[Gimp-developer] Brush ideas

[John Harris <john grynn com>]

Around 18 years ago, during the original clone-tool wars ( sorry, I had 
to do it. ) when digital retouching systems were all fighting to be top 
dog,  I used a proprietary retouching workstation called "Superset".  
Some of the tools in this system were not only amazing at the time, but 
have yet to be duplicated today.

The airbrush and cloning tools used stocastic brushes that were 
recalculated with every "hit" or "impression" of the brush.  This is the 
closest I have ever seen a digital brush come to the performance of a 
real airbrush.  This made for band-free soft brushes and the ability to 
create textures with amazing results. Skin textures and such were 
incredible.  The brushes could be scaled almost indefinitely with no 
scaling artifacts. These brushes were blazing fast and all done on 486 
era processors!

Another system, this one by Abra - also proprietary, had a "scramble" or 
"randomize" tool.  This tool operated like a brush and when applied 
would randomize the pixels within the brushes defined area.  Extremely 
useful for facial retouch work.