Painting Leaf
Software : Photoshop CS2
Level : Intermediate

Concept: We have used Adobe Photoshop and CorelDRAW together to design these lessons. You will get an idea how these two softwares can be used together to achieve wonderful effects. Adobe Photoshop is a raster program whereas CorelDRAW is a vector tool. Mostly, in the beginning, you can try CorelDRAW to draw the shapes, outlines with the help of its powerful drawing and editing facilities and then fill those shapes using Adobe Photoshop.

We will paint the leaf using photoshop. We kept the sample textile artwork open in photoshop for the reference of colors.

1. Open photoshop. open the exported jpeg leaf file that is designed in corel draw in the last lesson. You can reduce the size it it does not fit the window.

2. Select Magic Wand Tool and click within the leaf inside the border. The inside portion will be selected. Create a new layer and keep it selected. Select the basic leaf color using Eyedropper Tool. We selected the cream color within the leaf.

3. Fill the entire leaf with the base color.

4. To get rid of the dark black border either off the display of the background layer or create the new layer between the painting layer and the background layer and fill it with white color. Or you can even delete the background layer. Lock the painting layer (marked with red circle) before you start painting again.

5. Select the shade of the green and paint the leaf using paint brush. Use soft brush and paint at the corner and a bit in the middle. Carefully observe the original artwork while you paint. Increase or decrease the brush size according to the requirement.

6. Filter > Artistic > Cutout

7. You can use any available method to change the fill into something that look like painted naturally.