You've asked a good question, but first some back story. I am LOVING the new Pale Girl Texture from HWL. It's everything I've ever wanted in a skin tone. But here's the thing...my character is kind of fond of her freckles. I can do a lot of stuff with Photoshop for a total novice, but freckles, I cannot seem to create. I don't have the right brushes for starters. So, if any of you fine texture makers out there are up for a request, I'm looking for pale girl with freckles. So to answer your question, I am still trying to work on this myself, but I fear the worst. You are, of course, right to have asked though :) -Darth

Do you know how to set up a freckle brush in Photoshop? Double click on the right size brush to get the options, set the spacing to near the maximum. The actual spacing will vary depending on how fast you move the brush. Paint on a layer, or a bunch of layers and vary the layer opacity to control the effect- use different size brushes too. Jim Burton (Who teaches Photoshop for a living, sometimes!)

Jim, are you talking one pixel at a time here? I have some "randomly spread dab brushes" sort of thing, but they are, of course, too big. I thought I was supposed to be able to create my own brushes, but this option refuses to be selectable. It would be a piece of cake, even for me, with the right brush(es). Sadly, "Sphere" "Box" and "Star" aren't going to cut it. :( -Darth "Shoulda put this in the other Forum" Logice

Darth- The create option works if you select an area of the image first- but I think you want to pick the paintbrush tool, then open the brushes palette, pick one of the soft anti-aliased brushes from the second row and then double click on the brush dot & set the options as I mentioned. You then just hold the mouse button down and Photoshop will keep pumping the freckels out, with the spacing set high you will not get lines, you get dots (or dabs)

Thanks Jim! -Darth

no no no... grab the airbrush (or paintbrush or whatever) and set it's mode to 'dissolve.' that will make it paint these godawful 8-bit airbrush dots all over the place. use the opacity to control the dot density. wave it over the area where you want freckles. this is good for making short fur, grass, snow... and freckles. you'll want to make them on a separate layer, probably, then run a slight gaussian blur on them. if they aren't big enough, paint a swatch on a layer, then size it up with the layer transform options. you can do a buncha layers of different sizes, merge them, blur them to taste, then use the clone tool to 'stamp' freckle patterns from it to wherever you want.

ps: er, not to imply that i'm an expert and jim isn't. sorry jim! the spacing of brushes to make dots is a pretty good trick. :) the problem i have with doing it that way is, when i wave the brush, i end up with dotted lines. the dissolve comes out more random.