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.