White Rabbit - Photoshop CS5

I have been Beta testing Adobe's CS5 Master Collection for a while now, with the embargo up (as of 7.00am this morning) I am able to share my finding and feelings about the new features. My first post will cover the new brush engine in Photoshop CS5.
As an illustrator I have always been a fan of painting in Photoshop, early versions had customisable brushes and later there was support for pressure sensitivity via a graphics tablet input - all great features for those wanting to use the program as a digital canvas. Digital painting has one major drawback - the fluidity of natural media is lost in Photoshop, the painting is almost too precise and there is very little room for creative mistakes.

Until now.

Adobe's latest edition of the tool includes a fantastic new feature for painters - a "bristle" brush. This added level of brush control (in addition to pressure sensitivity) allows the emulation of bristles on a surface - the brush even rotates to match the rotation of your pen on the graphics tablet (something that really has to be seen to believed..) this really brings in some of the randomness back into drawing and painting - I have been using a variety of Wacom tablets for about 10 years now and I have never seen the level of control and natural feel of Adobes Photoshop CS5 and a Wireless Wacom Intuos 4 - its a fantastic combination.

So I have done a few doodle's I would like to share - I set myself a task - a one hour speed paint using the new toolset.































I hope to get some more of these up on the blog in the next few days.