This includes two guides, not one.

Part two of Photoshop Brushcraft ran live with us on Monday 26 October 2026. This product gives you Celia’s own written guide for workshop two, and the new Camversation step-by-step guide built from the recording itself.

Part one took the brush engine apart, control by control. Part two puts it to work on pictures. Mist sitting in a valley, wisps of smoke, a shaft of light through a church window, a photograph turned into something closer to a watercolour, and textures built from a blank document and two colours. Almost all of it is done with brushes you already own and have probably never switched on.

Who this is for

These are companions to the workshop, not a substitute for it. Brushcraft is sold as a complete four-part series, and the guides are written for people who are watching it.

If you booked the series and took the sessions-only ticket, this is the written material that goes with part two. If you added the guides to your ticket when you booked, you already have both of these and there is nothing to buy here.

Celia’s guide

Twenty-four pages in her own words, and it carries more than the hour held.

• Getting brushes, across three pages: the Legacy Brushes and how to switch them on, the free packs on Adobe’s own site, and what to check before buying from anyone else, including file format, compatibility and whether the licence covers commercial use

• Brush management and housekeeping: making your own brush group, copying a favourite into it without moving the original, saving a tool preset, and exporting a group as .abr so your brushes survive a new computer

• Painting soft haze, with her figures: soft round brush, hardness 0%, opacity 100%, flow 3 to 5%, a pale colour sampled from the photograph rather than white

• Painting textured mist with the Smoke Billow brush, at a low opacity and full flow, stamped rather than dragged

• Light rays over two pages, step by step, on a layer set to Screen

• Painting on masks, as a recipe card: the picture, the paper texture and the watercolour brush listed as ingredients before the method starts

• Creating a glow, over two pages. This is the one that ran out of time in the session, so the handout is the only place it exists

• Day to Night, over four pages. Turning a daytime street into a night scene with Colour Range, an exposure adjustment, a colour lookup, curves by channel and a group mask painted back to light the lamp and the windows. It goes well past brushes

• Two texture projects from scratch: a flat or textured background built with the Splish Splash and Stain Monster brushes, dodging and burning and a layer of noise, and a sweet pea lifted off a painted background with Select Subject and an inverted mask

Her method pages name the pictures she worked on, so you can follow them with anything similar of your own.

And the new Camversation guide

This is the one we are trialling, and it is new.

Rather than being written ahead of the session, it is built from the recording afterwards. It follows the hour step by step in the order Celia taught it, with her settings read off her own screen as she worked, so the values are exact rather than remembered. Forty-five pages.

• Sixteen steps, in her order, each one time-stamped to the recording so you can watch, pause and follow

• Her settings read from the panels rather than from memory, including the ones she changed mid-sentence

• Every brush she opened, taken apart: why one click of the maple brush gives four leaves at four sizes, and which three ticks are responsible

• A glossary of every term and control in plain English

• A kit list, and a page on setting up

• The questions people asked during the session, with her answers, including the one about which brushes are allowed in competitions

• A troubleshooting page, so when something behaves oddly you can look up the symptom

• A one-page summary

• Every setting checked back against the recording before it was published

What people said about the guides

“Love the guides and step by step. They are great.” — Sue

“Just read mine. It’s fantastic.” — Lynn

“Guide is brilliant. Thank you both.” — Mo

“Thank you very much for the magnificent guide, it’s great!” — Teresa

Where part two sits in the series

• Part 1, Brush Tools in Action. The brush engine, control by control.

• Part 2, Creative Brush Techniques. The subject of these guides.

• Part 3, Create Your Own Custom Brushes.

• Part 4, Celebration of Brushes.

Part two leans on part one but does not require it. If you have never opened the Brush Settings panel, the new guide explains every control it uses as it goes.

From Mark

The thing that struck me watching this one back is how little of it is difficult. A shaft of light through a church window turns out to be one click, then Shift and click, at fifteen percent opacity. Mist is a soft brush at four percent flow and the patience not to turn it up. Celia said that out loud and it is the best advice in the session: do not increase the flow because you are getting impatient.

The other thing worth saying is that her handout keeps going after the recording stops. The glow pages and the Day to Night walkthrough were not shown live, and they are properly worked through.

What people said during the session

“I can’t tell you how excited I am after the possibilities from the 1st session and now even more. Thank you Celia for opening a new brushes playground for us.” — Angi

“I plan on watching the replay again and probably again!” — Abby

“Celia is a brilliant teacher. So knowledgeable and explains her subject so clearly.” — Sharon

About Celia

Celia Henderson LRPS teaches both Photoshop and Affinity Photo, and has been presenting for Camversation for years. Her Monday sessions have become a regular fixture.

She teaches at a pace you can actually follow, she explains why rather than just what, and she is very good at spotting the thing everyone is quietly stuck on.

We utterly love Celia on Camversation. She is a real pillar of the community and has a fan club within our group.

You can see her own work at artofflowerphotography.co.uk and celiahenderson.co.uk.

The practical bits

Two PDFs, 24 pages and 45 pages, yours to download and keep. Written for Photoshop and useful on any recent version.

These cover part two only. Guides for parts one, three and four are sold separately.