Introduction,

Painter's Image Hose is clearly one of the more innovative painting tools to appear on the imaging scene. It gives artists the opportunity to create highly complex, detailed imagery onscreen and in very brief production times. Nevertheless, the Image Hose is only as useful as the media and techniques which make up the artist's palette and repertoire.

The Garden Hose provides a rich palette of nozzles, but using them effectively can involve more than just random spraying of images. A basic familiarity with Image Hose functionality, as well as a working knowledge Painter's compositing techniques, can greatly expand an artist's capabilities. With that in mind, here are a few suggestions.

Working with nozzles,

If you are using Painter 4, you've probably noticed that nozzles are now accessible as libraries. This is a powerful feature since it allows you to control nozzle size via a dynamic slider on the Nozzles Palette. The down side is that large libraries can take a lot of memory. They also take a while to load and the waiting can get very frustrating.

Generally, I load nozzles from the Nozzles folder using the Command + L key stroke. I pretty much know what each nozzle looks and renders like, so it's faster for me. Even so, switching back and forth between folders quickly gets tiresome too.

One of the easiest ways to work is to create your own library or nozzle folder. By adding the nozzles you expect to use in one folder or one library, they become much easier to load. You can use the Mover feature to create a working library from virtually any assortment of nozzles. You can also make a folder on your hard drive and copy the individual nozzles you expect to use into that folder. I tend to think of this process/task as loading a palette before beginning to paint, something all painters must do.

Selecting the correct brush,

Most of the Garden Hose nozzles were designed with the Random or Random Linear brushes in mind. Generally, medium nozzles will use a Medium Random or Medium Random Linear brush. Small will use small, etc. But, there are exceptions (see Scratch Paper). Here's another tip: changing the brush size (the circle), will change the proximity of elements spraying from the brush--smaller being closer together.

Three rank brushes are also provided and most all of these render varying sizes based on pen pressure (soft being small and firm being large). With these brushes, it helps to use Brush Tracking before attempting to work with them. Set your pressure so that you get what you want using your average stroke. Done correctly, these linear perspective brushes can be very fast and powerful tools.

Most all of the 3 rank brushes have a RPP setting. This translates to Random, Pressure, Pressure. RPS is Random, Pressure, Sequential. The Scarlet Oak 3 rank brushes work differently. Instead of changing size, pressure will change colors ranging from green to yellow to red.

I encourage you to Save Variants of Small, Medium, and Large Random Linear Variants 3 rank RPP brushes. That way, you won't have to play with the rank sliders every time you want to use these brushes.

Scratch paper,

Because working on a composition requires frequent brush adjustments, I create a scratch paper file. I know what I want from the brush, but getting it from one nozzle to the next is problematic at best.

The way an Image Hose brush renders changes from nozzle to nozzle. A nozzle's overall file size; the images' size within a nozzle; or considerations involving a random, linear, or pressure ranked rendering techniques make going directly to the master file very difficult.

To save time and needless errors, try this: Open a small scratch paper file at the same resolution as the master. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to see what the new nozzle is going to do. You can also use it to hone your stroke with 3 ranked brushes before going to the master image.

Brush strokes,

Many people are so amazed with the Image Hose, that brush strokes take on a line drawing character. They just want to see that stuff come out and the more the better (I think it has to do with the motion involved). However, making use of the sophisticated rendering capabilities of the Garden Hose generally involves the opposite approach. At times, it's much like applying a watercolor wash. This is especially true when working with multiple rank brushes. With these brushes, pressure can create a delicate linear perspective. Regardless of the nozzle/brush, a more subtle, controlled approach often works best. Index

Altering color with brushes,

When working with the Image Hose, you can alter the color or tint of nozzle images by choosing a background color on the Color palette. If you adjust the Grain slider down from 100 percent in the Controls palette, you will begin to apply the selected background color to the nozzle elements. Working with only a few percentage points seems to be most effective for hue variation.

If you select black or gray as the background color and drop the Grain to 20 or 30%, you effectively turned the nozzle into a shadow. You can add shadows and then switch Grain back up to 100% to add image over the shaded area. Further, if you're working with floaters, you can apply these Grain shadows directly onto a floater without having to deal with Drop Shadow, bleeds, and masking brushes. The shadow will not apply beyond the boundaries of the floater.

Image Hose Compositing,

Painter lets you composite with images created from nozzles, yet most people don't take advantage of this valuable feature.

Because each image within a nozzle has it's own mask (that's how the Image Hose works), you can check the Add to Mask box on the Nozzles palette and the masks apply to all of the sprayed elements. In fact, they become one single, combined mask.

Where a mask exists, so does the ability to make a floater. A quick way to do this is to convert the mask to a selection (select the outline or marching ants option) and Option + Click with the Floater Selection Tool. You've quickly converted your sprayed Image Hose elements to floaters. From there, it's a simple matter to pick them up and move them where they work best. But you can do a lot more.

As you know, floaters can be edited independent of the background composition. So you can apply lighting, color adjustment, transparency, textures, or virtually any filter available. You can also drop shadows. Further, you can apply very sophisticated layering techniques. What this means is, you can work into a image creating very sophisticated effects that work much the same as in 3D.

The Jungle image that's part of "Painting Nature with Nozzles" tutorial was done this way. Here's a simple example of what I did. I painted a small bough of bamboo. I converted that image to a floater and applied shafts of light. Then I darkened and de-saturated the color because this part of the plant is going to be in the background. I dropped a shadow and then painted another bough. I made this a floater too and applied brighter lighting. I also sharpened the focus and dropped a shadow. For the background, I simply filled it with a bamboo pattern (and used some masking, color, and lighting tricks).

With four floaters (two bamboo and two shadows), I positioned and edited each individually until I got a very photographic quality. A few tricks are involved to make this work, however. Here's one below.

Using paper color,

When using the Add to Mask feature, it is important to Set Paper Color so that it approximates the color of the nozzle's objects. If the object has a shadow, Set Paper Color to a darker value to retain the shadow effect. Why? Because Image Hose masks that feather tend to pick up the paper or background color. Even masks that don't feather will usually carry a one pixel outline of the paper color.

For example, if you have a pastel flower loaded and you spray it onto a black colored paper, when you make a floater, the flowers will have a black outline around them. The effect is even more obvious when shadows are present.

Because shadows are semi-transparent and feather at the edge, they tend to pick up more of the paper's color when converting them to floaters. If the paper color is white, the effect will appear as a light halo around the floater. It's not noticeable as long as the background stays white. However, change the background color or layer the floater over another and the problem quickly becomes apparent.

The solution is to Set Paper Color to match the color of the nozzle. If the nozzle images have shadows, set the paper color to a much darker value. Either of these techniques will eliminate the halos. Further, they're fundamental techniques to Image Hose compositing.

Landscapes and environments,

If you have seen some of the landscapes done with the Garden Hose, you will notice they often have a 3D effect. Similarly the can appear very complex and near photographic. The method to achieve these qualities involves compositing floaters in the manner mentioned above (Compositing with the Image Hose).

By using the these compositing capabilities, you can make each layer unique. You can light it independently. You can create depth of field. You can augment dimensionality by dropping shadows from one layer onto another. You can apply the diffusion of light of distance as well as linear perspective. However, to do this level of composition requires that you know where the other elements are without painting directly on top of them.

For example, if you want to apply another layer of leaves over an existing floater of leaves--so you can add a shadow and unique lighting--how do you control the composition? How do you see the leaves of the floater below while you paint the new layer? If you turn the bottom floater off, or make it invisible, then you can't see how the new layer is going to work with it. If you drop the bottom floater and then paint the new layer and make it a floater, you can't move the new layer because a copy or cut-out of the new image remains below, on the original image. Worse, you've lost the ability to adjust the position or modify the bottom layer (floater).

You could clone the image and make your new floater over the clone. From there, you could copy and paste it into the master image, but if you do that, the floater's shadows will have ghost images of the plants you painted on.

Okay, no problem you say. You just take the clone, Select All and Delete, then turn on Tracing paper. Whoops! What happened to the image? All that's left is the paper color.

The trick is to clone the clone,

If your image is made up of floaters and you clone it, the clone flattens or drops the floaters into the image. But, if you Select All, Delete, and turn on Tracing Paper--and remember, you need the Tracing Paper so you can paint on a pure paper color--the Tracing Paper will reflect only the source document, the original image minus the floaters. In other words, you've lost the benefits of an overlay. Worse still, if master image contains nothing but floaters, then all you'll see is the paper color.

When working with floaters, cloning, and tracing paper, try this: Say you have an image composed of floaters only. Clone that image and then clone that clone.
Because the first clone drops the floaters, the second clone will carry them as part of the original background image. If you Select All on the "clone of clone" and Delete, the Tracing Paper will bring up the same image as that of the master.

This is a very powerful compositing tool when working with the "Garden Hose" or Image Hose items in general (using the Add-to-Mask feature). It allows you to create and add many interrelated floaters. Further, each one is based on your existing composition and achieved without having to alter or drop the floaters in the original document. Simply copy your new floater and paste it into the master.

"Okay, but now that I've got the composition complete and I drop everything, the edges of my tree have shadow falling on the sky. That doesn't work." Index

Eliminating unwanted shadows,

Most of the Garden Hose nozzles have shadows. Some do not and these are provided to give users the means to paint shadow less edges for silhouetting objects-against a sky for example. Still, because it's 2D, most compositions will have some unwanted shadows, usually those around an object's edge.

The most obvious and precise way to get rid of unwanted shadows is to use the masking brush, or cloning brush if the image is flattened. However, painting out small shadows from 5,000 leaves can be a bit tiring, not to mention making for bloodshot eyes. These are some other methods I use:

One alternative is to collapse, copy, and paste the floater into a new, blank image. Set the Paper Color to match the desired background of the master image. If the color is close to the object's color, then you will have to choose another, contrasting color--one that does not occur in the object itself. Drop the floater, Clear Mask, and choose Painter's Color Mask. Check the Invert Mask Box. Click in the background color and adjust either the Hue or Value sliders (everything else goes all the way up) so that the shadow of the object is included with the background color. Click OK. Make the mask a selection and convert the selection back to a floater. Copy and paste the floater into you original document and see how it works. Sometimes a one pixel feather is necessary since you'll inevitably get some jaggies. It's likely some clean up will also be required.

I sometimes use this same technique, only I bring the floater into PhotoShop. I've found that PS's masking and edge altering tools are a little more varied, sensitive, or precise. Once you've selected or masked the area, you simply need to Invert the Mask to make the object a floater again. Save the file as PhotoShop 3 and open it in Painter.

Regardless of which application you choose, selecting the background seems to works better than selecting the object. Why? Because They're more easily isolated. You can control the background's hue, saturation and value. Being semi-transparent, the background color shows through the undesired shadows and is editable as a hue or value factor. The tree in Sonoma, for example, was done using this technique.

Try this: Using Add to Mask, paint some Oak Leaves on a white background. Convert them to a floater. Drop the floater, Clear the Mask (Cmd + U) and choose Color Mask. Click on Invert and sample the white background in the image. Except for Value, move the sliders all the way up. Set the Value Feather to 0 and extent to 46%. There it is. With colored backgrounds, Hue is sometimes the variable. Index

Transparent floaters in Painter 4,

Some time ago, years and years now, a voice lamented that Painter 4 didn't offer transparent floaters (that could be painted on). I suggested that Painter could emulate transparent floaters, but what I've found is even better. Here's the method.

1) Make a floater the size of your image (Select All, Copy and Paste).

2) Select the floater so that it's active.

2) In the Color Palette choose black for both background and foreground color.

3) Open the Gradation palette and select the Two Point variation (make sure that the gradation preview is pure black).

4) Using the Paint Bucket, go to the Controls palette and select Mask as What to Fill and Gradation as the Fill Method. Click in the floater with the Paint Bucket and the floater should disappear.

5) Using Add to Mask, you can now paint in the floater with an Image Hose nozzle.
Unfortunately, I found that I had problems with shadow artifacts (from the nozzles), hence the "haven't found a reason to use them" statement. All that has changed, however.

Previously, this FAQ discussed various cloning techniques necessary to avoid shadow artifacts when compositing with the Garden Hose. Well, that technique applies to transparent floaters too. But, most of that cloning the clone inefficiency can be eliminated. There's an easier way.

As with cloning the clone, the trick with transparent floaters is in the original Paper Color. Make your Paper Color black and nozzle shadows will retain their natural feathering and color--no halos or artifacts.

Transparent Layers allow for very sophisticated compositing. First, you can add clear overlays whenever needed. Second, you can paint relative to any part of an existing composition without necessarily altering it. Heck, you can even drop shadows from the painted part of a panel. But most important, you can now work on a single file/image without having to clone copies.

Virtual Birch was done using this technique and with only one file. No clones were used. The master image was always present. Index