Yeah, see it seems like you guys are super-knowledgable with these programs anyway, so I'm actually unsure if it's like, "DUH!" But I've just learned the beauty of defining brushes. I knew you could do it, but I didn't think about the fact that you can create some cool fabrics that way. Again, I'm sure you can do more amazing things in that direction with Illustrator--BUT--it's fun! If you mess with the spacing so that it's pretty wide, you can do cool swoopy motions with whatever shape you saved as a brush--anything from stars, boxes, butterflies, etc. And with a tablet, you can make it all pressure sensitive, which is fun. Methinks this would be a fun way to make designs on tee shirts with your illustrations and whatnot. But like I said, you guys have probably already thought about this...
And some time, you can't really become an expert in a month...
But believe me that each time i find something new, and by saying something new i mean that there are a lot of really small things that the average user will rarely know/need about them.
Your greys are now determined by density, if you get my drift. Then I separate them with the magic wand and add all kinds of harsh grain to the darkest, then less to the mids, and a little less to the highs. Then SMACK! You flatten that b!tch out and you have just stuck vector info (the grain, believe it or not) onto a raster file (the bitmap) that actually fools the eye into thinking you have resolution in the disguise of grain.