This tutorial covers some of the effects you can get when you apply paint stroke particles and some Variants to an image. Because the effect is so varied, depending on the image you're applying it to and the type of result you want, we'll take a look at the general settings needed for this kind of effect rather than a specific set of values. At the end of this main page, you'll find three examples of variations to the main system, with some more specific setting numbers.

Download the tutorial preset files and particles below, and you can explore the possibilities. The tutorial text doesn't tell you exactly how to recreate the presets (you can just download them, after all) but it does explain why they were set up the way they were.

The Particle Panel is where we set up the paint strokes that are going to be used by the effect. This effect requires a set of particles that have an alpha channel representing the paint stroke, and a pure red tint. The pure red tint allows us to easily change the colour of the particle to match the underlying image using Scatter's Hue, Luminance, and Saturation variants. We've provided a set of appropriate particles for you to use in the downloads above.

The particles we've provided contain two types of stroke. The first is a big block of 'scribbled' paint, the second is a single stroke. These strokes were created in Painter using various chalk type brushes and converted to particles in Photoshop. The chalk strokes tend to give better results as they have internal opacity details that come through in Scatter.

When you're setting up particles for a paint effect, place the large block strokes along the top row, with the smaller strokes beneath. When you've done that, you can set the 'Row Select' option at the bottom of the Particle Panel to 'Time' so that as strokes are applied, the top row is used first, then the second, then the third and so forth. Using that effect, we can create an initial rough colouration and then add detail with the smaller strokes. Setting the 'Column Select' to 'Random' allows us to get more variety of strokes at each stage if we choose to use more than one column of strokes.

Once we've got a set of particles ready we can set up the packing. We don't want too uniform a look to the painting, and we have to remember that we've set our particles to select Row based on Time, so the packing parameters need tweaking to account for this.

The first thing to do is set the Packing type to Random. Other packing styles are too uniform, and because we're changing particle row over time, we would get all the big particles at the top if we had Top-Down packing. Random packing means that the entire image has a chance of being covered with big particles before it moves on to the next row. Jitter amount should be set around 50%.

Packing Density is the next thing to look at. The difference in size between the particles means that a Packing Density that doesn't change will create only small scatterings of the smaller particles. Because we're selecting particle row based on time, we can also select Packing Density based on time. The 'At Start' value should be set low, so that few of the big block particles are applied, and the 'At End' value should be set high so that we get more of the smaller ones. These settings can be tweaked to create effects from sparse strokes to solid blocks.

The Clear Underlying flag can be set on or off depending on the effect. For maximum flexibility after an apply, apply the effect to a duplicate of the layer that contains the thing you want to paint, and turn on Clear Underlying. This will replace the layer with the painted result, removing the original image completely. Some of the variant methods described on other pages use this.

Using the Colour Variants we can link the particle colour to our underlying image. Tweaking these settings can create some interesting colour variations inside the painted image.

Hue should be set to vary based on Hue, with a value of 50% 'At -180 degrees' and 100% 'At +180 degrees'. Because our strokes are red, this setting links their hue with a clockwise Hue shift from red through all hues. Basically, it makes them match the underlying image.

Luminance should be set to vary based on Luminance, matched to 0% 'At 0' and 100% 'At 255' so that the brightness of the strokes matches the luminance of the underlying image. You can tweak this if the image is too dark or too light.

Saturation is where most of the tweaking happens in this panel. Saturation should be set to vary based on Saturation. Generally, a good effect can be achieved if you set the 'At 0' slider to around 5%, and the 'At 255' slider to around 75-100%. This compresses the saturation range in the image, boosting it slightly as the particles apply.

The Variants Panel is used to set up how the strokes interact with each other as they are placed on the canvas. Using the settings in this panel we can change the properties of the strokes over time and create various interesting results.

The Scale Variant is one of the most important. We want to vary Scale by Time, with around 30% at the start (the particles are big so we want them smaller than maximum even at the start) and around 5% at the end. This setting will give us big blocky strokes early on, reducing to fine detail as the system progresses.

Rotation and Opacity are both heavily variable depending on the effect you're after. Some rotation is a good thing, it makes the results look more natural. Try not to put in too much rotation however unless you're after a really 'scribbled' result. To keep the amount of rotation down, just make sure that the two sliders are close to each other in value, it doesn't matter what value they are because it's the difference that defines how much variance there is. The Opacity Variant is similarly something that can be tweaked to produce many different results. Generally, the opacity should be key quite low so that the strokes blend in with each other. However, Variants such as Time can be applied to that to increase or decrease the amount as the painting progresses. The higher the density of packing, the more the particles will overlay each other, so the more you can afford to drop their opacity and still get a solid result.