias is evil it adds a feather to your selecting so when you try to fill things in with a different colour or erase a selected shape, it leaves a coloured line around the selection). if you plan on cell shading something use the pencil tool.  

[hyceate]

If you are ever going to use Photoshop again, learn to use the sharpen tool but do NOT abuse it. If you have a strong enough computer, use spacing at 1% or around 10% if it lags per stroke. I don't use airbrush until blending but even then I only use about 50% hardness. Too much airbrush will turn it really blurry and plastic like.


On my phone currently. Cannot type much. >_<