How to Use Photoshop With a Drawing Tablet TUTORIAL

If you've e'er tried to acquire how to describe in Photoshop, probably you lot've heard most graphics tablets and that you can't really draw digitally without ane. In this tutorial, I'll show you the reason for this! I'll explain how to use a graphics tablet in Photoshop and how to use its settings efficiently for creating art.

The tips and techniques presented in the tutorial are universal and volition work with whatsoever force per unit area-sensitive tablet, both screen and non-screen ones, just equally an example I will be using the newest production of our sponsor, XP-PEN. Artist Pro 16TP is a pen tablet for Photoshop and other programs, with a 4K (3840 ten 2160) screen and a multi-impact support. If y'all're interested in getting one, curl downwards to the stop of the article to read about the 16th anniversary discounts!

What You'll Learn in This Tutorial on Using a Cartoon Tablet With Photoshop

• How to draw in Photoshop with a tablet
• How to connect a tablet to Photoshop
• How to draw smooth lines in Photoshop
• How to create your own Photoshop drawing brushes
• How to use a pen tablet in Photoshop

What You'll Demand

To follow this tutorial, you need a graphics tablet. It can be whatsoever tablet, pocket-sized or big, with or without a screen—every bit long equally information technology supports pressure sensitivity. Keep in listen that mobile tablets normally lack this characteristic—fifty-fifty if you use a stylus on them, the pressure is not registered.

I'1000 going to nowadays the settings of the brushes I employ in this tutorial, simply you can also download the whole set up and then arrange the settings to your needs.

If you want to create a similar artwork without copying the steps exactly, I used a photograph of a galloping horse as a reference.

1. How to Prepare Up Your Cartoon Tablet for Photoshop

If y'all accept your tablet all set up and you simply want to learn how to employ it in Photoshop, feel free to skip to the "How to Use a Drawing Tablet in Photoshop" department below.

Install the Drivers

After you plug the tablet in, you lot need to install the proper drivers. Go to the website of the producer and search for the drivers created for your specific model. Don't forget to restart the computer subsequently!

I found my XP-PEN drivers hither, but to observe whatsoever other drivers, y'all merely demand to search online for "[tablet make] drivers".

Calibrate the Pen

Later on y'all install the drivers, the tablet should piece of work—the cursor should follow the movement of the tip of the pen. However, to brand sure everything is adapted to your preferences, information technology's good to do 2 more things.

Get-go, some tablets, like the Artist Pro 16TP, come up with a born screen. This means that you can draw on the screen, seeing the cursor directly nether the nib. But because at that place'due south glass covering the bodily screen, y'all may run across some distance between the tip of the pen and the screen. Information technology's called the parallax. In modern tablets, it's not actually noticeable in the normal viewing position, as long every bit the cursor is placed directly under the pen. To ensure that's the case, open up the programme that has been installed with the drivers. For XP-PEN, information technology'south called Pentablet.

The parallax may exist annoying; that'due south why information technology's necessary to calibrate your screen to your pen!

Search for a button that says Calibrate. The program will display a picayune cross-hair icon in one of the corners of the screen. When looking at the screen in a natural viewing position, put your pen tip correct over the center of the cross-pilus, and so click it. Practise the same with all the other cross-hairs that appear adjacent. When you lot're done, click OK to relieve the settings.

Don't effort to be perfect here—just make certain the nib touches the cursor from your usual perspective

Go along in mind that calibration depends on your position and the position of the tablet, so you may need to recalibrate if you lot identify the tablet on a stand. You can back up the settings of your tablet if you want to experiment with scale without affecting your previous configuration.

If you have a not-screen tablet, you don't have to calibrate it manually, simply instead you demand to calibrate it mentally. The distance between the tip of the pen and the cursor on the screen is much bigger than any parallax, and information technology may take some fourth dimension to get used to it. Nonetheless, our brains are very adaptive, and you're going to exercise wonders with your tablet, if you lot only give information technology a chance!

Suit the Pressure Sensitivity

No affair if you lot have a screen or a non-screen tablet, it's also good to suit the force per unit area sensitivity. The greatest advantage of a cartoon tablet over a figurer mouse is that the former is sensitive to force per unit area—it registers how hard you press the pen to the tablet. Simply like with a pencil, you lot can push harder to describe thicker, darker lines, and lighter to draw thinner, lighter lines.

Lines drawn on a tablet look more like to a pencil sketch

Notwithstanding, pushing the plastic neb onto the screen may feel uncomfortable to some people, and you may also worry about the nib wearing downwards from the friction on the matte surface of a non-screen tablet. If this is the instance, find the section of the settings that allows yous to arrange the pressure from Soft to Difficult. The softer the setting, the less force per unit area you take to utilize to make the stroke appear, and vice versa. It's proficient to revisit this setting after y'all start drawing and become a better thought of what your expectations are.

The pressure curve may besides allow yous to conform the pressure in a more customizable way

2. How to Use a Drawing Tablet in Photoshop

The First Steps

Before I show you how to draw in Photoshop with a tablet, we have to learn nigh various brushes. Photoshop brushes are a set of settings that control the look and feel of your strokes. Your pen always looks the same, merely by switching to a different castor, you can effectively plough information technology into a pencil, a fine liner, or any of the painting brushes imaginable! So permit's see how that works.

Open Photoshop and create a New Document with a white background. Considering information technology's easier to make an artwork smaller than bigger, information technology'southward adept to always start with a larger canvas than you need. I've used 3000px x 3000px for this drawing.

Have the Brush Tool (B) and open the Brushes palette. Open the General Brushes list. Take the Hard Round Force per unit area Size one start—this is the most bones cartoon brush, bully for inking. Depict a couple of strokes to see how the pressure affects the thickness of the lines. Y'all tin can compare it to Hard Round to see what the strokes would look like if you used a mouse.

The strokes drawn with a mouse are not only less smooth, only they as well accept an equal thickness on their whole length

However, you may observe a trouble hither—the lines frequently end with a weird antiquity. This isn't a problem with your tablet; it's but how Photoshop works. Fortunately, it's easy to fix! In the upper bar, set Smoothing to at least 1%. Then click the gear icon next to it, uncheck Stroke Catch-up, and check Catch-up on Stroke Finish instead. Your strokes should be perfectly smooth now!

Feel complimentary to increase the smoothing if yous feel your lines are also jittery or you don't accept enough command over them. This option may exist peculiarly useful for non-screen tablets.

Brushes and Pressure Sensitivity

The pressure of the pen can exist linked to the size of the brush, its opacity (darkness), or both. You tin can accommodate it in the Castor Settings console (F5).

Y'all can adjust the size in the Shape Dynamics tab. Set Command to Pen Pressure to link size to pressure. Suit the Minimum Bore to define how small the stroke should be when the pressure is the everyman.

1 - low pressure, ii - loftier pressure

When you draw lightly with a pencil, your strokes are not merely thin, but they're also light—by pressing lightly, you utilize less graphite to the paper, which makes the marks less noticeable. Yous tin can achieve a similar outcome with a cartoon tablet with the settings chosen Opacity and Menses.

Become to the Transfer tab. Here you can link both Opacity and Flow to Pen Pressure level. Opacity and Menses are slightly different:

• When transparency is regulated by Flow, the opaqueness of the stroke can build upwards to 100%, if you draw continuously over it.
• When transparency is regulated by Opacity, the stroke has a maximum level of opaqueness it can achieve, even if you draw continuously over information technology (the opacity doesn't build upwardly unless yous lift the pen and start once again).

From left to right: full Opacity, low Opacity - total Flow, total Opacity - low Menstruation

If this is disruptive, just use Opacity and you'll be fine!

one - low pressure, ii - loftier pressure

You can also adjust Opacity and Menses manually in the upper bar:

Information technology'south also possible to combine size and opacity in i brush, similar a real pencil. Just proceed in mind that so it's not possible to draw large, low-cal lines or pocket-sized, dark ones.

1 - low pressure, ii - high pressure level

If you want to salve your brush settings, yous can relieve them as a new castor by clicking the plus icon on the bottom of the panel.

Sketching

It's all-time to kickoff your artwork with a sketch. For sketching, yous demand a brush that works similarly to a pencil—something that gives yous a lot of space for experimenting. In my opinion, this brush should produce sparse, calorie-free lines when you press lightly, and so that you tin test your vision without making a mess. And when you're more confident nigh what you're trying to describe, the college force per unit area should requite you thicker, darker lines. These are the settings I used:

This makes the light strokes small-scale...

... and this makes them also less visible through lower Opacity

1 - low pressure, 2 - high force per unit area

Keep in mind that all the brushes I'k presenting here are adjusted to my own way of drawing and the settings of my tablet. Feel free to adjust them to your needs!

Sketching lightly allows me to create a preliminary sketch, full of potential and easy to adjust in whatsoever direction. If I used a mouse for this purpose, all the lines would be equally thick and dark, which would make them all seem equally of import. The multifariousness of line thickness and opacity allows me to visually separate the less important lines from the "more than concluding" ones.

Once I've sketched my vision, I can printing harder to cover these choppy lines with more confident strokes. Because they're thicker and darker, they brand the preliminary sketch disappear, without me having to erase it or depict information technology on a split up layer.

But existence able to create a articulate sketch on a single layer doesn't mean you accept to do it all the fourth dimension. If you lot want to develop the sketch some more, it's good to lower the Opacity of the layer, create a new one, and offset drawing there. Notice that even this last sketch has a multifariousness of lines—not everything is as important.

Erasing

Cartoon lines this way allows you to utilise the eraser much less frequently, but sometimes there's a need to remove something altogether, instead of just roofing it. In Photoshop, the eraser works just like a castor—which means it reacts to pressure likewise! So if you want to make something slightly transparent, you can press lightly, and you lot can press harder to get rid of information technology completely.

Some tablet pens, like the Artist Pro 16TP, come with a built-in eraser on pinnacle. Rotating the pen automatically makes Photoshop switch to the eraser style, which can exist pretty convenient if you're used to using the eraser built into a pencil, or if y'all prefer to draw without keeping your other hand over the keyboard.

Selecting

The main reason why graphics tablets are used in photo editing is that they let precise selection. Instead of advisedly placing and dragging points with the Pen Tool, you can just take the Lasso Tool (L) and draw the option. This is very useful in drawing, peculiarly in the sketching stage, when you notice y'all desire to make an chemical element smaller or bigger, or remove a big expanse completely without having to draw over it with an eraser.

Press Control-T to resize, move, or rotate the selected expanse. Press Control-D to deselect when you're done.

Inking

In traditional art, later yous're done with the sketch, you can cover these messy lines with ink, and so erase the graphite to keep but the make clean line art. In digital art, it's much easier—you can just create a new layer and draw on information technology with a brush designed for more confident strokes. It doesn't have to look exactly like ink, unless this is the style y'all're going for. Information technology can be more convenient, especially for a beginner, to use a brush that is simply a darker version of a pencil. Hither are the settings I used for my "inking" brush:

I've increased the Minimum Bore to make the stroke easier to command

This option gives the brush a subtle texture, to create a feeling of drawing on paper.

I've linked the pressure to Flow, so that the tips were lighter, but non too light

i - depression pressure, ii - loftier force per unit area

But if you do desire your lines to look as if they were made with ink, y'all can simply turn off the transfer pick:

1 - depression force per unit area, 2 - high pressure

Inking should be slower and more deliberate than sketching

After you finish your line art this manner, you can depict over the chief outline once again to make information technology more than distinctive. Pressing harder will ensure these lines will be thicker and darker. And so you tin just hide the sketch layers.

Blending

If y'all're interested in something more than simply filling the line fine art with flat colors, y'all demand to be able to alloy. In Photoshop, yous tin blend using the Blur Tool or, more than efficiently, with the Mixer Brush Tool. All the same, they both requite yous a upshot like to the one on the left. It'due south pretty neat and can be enough for some styles, merely if y'all want to bring your art to the adjacent level, blending with a painting brush is the way to go.

The technique I'one thousand going to show you is only possible if you have a drawing tablet. Here are the settings of the brush I used for this purpose. It's a general painting/shading castor:

I've linked but the Opacity and Period to pressure

1 - low pressure level, 2 - high pressure

This brush doesn't alter size with pressure level (y'all have to practice it manually using the [ and ] keys). Thanks to this, you tin focus entirely on the opacity of the strokes—the harder you lot push, the more they comprehend. So even when painting 1 colour over another, yous tin can blend simply by pressing the pen very lightly.

If you want to blend the colors more, all you demand to do is to concur the Alt primal, click the expanse where the colors are already partially blended...

... and continue panting lightly over the sharp borders between the colors.

Keep Alt-clicking and painting lightly, until all the colors get sufficiently blended.

Here'due south how this process works in practice:

And here's a comparison between soft blending and this special textured blending. It may be subtle, merely information technology's a crucial step to make your painting more realistic.

Make sure you paint the colors on a layer separate from the line art!

Shading

You might have heard near this popular method of shading in Photoshop—y'all create a New Layer over the colored drawing, Clip it (Control-Alt-G), change its Alloy Style to Multiply, and then whatever you paint will make the layer below darker. This method is also easier with a tablet!

First of all, some areas should be darker than others, and so it'southward practiced to select them with precision:

Press Shift to add more than areas to the choice

Then you lot tin can apply a soft castor to create basic shadows. Press Control-H to hide the selection borders while doing this. Here are the settings of my soft brush:

I've gear up the Hardness to 0%

Pressure-controlled Flow will assist me make the light strokes slightly less visible

1 - low pressure, two - high pressure

This is the fastest way to make the subject await more 3D

Subsequently you've created these basic shadows, you can add more of them to make the form of the body more detailed. Just keep them subtle—linking the Menses to force per unit area in this brush volition give you lot more command over the whole process.

But shadows aren't everything! To brand the body wait more 3D, information technology's good to add some shine. Shine is affected past the texture of the surface, then don't use the soft brush here, unless y'all want to make the body expect completely smoothen. Instead, apply the same method as for the coloring. Paint on a new layer, clipped to the first layer, in Screen mode.

Removing Lines From the Drawing

If you hide the line art now, your cartoon may expect very much like a painting without details. This means that you lot can plow information technology into a painting just by adding those details!

Kickoff, lower the Opacity of the line fine art as much equally possible without losing the details. And then add a Layer Mask to it and pigment with the painting/shading brush (black) to remove the lines from the areas that expect good without them—particularly from the areas that are turned towards the lite source.

And then it'due south fourth dimension to merge all the layers (select them with Shift, then right-click > Merge Layers) and zoom in. Brand the brush smaller, and then employ the same blending technique as before to encompass the lines, replacing them with modest shadows or shine. Yous should practice it slowly and deliberately—this stage may take more than time than all the previous stages combined, but yous can't hurry it!

Your job is basically to replace the lines with a slightly darker version of the colors surrounding them

Speaking of zooming, some tablets, like the Artist Pro 16TP, take a bear upon characteristic—you tin can zoom (and rotate!) with your fingers, just similar on a smartphone. This can be very useful if you don't want to rely on the keyboard too much.

Masking

When you're done with the drawing/painting, you may want to make your artwork more than interesting past adjusting certain parts with filters or adjustment layers. Here's where a graphics tablet volition help you apply the effect to specific areas—just add together a Layer Mask to the consequence, make full it with blackness, and then paint on it with white to reveal the event merely in the chosen areas.

For example, here I added Move Mistiness to the whole body, and then revealed it on the mane only. Don't forget to convert your field of study to a Smart Object (Right-click > Convert to Smart Object) to have this kind of control over the filter.

Conclusion

Now you know all well-nigh using a cartoon tablet with Photoshop! I promise at present y'all can see that in guild to create artworks efficiently, you lot really need a graphics tablet—a mouse merely doesn't give you all these options you would wait from a cartoon tool. A pen tablet for Photoshop is a must-have for every digital artist!

And if you're thinking, "OK, but this was all near drawing, exercise I need a graphics tablet for photo editing?", the answer is yeah... and no. It's completely possible to edit photos with a mouse, but a pen tablet will make the whole process more efficient. And then if you lot edit photos professionally, investing in a design tablet for Photoshop will exist a choice you lot won't regret!

Also, don't forget to check out the offer from our sponsor, XP-PEN, which celebrates its 16th ceremony this year! The 16th anniversary celebration of XP-PEN will exist starting from xvi Baronial and last until 16 September 2021. All XP-PEN products including the Creative person 16 TP in the Great britain store will be on slap-up discounts! You tin learn more in the XP-PEN United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland Store.

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How to Use Photoshop With a Drawing Tablet TUTORIAL

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