PLEASE NOTE! VERSION 2 IS NOW AVAILABLE HERE
I know it’s customary to write an introductory post on your blog. At the same time, there’s nothing I’d like to do more than get to some meat. That being said, please excuse my brevity.
Hello world. My name is nkurence, I’m a blog.
*fanfare*
Thank you.
Now I’m going to get down to practical blog business, ranting. I love Photoshop. I haven’t been using it since version one like some people I know, but it’s been my friend for quite a few years (yes, we hang out). My introduction was at version 2. A time which I now fondly think back to as the ‘filter years’. I was 11, and I think that’s about how many floppy disks were required for the install.
Another app I love is Painter. There’s debate between the two, but that seems somewhat unproductive- as personal preference is, well, personal – and you’re better off trying them both to decide what you like more than listening to me. More relevant, Painters biggest strength has always been it’s natural media tools. Something about scribbling on a Wacom and having it look like pencil or ball point just gets the pendulum swinging, and taping some paper over the tablet clinches the ‘real feel’ deal. Now I’m all for supporting good tools. As a professional you just can’t skimp on them. But, if all I’m firing up Painter for is sketching (which is <5% of my workflow), is it really worth paying another license, mastery of another environment, and further fracturing of my workflow? For less than 5%.. maybe when my kids get out of school.
So for a few years now I’ve dropped the ball on Painter. Enter Photoshop CS4. I’m almost a fan boy. I know it’s a tool, but this was a killer upgrade. The canvas rotation and interactive brush resizing are cheddar (thank you) features I’ve longed to have from the Painter camp. It’s just that brush system (while I know and love it) is feeling somewhat dated and, still lacks some of the cool modulations you can achieve in Painter. Now, with enough patience and use of your observation muscles, many of these tools can be rebuilt in Photoshop. In my experience, to yield the same ease of use, they typically require more than a Brush preset though. Thankfully we have more than Brush presets, we have TOOL presets. If you’re not familiar with Tool presets, you have to dig into them – they’re extremely powerful and if you do anything repetitively with tools – they can speed your workflow big time. Tool presets store the tool and it’s associated settings.. such as nozzle shape, size, color, blending mode, opacity etc.. and are not limited to brushes – they work with any tool in the app. The only problem with tool presets is they get buried in a text list (which gets quite long). In Painter, you’ve got tricked little icons and can build your own palettes.
Now, with CS4 we get Adobe Configurator. Configurator is a Flex environment for building custom Panels (palettes) for Photoshop, it’s available at Adobe Labs. So I got to thinking.. ‘I’ve already been trying to recreate a number of basic analog tools I use, lead holder, ball point pen, gray copic.. wouldn’t it be great if I could assemble all of those into a custom panel and get some of that Painter feel back in the box’… hence the origins of NK Standard, and I’m sure, many other little beasts out there.
The process of building the panel was a little roundabout. In Configurator you don’t have the ability to call Tool presets directly- in fact it seems it’s primarily geared for building panels from the canned tools (so why not use hotkeys?). But, thankfully, you can call Actions. So for each custom tool preset there’s an action that selects it. The creation required no coding. Short of refreshing on C and jumping into the API this was the easiest (and only) way I know of implementing it. Although, I WILL eventually get into the API.
For designers, workflows are like attitudes. Everyone has their own- and their generally foundational. I don’t expect this kit to be filling in many voids out there, but some might find it useful and fun. Most importantly- it’s value is as an eye-opener at the kind of customization that can be had with a minimal development effort these days. Many of these tools were made on the fly or in short sessions, the panel itself was created in under two hours and that includes having to figure out the action workaround for selecting tools.
As it’s titled, these are the tools I use most frequently in PS. Since the creation of this panel, I’ve started using these presets for most things – either as-is or with slight modification, on everything from sketching to rendering. I’m not going to spend much time explaining these as most are somewhat self-explanatory – and what’s not expressed in the name can be quickly grasped through use.
So please, download it, tool through it, pick it apart, and use it if you suits you. Installation instructions are included in the archive. Also, please note: If you want to modify any of the tool settings, just overwrite the particular preset (for example, if you want the brush size to be different, color, shape tip etc. by default).
If you get inspired and build out your own panels, I’d love to see them!
NK_STANDARD.zip (6.3mb)
Compatible with both Mac + Win, Photoshop CS4 or later.
