Working with Color

Like all print designers, you rely on images to add visual interest to your layouts, and color plays a big part in that. That’s why it’s so important to “take control” of your color. Photoshop puts you in the driver’s seat by allowing you to select, replace, and enhance the colors of your images. Photoshop also provides several ways to add color to grayscale images, or—if your design calls for it—there are also several ways you can remove colors from your images and work exclusively in black-and-white.

Replacing Colors
Replacing colors is one of the most common tasks print designers and production artists are faced with. And as you might have guessed, Photoshop provides us with more than one way to complete this task. In this section, we’ll take a close look at the various tools and methods for replacing colors, and I’ll offer up some guidelines along the way.

Hue/Saturation Adjustments
Photoshop’s Hue/Saturation controls are the easiest to work with when recoloring selected areas of a photo. When making this type of adjustment, you have two options: to access the Hue/Saturation dialog box and apply the change by using the Image --> Adjustment command, or to use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Choosing the menu command applies a permanent change to your image that can be undone only by using the Undo command (F/Ctrl+Z) or by selecting a previous state in the History palette. Edits cannot be made to the adjustment unless the command is undone first. If you take one too many steps past your history limit, you’re stuck with a permanent change that cannot be undone. Adjustment layers, on the other hand, allow you to edit or undo the adjustment any time—without any limitations.

Adjustments vs. Adjustment Layers
The smartest way to apply adjustments to an image is to use adjustment layers. Using adjustment layers instead of the adjustment commands offers more flexibility and control, because it allows you to make changes to the adjustment at any time after it is applied. The easiest way to add an adjustment layer is to click the Create New Adjustment Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose the type of adjustment you’d like to apply from the pop-up menu, or if you prefer, you can choose one from the Layer menu (Layer -->New Adjustment Layer --> Hue/Saturation).

Before you can replace specific isolated colors in an image by using Hue/Saturation, you first need to select them. This can be done by using any of the selection tools. But a better way to select specific colors in an image is to use the Select --> Color Range command. In most instances, this is a much easier and more accurate way to select colors that you intend to replace.

The Hue/Saturation Dialog Box With your selection already made, apply a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer as described earlier. The selection area is automatically applied to an adjustment layer mask. This allows you to shift colors in the selected areas only, while all other areas are masked from the Hue/Saturation adjustment. The controls in the Hue/Saturation dialog box allow you to rotate the color wheel and shift the colors in your image. Adjust the Hue slider to cycle through the full spectrum of colors. After you’ve chosen a replacement color, use the Saturation slider to control how vivid the color is, and the Lightness slider to control how dark it appears. Notice that after the color was shifted in Figure 4.2, the shadow areas around the center of the flower contained a yellow cast rather than a red one. This was repaired by painting in the adjustment layer mask with a soft white brush set at a low opacity setting.

Hue/Saturation Colorize Option By enabling the Colorize option in the Hue/Saturation dialog box, you can ensure that all of the affected colors in the original image are changed to the chosen replacement color, which is displayed in the bottom color bar. This usually dulls the highlight and shadow areas of the adjusted color area. You can use the Saturation and Lightness sliders to correct this, but depending on the image you are working with, the recolorization may not look as natural.

With the Colorize option disabled, all of the affected colors simply shift around the color wheel. Depending on your image, this can sometimes make the recoloring appear more natural. This is because not all of the affected colors are replaced in the same way, as they would be with the Colorize option turned on. However, it can also have a negative affect on any shadow and highlight areas that contain their own color cast, by applying the wrong color in relation to the new replacement color and to the rest of the image.

Replace Color Command
The Image --> Adjustments --> Replace Color dialog box combines the Select --> Color Range options with the Hue/Saturation sliders. This is a great tool for replacing color without having to open more than one dialog box. The only problem with Replace Color is that you can apply it as a command only and not as an adjustment layer. You can use the top half of the dialog to select a color range by using the same methods as with Select --> Color Range. After your selection is complete, use the Hue/Saturation sliders at the bottom of the dialog to replace the color. With the Preview option enabled, you can see the color applied to the image before clicking OK.

The Color Wheel
At the heart of Photoshop’s color controls is the classic color wheel. It helps to have a firm understanding of basic color wheel concepts when making color adjustments in Photoshop. If you take a close look at the color wheel, you’ll see that it is made up of six basic colors: red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and magenta. Every color is based on one of these six primary colors, or the transitions between them. The primary color that any color is based on is referred to as its hue. The Hue values in Photoshop’s color controls (such as Hue/Saturation) are based on the color wheel. Photoshop can determine the distance between primary colors on the color wheel, starting with red and moving clockwise around. Therefore, by applying a Hue adjustment in the Hue/Saturation dialog box, you are essentially spinning the color wheel in order to adjust the color in your image.

Color adjustments can also be made by shifting the colors in your image toward one of the six primary colors. Red, green, and blue are the exact opposites of cyan, magenta, and yellow, respectively. Therefore, adding red takes away cyan, adding green takes away magenta, adding yellow takes away blue, and vice versa all the way around. When you push the colors in an image toward one of the primary colors, all of the image’s colors become more alike. Also notice that as the colors move toward the center of the wheel, they become less colorful and eventually lead to white. The colors on the outer edge of the wheel are the most vibrant, while the center of the wheel contains no color at all (this represents neutral gray). Photoshop describes how vibrant a color is by using percentages, which are referred to as saturation values. A 100% saturation value refers to the colors on the outer edge of the wheel,  whereas 0% refers to the center of the wheel, or gray (no color at all). All other saturation values are located between the outer edge and the center. The one other thing that Photoshop’s color controls refer to, but the color wheel does not reflect, is the brightness levels of all the colors. Photoshop uses three terms to describe brightness in a color: brightness, lightness, and luminosity, and they all mean the same thing—how light or dark a color appears.

8 Important Things when Working with Brush

- Customize and Create Your Own Brushes Photoshop allows you to edit existing brush presets or create new ones by using the Brushes palette. The flexibility that Photoshop’s brushes offer can help you achieve just the right look when retouching, working with masks, or illustrating.
- Press B to access the Brush tool and then choose Window --> Brushes to display the Brushes palette. Select a brush from the Brush Presets Picker.
- Save Custom Brush Settings as Presets Being able to save your brush settings can be a huge time-saver. When you develop one that works best for you, definitely save it, or else be faced with the daunting task of trying to remember detailed settings in order to re-create a brush.
- Using what you now know about the Brushes palette, choose the brush settings that you’d like to apply to your custom brush.
- Use Brushes Effectively with Layer Masks Painting in layer masks with the Brush tool is a great hands-on technique for combining image layers in a print montage. It can also be a useful technique for controlling adjustments made in Photoshop, including smart filters. Working with brushes and layer masks not only provides an incredible amount of editing control—it’s also completely nondestructive.
- Create a montage by using layer masks and brushes, or use them to control where adjustments are applied in a more hands-on fashion.
- Restore with History Painting The History Brush allows you to paint backward in time. It can be used to restore parts of an image that were accidentally damaged or erased. For example, specific areas of an image that have become too blurry as the result of applying a noise reduction filter to the entire photo can be restored by using the History brush.
- Work with confidence as you edit your images. It helps to know that if you get into a situation where you’d like to restore certain areas of an image to a previous history state, you can with the History brush.

History Painting

The History brush works just like the Brush tool, except it allows you to paint backward in time. After you specify a history state in the History palette, you can then paint with the History brush and restore parts of an image. I find the History brush especially useful when removing an image from its background with the Extract filter. Rather than restoring areas that were accidentally erased in the Extract dialog box with the Cleanup tool, I sometimes prefer to apply the filter, and restore those areas in the image window with the History Brush.

To apply this technique, complete your extraction by choosing Filter à Extract to open the dialog box, and click OK to apply the filter. As a result, the extracted image appears on its own transparent layer with no Background. F/Ctrl+click the Create A New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a layer underneath the extracted layer. Press D to reset the application default colors of black foreground and white background. Press F+Delete (Mac) or Ctrl+Backspace (Win) to fill the new layer with white. Doing so provides a clean canvas underneath the image for you to clearly see what needs to be restored. Choose Window à History to display the History palette. Then in the palette, click to the left of the history state positioned just before the Extract filter. Abrush icon appears next to the history state.

To restore the edges of the image with sharp clarity, choose a hard round brush from the Presets Picker in the Options palette and click the extracted image layer in the Layers palette. Make sure the brush opacity level is set to 100% in the Options palette and  begin painting in the areas of the image that need to be restored. As you add brushstrokes, Photoshop goes back in time and magically restores those areas.

Brushes and Layer Masks

Painting in layer masks with the Brush tool is a great hands-on technique for combining image layers in a print montage. It can also be a useful technique for controlling adjustments made in Photoshop. Working with brushes and layer masks not only provides an incredible amount of editing control—it’s also completely nondestructive. No pixels harmed!

Defining a Brush Preset

Photoshop allows you not only to create custom brushes by altering settings from the default preset brushes, but also to define a brush preset based on a scanned-in texture, a shape imported from Adobe Illustrator, or a paint daub created in another application, such as Corel Painter. This is a great feature for fine artists and illustrators, but how can print designers and production artists make use of it?

Lock Brush Settings
By clicking any of the lock icons located next to the setting names in the Brushes palette, you are telling Photoshop to apply those settings to any brush preset you choose. This can be especially helpful when creating sets of brushes with similar characteristics. The lock feature can also be useful when applying brushstrokes that use the same Control menu options, such as stylus Pen Pressure Control. To unlock all locked brush settings at once, choose Reset All Locked Settings from the Brushes palette menu.

One of my favorite uses for the Define Brush Preset command is to create textured brushes that can be used to produce custom frame effects. Before you can define a brush preset, you first need to create a paint daub. There are several ways to do this:
- Import a custom shape from Adobe Illustrator.
- Create a custom shape layer by using the Pen tool or the Freeform Pen tool (you can also edit a shape layer created with one of the default shape tools).
- Import a natural media texture by scanning it into Photoshop (some examples are paint daubs made with oil, watercolor, charcoal, or any other natural art media).
- Create a paint daub by using any of the brushes in Corel Painter and save it as a PSD file.
- With one of the marquee selection tools, select an image area that you’d like to sample.

Note that Photoshop automatically saves the sampled image as grayscale. Also, because we’re dealing with pixels, resolution is a factor when resizing the brush, so be careful not to make it too large. After you’ve determined the custom texture, shape, or sampled image that you’d like to define as a brush, use the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee tool to select it and choose Edit --> Define Brush Preset. In the Brush Name dialog box that appears, enter a descriptive name for the brush. The more descriptive the name, the easier it will be to identify the brush later. After the brush is defined, you can use the Brushes palette to alter the settings as needed. I like to use the Scattering, Noise, Wet Edges, and Pen Pressure control options to create eye-catching frame effects. These types of frame effects can add a creative flair to the images when placed in a print layout. If you like the brush settings you’ve used to create the frame effect, you can always save them as a new brush preset.

Saving a Brush Preset
After you’ve created a custom brush with the Brushes palette, you can save the settings as a preset. Doing so allows you to restore the brush settings whenever you’d like to use them again. To save your custom settings as a preset, choose New Brush Preset from the Brushes palette or Presets Picker flyout menu. In the dialog box that appears, enter a name for the brush and click OK.

The new brush is added to the bottom of the thumbnail list for the library that is currently visible in the Brushes palette and Options palette Brush Presets Picker. To save your brush library, choose Save Brushes from the flyout menu. Photoshop then displays the Save dialog box, where you can name the new library. The default file location on your system for custom brush presets is in these folders:
Mac: Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Presets/Brushes
Windows: Program Files/Adobe/Photoshop CS3/Presets/Brushes
If you choose not to save the library and then apply the Reset Brushes command, or load another library without appending, then all changes you’ve made to the library will be lost.

Renaming Brushes
If you don’t like the names that Photoshop has given the preset brushes, or if you’d like to rename one of your own custom brush presets to something more descriptive (for example, custom sponge 1 as opposed to brush 1, or my brush), you can rename a selected brush by Control+clicking (Mac) or right-clicking with a two-button mouse and choosing Rename Brush from the pop-up menu. Enter a new name in the Brush Name dialog box that appears and click OK.

Shared Brush Setting Concepts

The rest of the settings in each panel of the Brushes palette are based around three basic concepts:
Jitter, Minimum, and Control. It helps to have a basic understanding of what these concepts are before experimenting with the settings. Here is a brief summary of each:
- Jitter allows a specific brush option (such as size or opacity) to fluctuate across a brushstroke. The higher the setting, the more the option will vary.
- Minimum determines the range used to apply the Jitter setting.
- Control determines when to use the Jitter setting. When set to Off, the Jitter setting is applied all the time. The Fade setting causes the Jitter setting to “fade out” (or gradually disappear) in a particular number of brushstrokes. The remaining three Control settings (Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, and Stylus Wheel) cause the Jitter setting to be controlled by input from a graphics tablet.

Shape Dynamics
The Shape Dynamics settings can change the shape of the chosen brush. They allow you to vary the settings chosen in the Brush Tip Shape section of the palette.

Scattering
Asmooth stroke is actually made up of paint daubs that are extremely condensed. The Scattering setting determines how varied the paint daubs are distributed. Higher values increase the scattering area, creating gaps in the stroke. Lower values result in denser strokes with less scattering. The Count setting determines the number of paint daubs applied within the spacing distance specified in the Brush Tip Shape section of the palette.

Texture
The Texture settings control the opacity of the brush based on the texture that is chosen from the Pattern Picker; click the pattern swatch at the top of the dialog to display the Picker. You must enable the Texture Each Tip setting in order to gain access to the Depth Jitter controls. The Mode menu determines the opacity blend between the brush and the texture. Different blend modes can affect the way the texture appears in the center or along the edges of the brushstroke.

Dual Brush
Dual Brush settings allow you to combine two brushes into one. Photoshop combines any brush that you choose from the Dual Brush panel with the brush that is currently selected in the Brush Tip Shape panel. Color is applied only where the two brush shapes overlap. Dual brushes are especially useful when trying to replicate wet natural media such as watercolor or sponge painting.

Color Dynamics
Color Dynamics allow you to vary the color that is applied to each brushstroke:
- Foreground/Background Jitter varies between the currently chosen foreground and background colors.
- Hue Jitter changes the color of the brush randomly.
- Saturation Jitter varies the vividness of the color(s) you are painting with.
- Brightness Jitter darkens the color randomly.
- Purity allows you to adjust the overall saturation of the color(s) you are painting with. Zero makes no change; negative values lower saturation; positive values increase saturation.

Other Dynamics
The Opacity and Flow Jitter settings located in the Other Dynamics panel allow you to vary the Options palette settings for the currently chosen painting tool. The Opacity setting controls the transparency amount—how much you can see through the brushstroke—and the Flow setting controls the speed at which you reach that opacity level. When enabled, the Opacity and Flow settings are applied to each brushstroke but never exceed the settings in the Options palette.

Clear Brush Controls
To return to the original brush settings (preset defaults or saved as defined settings), choose Clear Brush Controls from the Brushes palette menu. This removes any adjustments you’ve made to any brushes in all the currently loaded sets in the Brushes palette. This cannot be undone. Therefore, to avoid losing any of the adjustments you’ve made to the preexisting brushes, be sure to save them prior to clearing the controls. Note that the Clear Brush Controls command does not unlock any brush settings. To do that, you must choose Reset All Locked Settings from the Brushes palette menu.

Additional Brush Settings
The remaining brush settings do not change the controls that are displayed in the center of the palette when enabled. Unlike the settings above them in the list, these settings are simple on/off controls. Here’s a brief summary of what each one does:
- Noise adds noise (a series of small dots) to soft-edged brushstrokes. Noise is more noticeable when applied to softer-edged brushstrokes.
- Wet Edges causes the center of the brush to become partially opaque and applies more color toward the edges of the brushstrokes. The effect is more noticeable when applied to softeredged brushstrokes.
- Airbrush allows you to toggle the airbrush option in the Options palette on and off. When enabled, the airbrush is controlled by the Opacity and Flow settings, which are also specified in the Options palette. The Opacity setting controls the transparency amount (how much you can see through the brushstroke), and the Flow setting controls the speed at which you reach that opacity level. Lower Flow settings allow you to “build up” applied color with repeated strokes, just as you would with a real airbrush or a can of spray paint.
- Smoothing helps to even out your lines and curves as you paint. Enabling this option can be especially helpful when using a graphics tablet.
- Protect Texture maintains a consistent pattern when painting multiple textured strokes.

Customizing and Creating Brushes

Photoshop also allows you to edit existing brush presets or create new ones by using the Brushes palette. The flexibility that Photoshop’s brushes offer can help you achieve just the right look when retouching, working with masks, or illustrating. Not only are  brushes totally customizable, but you can also save your favorite brush settings as a custom preset. Being able to save your settings—as you’ll soon learn—can also be a huge time-saver. You could literally spend all day toying with the various brush options. When you develop one that works best for you in your workflow, you should definitely save it, or else be faced with the daunting task of trying to remember detailed settings in order to re-create a brush.

The Brushes palette contains a series of controls that can alter the way a brush behaves. This palette is also referred to as the brush engine. These controls are accessible via different panels in the palette, and allow you to customize brush shape dynamics, scattering, texture, dual brush, color dynamics, and other dynamics. At the bottom of the list of settings on the left are additional options for adding noise, wet edges, and airbrush buildup effects; smoothing paths; and preserving textures. As you make adjustments in the dialog, the brushstroke at the bottom of the palette dynamically changes to reflect your adjustments. You can adjust all the settings by using the scroll bars or by entering a value in the accompanying fields. To enable the additional settings, place a check in the corresponding check boxes.

Brush Tip Shape
To display the settings in the Brushes palette that control the overall look of your brush, click Brush Tip Shape from the menu on the left. These controls allow you to determine the size, angle, roundness, hardness, and spacing of the daubs that you use to paint with. The rest of the settings located in the various panels of the palette affect the way the Brush Tip Shape is applied. As you adjust the settings, the paint daub preview updates at the bottom of the palette.

Here’s a quick summary of how each Brush Tip Shape setting works:
- Diameter controls the overall size of the brush. Size settings can range between 1 and 2,500 pixels. Note that when working with a sampled brush, the Use Sample Size button appears after changing the diameter setting from its default value. Increasing the diameter for a sampled brush softens the graphic stroke and degrades the sampled image. To reset to the default size, click the Use Sample Size button.
- Roundness indicates the ratio between the x-axis and y-axis of a brush and ultimately affects the shape of a brush tip. To specify a roundness percentage, drag either dot in the angle icon closer to or farther away from the center, or enter a value in the field. Avalue of 100% results in a circular brush; 0% results in a linear brush; all other values result in varying elliptical brushes.
- Hardness controls the hardness of the brush’s center. The higher the value, the harder the stroke.
- Spacing controls the distance between daubs in a brushstroke.

Brush Tool Presets

The Brush tool in Photoshop ships with several libraries of presets (also referred to as sets) that you can use when retouching print images. In addition, you can customize these presets and even create your own. For example, if there is a particular group of brush settings that you like to use when retouching headshots or any photograph of a person’s face, you can base your brush on an existing preset and save it as a new preset. Doing so means that you have to click only once to restore your custom settings. This can be a huge time-saver, especially considering how many options there are in Photoshop’s detailed brush engine.

There are two locations within the Photoshop interface where you can select brush presets. With the Brush tool selected, you can access presets by doing either of the following:
- Click the Brush Presets button in the Options palette to reveal a drop-down menu known as the Brush Presets Picker.
- Choose Window --> Brushes to display the Brushes palette, or click the Brushes palette toggle button in the Options palette. At the top-left of the dialog box, click Brush Presets to display the currently selected preset menu in the palette.

There’s really no benefit to using one preset location over the other. I prefer working exclusively with the Brushes palette, because all the available brush settings are there along with the presets. This makes editing brushes based on presets much quicker and easier to manage. By default, the preset menu in both locations displays the default set of brushes in a list with a thumbnail sample. With tool tips enabled in Photoshop’s preferences, hovering the mouse over each thumbnail in the menu reveals the brush preset name. In the Brushes palette only, you can click any thumbnail in the list to view a sample stroke at the bottom of the dialog box. To view more thumbnails at a time, you must resize the menu window or palette by clicking and dragging the bottom-right corner.

To change the way the brush presets are displayed, click the menu button to reveal the dropdown menu. Here you can choose to display the brush presets in small or large thumbnails, in small or large list view, as a stroke thumbnail, or as text only. In both locations, the flyout menu (accessible by clicking the arrow in the upper right of the Brush Presets Picker or the palette menu button in the Brushes palette) lets you select which of Photoshop’s available brush presets to display. Photoshop gives you the option to replace the current set with a new one or append the set, adding new presets to the list. Each new set you select is displayed in the menu list until you replace it or append it with another selection.

You can delete a selected brush by Control+clicking (Mac) or right-clicking with a two-button mouse and choosing Delete Brush from the pop-up menu. After clicking OK in the warning dialog box that appears, Photoshop removes the brush from the library list immediately. To save changes made to a library, choose Save Brushes from the flyout menu (or from the warning dialog described previously when resetting). Photoshop then displays the Save dialog box, where you can name the new library. If you choose  not to save and proceed to apply the Reset Brushes command, all changes you’ve made to the brush presets will be lost. To restore deleted brushes to the library, choose Reset Brushes from the Brushes palette flyout menu. When resetting, a warning dialog box appears, asking whether you’d like to display the default brush library set, or add it to the currently displayed list of brushes by clicking Append. To commit to the change, click OK. Photoshop will then ask whether you’d like to save the changes you’ve made to the current library before resetting.

The Preset Manager
Photoshop contains presets for gradients, brushes, patterns, swatches, styles, contours, custom shapes, and tools. You can access these presets through related palettes, such as the Brushes or Swatches palettes, or the Tool preset menu in the Options palette.  You can add to or customize any of these sets all at once by using the Preset Manager. The Preset Manager dialog box is accessible under the Edit menu, or from the flyout menu of any related palette. At the top of the dialog, choose a category from the Preset Type menu. By default, the Preset Manager displays the chosen set for all preset types in Small Thumbnail view. With tool tips enabled, hovering over each thumbnail in the menu reveals the preset name. To change the way the presets are displayed, click the  palette menu button to reveal the flyout window and choose a different view option (these vary depending on which preset type is selected). You can resize the dialog by clicking and dragging the bottom-right corner of the window. You can select a preset by clicking a thumbnail in the list. Shift+click to select multiple, contiguous presets; or F/Ctrl+click to select multiple, noncontiguous presets. You can rename selected presets by clicking the Rename button, or delete them by clicking the Delete button. The Preset Manager also allows you to save, load, and reset libraries. You can access any of these options from the flyout menu, just as you would from any palette that displays presets.

Working with Brushes

Many creative professionals consider Photoshop’s brushes to be tools solely used for creating digital paintings or photo-realistic illustrations. There is no doubt that combining brushes with a little imagination and a lot of artistic talent can produce some stunning digital artwork. However, brushes can also be put to good use in a much less glamorous day-to-day print/production environment. In addition to their role as important creative tools, brushes can help you retouch photographic print images. They can
also be used along with layer masks to combine images and control adjustments.

The Brush tool allows you to paint with pixels in Photoshop, something that can be very useful when retouching photos and working with layer masks. You can access the tool by clicking the Brush tool icon in the Tools palette or by pressing B on your keyboard. To use the Brush tool, select a layer or layer mask in the Layers palette, and then choose a brush from the preset list and click and drag in any direction. The brush behaves just like a traditional paintbrush. To help guide your brushstroke, Photoshop displays a circle icon that follows the cursor as you paint with the tool. The brushstroke appears onscreen in real time as you paint.

Cursor Preferences for Brush Tips
Photoshop CS3 contains two Painting Cursor Brush Tip preference options, both of which apply to the Brush tool. To access the Cursors panel, choose Photoshop --> Preferences --> Cursors (Mac) or Edit --> Preferences
--> Cursors (Win).
Full Size Brush Tip Enabling this option causes the circle cursor to reflect the edge of the brush, where the brush will stop affecting the image, whereas Normal Brush Tip (the default setting) displays the halfway point at which the color will disappear gradually.
Show Crosshair in Brush Tip Enabling this option causes a small crosshair to appear in the center of the circle brush cursor. This can be especially useful when using the Full Size Brush Tip option, because it can help you visualize exactly where the center of the brush is when painting with such a large cursor.

Holding down Shift as you click and drag with the Brush tool allows you to constrain the applied brushstroke to 90º angles. To create a straight line at any angle with the brush, click to designate the starting point and Shift+click to designate the endpoint.

Resize the Brush as You Paint
You can also increase or decrease the brush size in 10-pixel increments as you paint by pressing the bracket keys. Press ] to increase and [ to decrease.

The Brush tool also has its own set of options in the Options palette, including a Brush preset menu, size and opacity controls, a Mode menu, and airbrush capabilities. The Options palette also includes a toggle control for displaying the Brushes palette. The Brushes palette contains options for working with a graphics pen and tablet as well as options that allow you to edit or create brush presets. The lists of blend mode options available in the Options palette’s Mode menu are the same as in the Layers palette blend mode menu. To use these options, you must choose them from the Options palette before painting with the tool.

Graphics Tablet Pressure Sensitivity
To get the realistic look and feel of a traditional paintbrush, you should consider using a graphics pen and tablet. The various Control menus in Photoshop’s Brushes palette contain Pen Pressure options that allow you to take advantage of graphics tablet pressure sensitivity. With these options enabled, you can let the applied pressure of the pen control the size, opacity, roundness, jitter, or scatter of the brushstroke. Note that these settings must be enabled in the Brushes palette in order to control them with pressure sensitivity. Pen Pressure must be selected from each option’s corresponding Control menu.

8 Important Things to Identify Which Selection Tool to Use for the Task at Hand

Identify Which Selection Tool to Use for the Task at Hand As you edit images for print design, you are often faced with various selection tasks—everything from selecting an object and removing it from its background, to selecting and editing a small part of a much larger image. Some selections are easier to make than others. Using what you learned about all of the selection-making tools in Photoshop CS3, identify which tool is best for the selection task at hand.
1. Determine the type of selection you need to make (for example, a background or foreground object, a detailed or solid-color area, a high-contrast or low-contrast image). Based on what you now know about all of the selection tools available in Photoshop, identify which tool is best for the selection task at hand.
2. Add to and Subtract from a Selection Path In many instances, it can be too difficult to select an entire object or region of a photo by using just one method or tool. In fact, good selections are often made in steps. This requires making your initial selection and then altering it by using additional tools, commands, and key modifiers.
3. Open an image and make a selection with any of the selection tools except for the Magic Eraser, Background Eraser, or Extract filter. Locate some areas of the image that you would like to add to or subtract from the selection.
4. Apply a Feathered (Soft) Edge to a Selection Another way to modify selections is to alter the edge of the selection path. Photoshop contains a Feather command for softening edges.
5. By definition, a feathered edge is one that has a soft blur applied to it. Open an image, make a selection by using any of the selection tools except for the Magic Eraser, Background Eraser, or Extract filter, and apply a soft edge to the image. Use either the preor post-feathering methods.
6. Save and Load Selections With Photoshop, you can also save and load your selection as an alpha channel or as a path. This can be especially useful when making detailed selections that you might want to use again.
7. Open an image and make a complicated selection by using any of the selection tools except for the Magic Eraser, Background Eraser, or Extract filter. Save the selection by using either method.
8. Identify When to Use the Extract Filter There is more than one way to extract an image from its background in Photoshop. You can use the Magic Eraser to remove simple, solid-color backgrounds or use the Background Eraser to remove detailed backgrounds. But for moreadvanced extractions, you should use the Extract filter.
9. Open a photo containing an image that you would like to extract from its background. Be sure to choose an image with loss of edge detail, such as a head shot containing fly-away hair. Remove the image from its background by using the Extract filter.