[Tutorial] Easy blend painting in Photoshop

Hi. Do you hate yourself? Me too.

Anyways, this is a small guide to blending colors in Photoshop. Nothing super in-depth, just showing a cool small way to do it manually using the eyedropper and brush tools. This method is very simple and beginner-friendly, so if you think you’re ready to take a step up, google may show you some more advanced techniques.

In painting, amongst other stuff, blending is gradually fading two colors into each other. Think of it like doing the gradient tool’s job with the brush.

I will be using this brush set and an Intuos5 tablet. The keyboard shortcuts I use are listed here: Photoshop Shortcuts

Let’s get to it.

Note: Spoilers are GIFs. Also, I don't know why the screen recorder made smaller brush sizes look so odd and uncomfortable.

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Lay down the flat base color(s) for the layer. I'm just doing an example, so only red.





Make a layer selection (hold Ctrl and click on the layer's thumbnail) and add big color changes. The lines should be very blunt and visible, as they will end up being the climax of the color change.

Spoiler

Set brush opacity to 50%.



If you have a tablet, you can also enable the apply pressure settings.





Hold Alt to select a color with the eyedropper and run the brush across the lines to fade them together.

Spoiler

Do this all around.





And you got a gay little cherry.




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Some things to note:

• The more visibly different the colors are, the more blending it will require. For example, a warm color like red will fade into orange more seamlessly than a darker color like blue.
• Using this method will leave brush strokes. The more you blend with decreasing brush size, the smoother it will look.

Hope you found this useful. Tune in next time, when I also don't put in effort.

 

thought u was tryna paint the japan flag @ first lol

 

nah, too unamerican for my tastes