Adobe Photoshop CS Airbrushing Tutorial

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a simple airbrushed image, like the one above, in Adobe Photoshop CS.

Like the first tutorial I wrote, you will once again have to know your way around Photoshop a little before you start. Please refer back to the Simple Colouring Tutorial if you're not sure, it teaches you some of the basics.

To start on this tutorial, create a new file (I chose a 640x480px canvas). The first thing I did was use the paint bucket to completely fill the background, I used a dark colour to bring out the bright blue I was planning to use next. Screenshot 1

Next I chose the brush tool and altered it's settings in the toolbar at the top. When you want to get a soft and smooth airbrush effect, you lower the hardness of your brush, I set it to 0, then chose a random sized brush to paint with. Screenshot 2
I also lowered the brush flow so that the full, solid colour wouldn't come right out! Then I clicked on the little airbrush button beside flow control. Test this out yourself to see what it does ;> helps to have a tablet pen. Screenshot 3

If you are using a tablet pen, the next step will be simple, just create a new layer ontop of the background and brush away whatever comes to your mind, make sure you're brush is set to use Pen Pressure! That's exactly what I did here, and rushed it too.. took about 3-5 minutes. Screenshot 4
If you're using a mouse, don't worry! You can still have fun using the tricks in the previous tutorial.

After that I just smoothened out a few things with the blur tool and that was it! Done! ^v^ Now remember to get creative! Here's something else I did entirely with the paintbrush, changing the flow etc.

Once you've really gotten the hang of things, you can try for something like this:

Go wild and remember to just have fun!