Good news is that I found a solution to this problem. Not very elegant so you don’t want to overuse it, but it works. As always it involves cheating, faking, tricking AE into doing something that it’s not designed to do, and of course some nasty expressions, but finally you end up with what you’ve always wanted – your own Photoshop brush in AE. If you’re even going to use it once I think it’s still worth the effort.

The solution has so many aspects that I could probably do a 2 hour video and still not cover everything in it. But don’t worry. I’ll do my best to keep it as short and simple as possible, and while following my rule that “if something is worth doing once than it is also worth building a tool to do it for you”, maybe I’ll even create some CustomEffect to simulate Photoshop brush engine. Wouldn’t that be cool?

I still need to work on this solution, figure out what to cover in the tutorial and what I can skip, what to include in the CE BrushEngine and what not to include. It is impossible and very unpractical to cover all the possibilities this technique gives, mostly because it would create a lot of confusion and simply because of the way AE works.

Anyway I hope I’ll figure this out soon so I could provide you with a brand new tutorial and a brand new CustomEffect as well that you will hopefully find useful.

If you’ve seen Web2.0 elements on the web, tried creating them yourself, and end up being unhappy with the results, just watch this tutorial.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

There are many ways to create Web2.0 elements in Photoshop. This tutorial will present one of them, just to give you a kick start. The effect is fully customizable because it is based on Blending Options such as Gradient Overlay, Stroke and Drop Shadow.

Above that, this tutorial also comes with After Effect version for creating this effect by using one of my presets, that you can find in my other tutorial called Photoshoping in After Effects.

Download: Tutorial project file (After Effects CS2)

Ever wondered how come all models look so great in magazines? Watch this tutorial to find out. It’s more than just a makeup.

Click here to watch the video tutorial

There are many tutorials on creating a SmoothSkin effect. They are all based on the same rule: separate the details like eyes, mouth and teeth from the rest of the image, and then apply different filters to smooth the skin out while keeping all the details sharp.

Here’s my way of achieving this effect. It doesn’t require any painting or selection drawing. It’s fully automated. However it may require a bit of tuning up after applying the effect to restore some details that might have been treated as a regular skin.

As a reference – here are other tutorials on this subject that I’ve found on the net.
http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut020.htm
http://www.tutorialwiz.com/smooth_skin/
http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Flat-Skin/6436

You can also download my action preset to fully automate the process, or you can redord your own action after watching this tutorial.

Download: Smooth Skin Action (Photoshop CS2)

After downloading unpack the file to whatever folder you like and double-click it. After that you should see new Action Set in your Photoshop Actions palette.

Photos used in this tutorial come from sxc.hu. By the time they were downloaded, they were licensed as royalty free, and were free to use in any way you like (standard restrictions). Just to make sure, go to sxc.hu right now, or just click here to read the Standard restriction agreement.