Stylist Practice

Patrick_McAllister · Aug 2014

I am working on building my skills in Photoshop with using a stylist and I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions or techniques that can help me with my control and accuracy? Obviously the only real way to get better is to practice and keep practicing but I am wanting to know if anyone does/did anything specific in regards to practicing to help them get better?

Thanks,

- Patrick

Tobbo · Aug 2014

Practice really is the best way. But Lazy Nezumi Pro can be useful in Photoshop as well. I use it for more precise line control. It's essentially lazy mouse for Photoshop.

It has a free 30 day trial, so give it a shot and see how you like it.

https://lazynezumi.com/home

rube · Aug 2014

Practice is really the only way.. anything else you do will just be practice but with no end result. One thing I always do though is make sure my tablet is constrained to the proportion of my screen.. so when I draw a circle on the tablet I get a circle on screen, not a long oval. Some people don't seme bothered by that though. And lazy nezumi is great

Patrick_McAllister · Aug 2014

Thanks for the tip on Lazy Pro and at 30 bucks it makes it a no brainier as I can see the benefits of it. I will probably pick it up once I have more control of my hand because I see it's usefulness but I don't want to have a handicap through it. I like the idea of being able to control my movements without any outside help, but welcome the outside help when working on a lot of repeated stuff.

Zack Maxwell · Aug 2014

I'm pretty sure you'll develop the muscle-memory regardless. Just think of it like training wheels.

rube · Aug 2014

Also, just for ease of mind maybe. When I first started using my tablet I was a mess. but it does come quickly whne you start using it often.

Xoliul · Aug 2014

Just use it always, and don't touch your mouse anymore. You'll get the hang of it very quickly.

Jeff Parrott · Aug 2014

I would say start with:

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/library/

specifically

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/loosen-up
http://www.ctrlpaint.com/blog/shortcut-drills
http://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/fluid-linework

But yeah do it a bunch. LazyNezumi helps a ton though. I really like that a lot. Also Magic Picker is great. I use that for color picking. For now I would work in greyscale and get values down well. Plus it'll be easeier only dealing with 1 thing (Value) instead of 3 (Hue, Saturation, Value).

Justin Meisse · Aug 2014

FYI: it's called a stylus, a stylist is a hairdresser or fashion designer

Patrick_McAllister · Aug 2014

Thanks for the comments everyone. Jeff those tutorials and the site are very helpful and I like how they are short and to the point. I was beginning to wondering last night if I was holding my pen to hard while using my tablet. Drawing/painting with my elbow instead of my wrist is something that I have heard before and will take some rearranging to do it given my desk and the chair that I sit in but I'll get it.

Also another good tip Jeff to just focus on using Gray Scale instead of color at first. Even more so since I am colorblind and colors a lot of the time look different then what they are at certain values.

Thanks for the heads up Justin, I was almost going to check that last night before I created the post.

Stylist Practice

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