With the introduction of Photoshop CS5 and the new version of Configurator, NKS3 is beginning to fossilize. ???????So for the last few weeks I’ve been working on NKS4. Feature enhancements include new document types Sticky Note, and Graph Paper, along with a proper GUI, built in Flash – with gentle roll-overs and tool tips. The new GUI will allow for a smaller palette footprint, and in general, be much less of an eye-sore than NKS3. There are some new tools being built for this release too, but it’s still quite reminiscent of NKS3.

Sadly, Installation will still be manual. The NKS palettes rely almost entirely on a custom set of user presets (tools, actions, brushes, gradients, patterns, etc.). Adobe requires that these each be added manually to prevent rogue brushes from making international collect calls with your credit card. So in that regard, I see no way to avoid it. However, all assets will be local this time around. No more dynamic GUI loading – which will be great for those looking to work offline.

Since NKS3 was released there’s been nearly a thousand downloads. Seems only fair to start a public feature request thread for the next version. So if there’s a specific tool, or function that you’d love to have added drop me a line or add a comment to this post. Any requests I’m unable to accommodate I’ll make mention of in the comments, and try to address the rationale.

NKS4 is a third-party tool palette being developed for Adobe Photoshop CS5 on Macintosh and Windows operating systems. NKS3 will continue to be available for CS4 users.

NKS3 is a custom tool palette built for Adobe Photoshop CS4 using Adobe Configurator. The purpose of NKS3 is to provide a fast and realistic natural media drawing experience within the Adobe Photoshop environment by facilitating an excellent array of custom-built tools in a compact, centralized palette.

NKS3 is not aimed at creating fast or cheap effects, but at providing universal, quality tools that can be used in any number of situations, but primarily geared for concept designers, industrial designers, illustrators, and general sketch making.

The NKS3 palette is divided into 5 sections, broken down as follows:

Document Utilities
1. New Document: opens a new document, fills the background with a hi-res scan of a sketch pad, locks the layer, creates a new layer for drawing, notches on the left and bottom edge are aligned at 1/4″ increments with the documents grid
2. Color Bar: intended for use within a document created via. the ‘New Document’ tool; loads a complimentary color bar into a locked layer for sampling
3. Rotate 90°: rotates the current document 90° clockwise
4. Flip Horizontal: flips the current document horizontally

Natural Media Tools:
1. Lead, Sharp: newly tipped lead
2. Lead, Dull: used and dull lead
3. Lead, Blue: 0.7mm Pentel Blue lead
4. Ball Point: standard issue ball point pen
5. Ball Point, Dirty: very well used ball point pen
6. Ink Pen: standard issue gel-ink pen, with slight falloff from ink buildup
7. Ink Brush: hard-edge, dynamic brush
8. Stipple 1: single-dot stipple tip, for feathering
9. Stipple 2: multi-dot stipple tip, for main shading
10. Marker, Round: round-tipped marker, based on Copic N1
11. Marker, Wedge: wedge-tipped marker, based on Copic N1
12. Grease: grease pencil
13. Bristles: simple comb-tipped brush with falloff
14. Pastel: soft, crayon tip
15. Spray Paint: wide, noisy spray paint (no drips, sorry)
16. Wash: light, pigment build-up tool
17. Water: dirty water

Texturing Tools:
1. Grain: fine grain
2. Grit: fine grain with chunks and rubbish
3. Fibers: wide paper fiber
4. Banana: organic texture, sampled from a scan of banana skin
5. Powder Coat: basic powder coat texture

Blending Tools:
1. Blend, Fast: finger-paint with scatter
2. Blent, Fine: click-hold, and agitate quickly across desired path
3. Smedge: could also be a ‘smoke’ brush, blends but also drops an initial splotch of paint

General Utilities:
1. Glow: basic dodge brush with feathered nozzle
2. Radial Gradient: gradient tool, set to radial, foreground -> transparent
3. 1px Line: basic line tool for drawing out guides

Due to Adobe Configurators inability to support embedded images or customizable text, NKS3 dynamically loads it’s skin from the internet. This is done in order to use pixel-type and keep the palette footprint as small as possible. If you’re trying to use it on a machine that is not connected, the UI will not load. If you’d like an offline version, please send me a mail.

In addition to the new NKS panel, I suggest everyone check out Anastasiy’s custom color picker panel for Photoshop. Check out his site here.

Installation instructions included in the zip.
NKS3 is a freeware offering, and is compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS4, on Mac OS or Windows machines.

>Download NKS3

(ZIP 11.6 MB) (Right-click + Save-As)

If you’re using Adobe Photoshop CS5, please download the updated version here.

NKS3 by NKURENCE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Natural Media Tool Palette for Photoshop CS4

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the last week rebuilding some of the tools from the first NKS panel and refining the overall tool selection to be more efficient and more dynamic. I wont be having much time available to retrofit this kit anytime soon, so wanted to make sure this version was well thought out and worthy of the effort.

The tools are somewhat personalized around my workflow in the sense that I use pencils, markers, ball pens and ink quite frequently. However the selection remains wide enough that I feel many concept artists, graphic designers and product designers could utilize them effectively- in any capacity from ideation to rendering. I’ve attempted to keep the tools true to their name and real life functionality, so lead should look and act like lead, and so on. If you experience any shortcomings in their effect it’s due either to a fault of my observation or the extent to which brushes can currently be modulated in Photoshop, which is probably somewhat true of all of the tools to some degree.

I’ve made a short screencast showing the install procedure and a quick overview of the tools in action to give you a sense of their effect without committing to a download.

View NKS2 Screencast

Please note that about 50 seconds into the video (where I first start using the tools) that they’re only putting down dots. This is due to a setting at the bottom of the Tool Preset window [Current Tools Only] being checked – this needs to be unchecked for the palette to function properly. Aside from just putting down dots, you could get an error message like ‘Cannot execute the ‘Select’ command’, or other nonsense. So make sure you ‘uncheck’ that if you haven’t already.

One of the cool features of this kit, aside from centralization, is the fact that you can reset the initial state of any of these tools to better suit your personal taste. Say for instance that you like a darker lead, or would like the grease pencil to start out with a circular tip and a lighter tone. All you need to do is create a new tool preset (with your settings) and rename it identically to the existing tool preset (i.e. ‘Grease’, etc) which can all be done in Photoshops ‘Tool Preset’ palette.

Another nice feature about having tool presets triggered by actions is that you can assign hotkeys to them in the Actions Palette. For example if you primarily use markers and pencils you could set the Dull Lead to F1, Sharp Lead to Shift-F1, Lt Marker to F2.. and so on, you get the idea. I hope eventually that Photoshop will support hotkey addressing of custom actions with regular keys (non-function). I think Autodesk Maya is terrific example for Adobe to emulate in this regard.

This custom tool panel, like the first version, is only compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS4 and newer. It was created with the Adobe Configurator utility, and should be used with the most current version of Adobe Extension Manager (2.1 or newer). So make sure you get that installed before giving it a go. You can grab the newest version here.

Enjoy!

p.s. if anyone feels they’re able to improve the natural effect or feel of any one of these tools – please send me the updated preset and I’ll evaluate it for inclusion in the next version. I’m more than happy to give credit (and a high-five) to anyone who does so – however I cannot offer any monetary compensation as this is a freeware effort.

>Download NKS2

(right-click and save)

NKS2 by NKURENCE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.