Paint Presets

The Freehand Painting Module comes with many paint presets that create nice-looking effects on your

images, so you don't have to guess these settings for yourself when painting image. With the help of the paint

presets you can apply the same painting effects to different images over and over again. In the Freehand

Painting Module you can find a lot of presets already built-in, plus you can download or purchase professional

presets from the PhotoDonut Shop, or you can create your own.

One the best things about PhotoDonut paint presets is that they are editable and flexible. You can apply

a preset and then make either minor or major adjustments to those settings to suit the needs of a specific

image. This is because the results created by presets will always vary a little from one photo to the next.

1. How to use

Open an image, and then switch to the Freehand Painting module on the Donut Widget.

Go to the ‘Clone Mode’ menu on the right where 3 painting modes are available:

• Color: paint directly with the chosen brushes and colors.

• Clone (start color): stroke is the color of the pixel where you clicked the mouse and started moving

the cursor. The color will not change along the path.

• Clone (continuous): the stroke color changes whenever the image color changes along the path.

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  Select ‘Clone - continuous’, so that the stroke color changes whenever the image color changes along

the path. Then, under that in the Visual Guides, you can add guides to help with drawing/painting:

• Off: visual guides are turned off.

• Cloning source: if you did not apply a style to your image, then the default image is connected as the

cloning source.

• Reference image: by default,this is the original image.  

Whether you have selected to use a Cloning source or a Reference Image, you can choose the guide’s

opacity and color:

• Color: guide image is colored. 

• Greyscale: guide image is visible as a greyscale image.

• Outlines: only the outlines of the guide image are visible.

To adjust the opacity of the visual guides, move the slider.

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Most of the paint presets use the Auto Angle mode to automatically follow the contours of the original

image. You can change this in the Brush Angle menu:

• Manual: the brush will remain horizontal, vertical or whatever angle you set.

• Mouse path: the brush direction will follow the mouse path.

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On the menu on left side, there are the Paint Preset categories, you can scroll down and find different

categories and presets here. When selecting a different Category, the Brush families window on the right will

jump to the newly selected brush category and will list the available brush families. Try to paint with each of the

presets until you achieve a result that you like.

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If you choose a preset with a defined palette, you will automatically paint with certain colors from a

palette. You can also change the colors of this palette in the Color Dynamics menu:

• Use Palette: decide whether you want to use a palette or not If you check the small button in the

bottom right corner next to the palette colors, the Palette Editor will appear.

• Palette Colors: defines the number of colors you want to use in your palette.

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• Palette Source: choose whether to use the Main Input, the Cloning Source, the Reference or the

Original Image as the source for your palette's colors. You can also choose a Custom palette source. In this

case you will have to select a palette from the Palettes list on the left.

• Palette: shows the colors of the palette you will be using.

In the brush selector window on the right, is a list of the brush categories in alphabetical order. Next to

that are the thumbnails of the brushes themselves.

• Brush families are scanned brushes put into families. When choosing this option PhotoDonut will

select a random brush from the same brush family to use for each stroke. This creates diversity on the image

and gives a more naturalistic effect.

• Scanned brushes are  natural, hand-made brushes, that have been scanned and digitized. In this

mode you will always paint with the same selected unique brush.

Tip: Be courageous and experiment with different brushes and with various color palettes - it often

happens , that the same brush has a totally different effect with a different color palette than the original one.

Set the brush size as you wish in Basic settings, or use the keyboard shortcuts: F key will enlarge, the D

key will reduce the size of your brush while the mouse pointer is on the image. The brush’s contour will visibly

change its size as you press the keys.

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•  Opacity: lower the opacity value if you want the brush to be more transparent. 100 is the opaque

brush, 1 is the transparent brush. You can use the S key to raise the opacity, and the A key to lower it.

• Roundness:  change this  parameter  to make  your brushes more  natural  and  diversified. Negative

values will make the brush longer, while positive values will make it more rounded.

In the Brush Dynamics menu, you can make a lot of exciting changes:

• the Spacing of the brush strokes: the more you increase this value, the further apart the brush

strokes will be from one another.

• the Size Jitter affects the behavior of the selected brush family. You can specify the randomness of the

brush's size: at 0%, a brush's size does not change over the course of a stroke; at 100%, the brush's size has

the maximum amount of variation and randomness.

• the Angle Jitter defines the randomness of the brush's angle without modifying the Brush Angle

properties. The higher the Jitter value, the more random the brush angle will be.

• the Scatter properties change the brush strokes position along its path, the higher the value, the

more the distance there is between the brush strokes, and they will be more dispersed along the path.

Tip: You can easily use your graphics tablet with PhotoDonut to paint. Simply connect the device to your

computer and PhotoDonut will recognize it. Set the properties of your tablet for a great result in the Tablet

Properties.

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2. How to edit, save and install Paint Presets

Many paint presets have already been programmed into the software, but you can always create and

use your own presets and save them for future use. Then you can make small changes to the settings yourself,

until you get exactly the result you want. You should get into the habit of saving a preset when you discover

some settings that you really like, and that you might want to use on other images. By saving the settings as a

preset, you won't have to memorize all the numbers and settings you used to get that gorgeous result - just

load the preset file again.

You can save your current settings as a new preset if you click on the small floppy icon, that is

right under the Preset Categories.

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The Paint Preset Editor window will appear, and you will have the opportunity to select a category for

your preset and give it a name - and you also can choose which brush attributes you want to store in the new

preset.

Next to the Floppy icon, there are 3 more options:

• Update the applied preset: this will overwrite the current settings.

• Edit the presets: in Preset Manager window you can create new categories, or delete the presets

within each category.

• Install new presets: choose a new preset from your computer to install it.

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In our example we chose Detailed gel from the Gel category, painted with it, and here is the result:

We hope you enjoyed this round-up of PhotoDonut paint presets. Please leave a comment with your

thoughts and feedback on the website, and feel free to share other presets with us!

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