Exploring with the Painting Tools

You're definitely going to want to brush up on your painting techniques now that you don't have to worry about messing up your clothes. Painting is one of the basic skills you need to work in Photoshop, along with selecting, working with filters, and other key abilities. After you master the art of painting strokes, working with brushes, and using the many options Photoshop offers with its painting tools, you'll be well on your way to Photoshop guru-hood.

This chapter introduces you to a plethora of tools and techniques; I also give you a guided tour of the Brushes palette. Discovering the Brush Tool I'm going to be honest with you: If you can get the Brush tool to work for you, you'll be well on your way to Photoshop success. That's because so many of Photoshop's tools require the use of brushes. The Brush tool, and its hard-edged version the Pencil, use brush tips and painting strokes to apply color to your images. But that's just the beginning.

Introducing the Pencil and Brush Tools
The Pencil and Brush tools are like peanut butter and chocolate. Not only do they work well together, but they also share many important traits. You can access these tools in the Tools palette. Press B, and the Brush tool appears by default. To access the Pencil, press Shift+B. You can toggle between the tools by pressing Shift+B again. As you can imagine, the main difference between the tools is that one has a hard edge and the other has a softer impact. The Pencil and the Brush tools do have some other differences.