brush from image with transparency

[sharonkatz]

I have an image that I want to turn into a brush and it has a range of transparency in it - it looks like a swirl. When I use CutBrush to make it into a brush, I can only paint with colours if I switch the popup mode to Alpha. But alpha takes out all the swirl transparency and just leaves a flat swirl shape.
Is there any other way to make a brush, that I can use with varying palette colours, that retains the swirl transparencies?
Thanks,
Sharon

[slowtiger]

Tested, works for me.

- Create some brush shape on new layer
- Cut brush (switch off "Display")
- set brush mode to "Alpha Stamp"
- choose any colour, draw. Any transparencies from the original are there.

[ZigOtto]

as mentionned by Slowtiger, take care to turn the "Display" option "OFF" before cutting your brush.

[sharonkatz]

Thanks for this. How do I preserve the range of tones in the original cut brush selection?

I create a mark which has a range of tones from dark to light. I can see that around the mark the pixels are transparent (Background Color is set to Check.)

When I Stamp in Place at this point, the brush has preserved the full range of tones. The popup mode is Color.

When I switch the brush popup mode to alpha stamp, I lose the tones and the whole brush becomes one flat gray.

Is there any way to preserve the range of tones but still have the brush in alpha stamp mode so I can select which color that I want it to paint in?

Thanks,
Sharon

[slowtiger]

Ah! I think I get it now: by "tones" you mean different colours, not just transparencies? In that case there's no solution. You can either paint (in colour mode) with the original colours of your brush, or you can choose a different colour and paint in alpha stamp mode which applies colour (but only the one you've chosen) according to the transparencies of your stamp.

It wouldn't make sense any other way: in which way should the program know how you want the original brush colours to be affected by your chosen colour?

If you want to have differently tinted copies of your brush image, maybe you should paint with your brush first (in colour), then check "preserve alpha" and use another brush with a tint mode.

[sharonkatz]

"in which way should the program know how you want the original brush colours to be affected by your chosen colour?"

If the original mark has a range of say, red to white, then I'd like the brush to simply copy that range but apply my chosen colour. So if when I choose blue, then the stroke becomes blue to white; if purple, then purple to white. The software measures the difference from dark to light of the original brush mark and applies it to the chosen colour.

Is there any way to make a brush stretch along the stroke as we paint with it?

Thanks,
Sharon

[ZigOtto]

If the original mark has a range of say, red to white, then I'd like the brush to simply copy that range but apply my chosen colour. So if when I choose blue, then the stroke becomes blue to white; if purple, then purple to white. The software measures the difference from dark to light of the original brush mark and applies it to the chosen colour.

in that case, you can paint with your custombrush in Luma Stamp mode, (or Luma Invert), and set the A and B colors to get the gradiant you want (Blue/White, Purple/White, ...)
an other way would require a preliminar step : to apply a Lumakey to your custombrush, to re-cut it, then to paint with it in Stamp mode,
a little bit different from the "Luma Stamp" way, but working as well.

[sharonkatz]

"paint with it in Stamp mode"
Is that luma stamp mode? or alpha stamp mode? or some other Stamp mode?
Thanks,
Sharon

[ZigOtto]

"paint with it in Stamp mode"
Is that luma stamp mode? or alpha stamp mode? or some other Stamp mode?

Alpha Stamp,
because the gradiant (Color to white) of the original custombrush have been luma-keyed (removed white),
the alpha channel of the brush can be used to paint with in Alpha Stamp mode.

[sharonkatz]

Thanks for your help!