Blending colors without smudge

This here is a video tutorial (with speed doubled so you won't get exageratly bored; it's quicktime mov format) wich illustrates how to blend colors without using the crapy smudge. It can be used for both painting and textures. This was done in Adobe Photoshop CS2, but it works with all older photoshop versions and with Corel Painter and I think also with Gimp and Paint Shop Pro.

Download link (8MB zip file): http://www.wc3campaigns.net/tdr/smudgesucks.zip

The basic concept is: paint a stroke, then to blend pick the color near the stroke (using the eyedropper; deafult hotkey is Alt, at least in Photoshop and Painter) you just drew and paint with that color inbetween and so on. I use a standard hard edge brush, normal mode, with 20% opacity and 25% spacing and a mouse, although I do have a tablet, but I didn't touch it for this tutorial.

I attached a pic with the result and anoher sample (not featured in the video). It's just a blob, I only show you how do blend them colors. I picked random colors.

Here's a description of the steps I did:

1. I draw a shitty contour
2. Using a brush set to multiply I sploosh around some dark background for the blob
3. Set the brush to the setings I mentioned later
4. I define the highlight
5. Define the shadow
6. Add some more wacky colors and blend them with alt+click and so on. By the way, with the mouse I click continuously, I don't use long strokes. Just click click click click.....
7. If you want white around the thing, well...paint with white around it. But never use white backgrounds.
8. It's done. You can add a sharpen filter if you want. Actualy I recomend doing that, it clears the blurrines. I do that a lot. But only sharpen, don't let me see other ducks (photoshop nasty filters) in your paintings!

OK, now don't let me catch you using smudge again.

Great tutorial, although maybe you could post one that is also at normal speed so we can see what tools you are using at the certain times? Or settings and such. Anyway, I won't ever think of using smudge again.

As I said, I don't use any other tool than the standard brush set to 20% opacity and 25% spacing. I already mentioned all the stuff I do.

oh, and here's a short video (avi) wich illustrates what smudge and blur is and how are they different (in case you don't know)

that second video doesn't work. At least for me... neither in DivX nor mediaplayer10. whatever

The actual tutroail is nice. Gotta try that technique out right now.

the smudgenblury uses divix 3 codec, dunno why you can't get it working. mabye you downloaded the older one, I updated it today with a smaller (in kb means) one.

What's the diff between blending with a normal brush and a brush set at multiply?

I don't blend with a brush set to multiply. With the multiply brush I just paint the background.

Well here's my attempt at following your tutorial, I think it came out pretty good. I like the style you use , it comes out real good looking.

it's good, but...it's kinda blurry. are you sure you used the regular hard-edge brush? or you used that soft brush?

Hmm, well I used the normal brush because I couldnt find any other setting. Im using photoshop 7.

So why a multply brush for the background instead of a normal one? :D

It seemed that the multiply brush allowed me to color behind the black line, but maybe Im wrong.

because that's what I saw somewhere else :P. and 'guess that if you overlay multiple colors with multiply mode, you get a good dark background to paint on.

my try... I had issues with the highlight xD

This can be approved.