Photoshop - Grounding Horse Hooves in Grass and Brush
By T W I
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10th Feb 2012 •
6,141 views
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14 comments
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Software: Photoshop Elements | Skill level: Beginner
Grounding hooves in grass
Depending on how tall the grass is, the horse may be up to its knees in grass or the grass might simply be scattered around the hooves. If the horse’s legs are buried in grass, take a fuzzy eraser and erase to a point just below where you think the grass would cover. If not, skip this step.
If your background contained long grass, the horse should now look like its hooves and part of its legs have been hidden behind the grass, as they were erased. However the effect is somewhat unrealistic, as individual blades of grass would be obscuring the legs as well, not just one big chunk of it.
Select the eraser tool. Right click and an option box should come up with multiple erasers to choose from. Now we get to choose between two erasers that will both be well-suited for the job. Look at the grass in the background. Is it short and stubby or is it thin and tall? If the grass is shorter and less abundant, we will be using a brush that looks like three blades of grass, connected at their base. If the grass is tall and slender, we will use a brush that looks like a single, curving blade of grass. Scroll down to find the brushes we are looking for and click on the desired one.
Pull the opacity of your eraser down to 90%.
Resize the eraser until it is roughly the same size as the grass in the background. A handy keyboard shortcut for resizing erasers and brushes are the bracket keys, ‘[‘ and ‘]’. The left one makes the eraser smaller and the right makes it bigger.
Now begin to carefully erase the hooves (Or legs) with the grass eraser. Be prepared for a lot of undoing (Keyboard shortcut CTRL + 'z' to undo) , since this is such an easy process, so you should not stop until you are content with your work.
Grounding hooves in underbrush
What should we do when the surface we are trying to ground the horse’s hooves in is littered with leaves, flowers, weeds, etc? Obviously using the grass brush alone will make for an unrealistic result, but thankfully Photoshop comes equipped with a multitude of brushes suited for the job.
My personal favorite is the leaf brush. It is a scattered brush, meaning that when you click once to use it, it will erase in quite a few scattered little areas at once. It can be rather unpredictable, but is the perfect thing for blending hooves in brush. It is located right next to the grass brushes.
Keep the eraser size at 10 pixels or smaller, because anything bigger than that will result in large chunks being taken out of the horse’s hooves instead of little dots, something that we really don’t want to happen.
Now just erase using the same procedure as the above grass tutorial.
Depending on the consistency of the surface your horse is standing on, sometimes it is beneficial to use a combination of the grass eraser and the leaf eraser, as I did in the screenshot above.
The results should be surprisingly good! A lot of people may not think erasing hooves gives the impression that grass/weeds/flowers is growing in front of them, however if you take a moment to step back, you’ll be surprised at how natural it looks.
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50 days ago
• 5,014 views
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50 days ago
• 5,269 views
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Madeirey
Good job TWI! :D
Good job TWI! :D
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50 days ago
• 5,002 views
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Diddy
Wow, this helped tons! Thanks!
And you're amazing at graphics! :D
Wow, this helped tons! Thanks!
And you're amazing at graphics! :D
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50 days ago
• 5,154 views
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50 days ago
• 5,014 views
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Estella Noire
Amazing! I really needed this! Thanks, T W I!
Amazing! I really needed this! Thanks, T W I!
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50 days ago
• 5,019 views
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Reality
Thanks for this tutorial! It really helped. :D
Thanks for this tutorial! It really helped. :D
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49 days ago
• 5,218 views
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Milly
Great tutorial, this will help many people :)
Great tutorial, this will help many people :)
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49 days ago
• 5,039 views
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47 days ago
• 5,022 views
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44 days ago
• 5,028 views
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ladykbug
i like the article
i like the article
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40 days ago
• 5,030 views
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abb77
thats good !!
thats good !!
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26 days ago
• 5,024 views
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May 17, 2012
• 5,036 views
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Cowzers
Thank you for this tutorial ! It helps a lot :)
Thank you for this tutorial ! It helps a lot :)
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Jul 22, 2012
• 5,429 views
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