Chapter 8. Painting and Drawing

A lifetime ago (in computer years, anyway) a still fairly obscure little company just south of San Francisco introduced a small beige box with a tiny 9-inch keyhole of a monitor and a mouse about as elegant to manipulate as a new bar of soap. It could display and print only in black and white, was incapable of reproducing an even remotely convincing photographic image, and was strictly limited to a resolution of 72 pixels per inch. And the graphic arts world went nuts over it. Because bundled in its modest software suite, alongside its stunted little word processor, Apple’s early Macintosh gave the world MacPaint.

Painting and drawing programs have jumped by leaps and bounds since taking those first, early baby steps, but one feature remains the same: they’re still so much fun to use! In this chapter, you’ll learn how to use Photoshop Element’s built-in drawing and painting tools to create original artwork or to enhance your digital photos, whether you’re filling parts of your image with color, creating a blended gradient, adding a decorative stroked border to a logo or design element, or “painting” a photo with Impressionist-style brushstrokes.