Your opinion about grass brushes?

What is your opinion about using grass brushes in arts? It's good to use them or it's better to draw grass by hand? And what about Leaf/Plants brushes?

I have problem about that, should I use them or not?

They're always crap.

Indeed, don't.

Offtopic: And Rednek, your sig is cool btw.

I was thinking that same, but then I saw some really cool images with brushed grass. Is here someone with different opinion?

Offtopic: thank you olofmoleman :D I was laughing in my head while I was making it ^^

Show us an example that you think is good using grass brushes. Custom brushes do help sometimes but you have to know how to usem properlly. The pros do. :D

Grass brush saves me so much time, though I feal so horrible when I use them.

If a I had to paint a grass field, I'd sure as hell as use some. And actually, it's already happened and I do have a couple grass brushes laying around. Though I more often use other kinds of textured brushes... among the painting I recently posted, there's not a single one in which I didn't use some, and they were absolutely crucial in my treant.

It's definitely one of the more powerful features of PS. Of course you ought to use them. And the proportion of pros using them amounts to 100%.

But then again, it goes without saying that you should *know* how to use them if you want to look serious.

As a side note, it is always possible not to use them and paint everything with a plain brush, but it takes a lot more time, and eventually the result might not look quite as good.

Thanks for replyes to all
Brushes are ok in my eyes, but I can't critique my work ^^
Well I think I know hot to use them (Combinate brushes, add shadows, and change color for little values sometimes. Did I forgot to something?)

I agree with Stormrage, they're good if you know how to use them.
I can't give you any good advise on using grass brushes though since I never did it myself.

Otherwise, as for leaf brushes on trees.. that is a quite stupid idea if the final render will be big enough to make out details in the mass of leafs, cuz the brush will give you only on perspective of the leaves which looks not only unnatural but bad as well. This is ofc only for leaf brushes like the standart one in PS. I can imagine that you could use a variety of custom brushes that represent heaps of leaves. so that you get some depth. And then go over that with another brush for volume of the leaves as a whole.

Well whatever...

Every tool is good if you know how to use it well...

I don't really like the grass brush, it is not really as flexible as making the grass by yourself (now if I were in a hurry I'd obvioulsy use it, it takes a lot of time making grass little by little with your own brush)

One key part of the grass tool is to not have every blade the exact same color. If you add slight variations all the way through it can end up looking nice. Just be sure as you go through it's not the only thing you are using to make grass otherwise it will look plain. You might take some grass out of a high definition picture and modify it slightly. It isn't easy to crop out grass but you can achieve some interesting effects with it.

I do believe that using the leaf brushes on trees is a no-no. It does look very unnatural.