One of Photoshop users’ favorite tools, the brush tool is the final touch any Photoshop masterpiece needs.
The Tool
The Brush tool will appear in the tools panel as a brush symbol, pressing (B) on your keyboard will select it so for now press (B) on your keyboard. Once you have selected the brush tool you’ll see a number of options for the brush tool at the top of your Photoshop window that will look something like the image below depending on what version you are using (The screenshot below is for Adobe Photoshop CS3)
From left to right we will familiarize with the options available for the brush tool, the first is the tool preset picker we have explained thoroughly last time while talking about the pen tool.
Tool Preset Picker
The tool preset picker basically has a list of presets for a number of Photoshop tools including the one you have picked and clicking on the small black triangle (downward arrow) opens the list of available presets that you can add to, for a better and more detailed explanation with screenshots about this option check my last tutorial
Brush Preset Picker
The next option (see image below) is the brush preset picker, you can access it by clicking on the black triangle (Downward arrow) marked by an arrow in the image below
Clicking on the arrow will bring down a menu (shown in the image below), at the first glimpse you will see a few options that are basic knowledge for anyone who wants to use brushes frequently, the first is “Master Diameter” which is basically the size of the brush you want to use, now normally brushes come with their own default size but you can make a brush bigger or smaller moving the scroll down and up the line or typing in the number you want.
Below it you have the “Hardness” of your brush which is basically how soft or hard you want the edge of the brush to be, the less the hardness is the softer the edges of the brush become and the higher the hardness is the harder the edges are
Then finally below the “Harness” and “Master Diameter” you have the list of brushes available for you to use. Photoshop comes with a number of default brushes you can use to make all sorts of wonderful stuff with but you can also download new brushes via the internet or even create your own in Photoshop, we will cover these two later .
You will also see two buttons (See image below), clicking on the first one gives you access to a number of options for the brush preset picker menu including the view you want for the menu which ranges between text only (to show only names of brushes) to small or large thumbnail preview and a small or large list and finally a stroke thumbnail preview.
You then have a preset manager that allows you to delete, rename load and save preset brushes which of course can be accessed too by right clicking on any brush in the brush preset menu directly you can rename or delete a brush preset, you then have Reset Brushes and Save/Load Brushes and replace brushes options which are quite self explanatory. then you have a list of all the brush preset sets you have loaded
Brush Mode
The next option, shown in the image below is the Mode of the brush which is basically the mode in which the brush will blend with the its background below it. Press on the small arrow as shown in the image to open the drop down menu and select a mode. By default its set as Normal but you can change it. Selecting a perfect blending mode can be very tricky and is the best way to keep your brushes textured and add a feeling of richness to them.
You can choose the blending mode of the brush before you start using it but after you apply it you can’t change the mode … the change in blending mode will only take place if applied before the use of the selected brush. Below are three examples of the same brush in three different blending modes : Normal, Overlay and Hue and as you can see each mode blends differently with the background.
You can either apply the brush directly on the layer or image you want to edit or you can apply it on a new empty layer of its own . If you apply it on the same layer you can use the Mode option (shown in the images above) to alter the mode you want the brush to blend in with the layers below it with, This way is only effective if used before you apply the brush.
If you already applied the brush on the same layer you can still edit the blending mode and opacity of the brush. Go Edit > Fade Brush tool (Keyboard Shortcut = Ctrl+Shift+F) and a small pop window will appear in your Photoshop as shown in the image below
make sure you check the Preview option (Click in the checkbox marked by a circle in the image below) so you can be able to preview the changes you are making on the brush, The Mode option works in a similar way to the option we have explained before .. Press on the arrow to open the drop down menu like we did before and use the scroll in the Opacity option to make the brush less or more transparent
Opacity and Flow
The Opacity and Flow tool are two options to control the strength of color of the brush tool, the first does so by reducing the opacity of the whole brush and the other does so by reducing the color applied to the brush … The end product is generally very similar , if any of our readers have a better interpretation of this but it seems that lowering the flow of the brush is equivalent to lowering the transparency of the brush tool. The Opacity and flow options can be found located as shown within the red box in the image below
As I might have said before, the Brush tool is one of the most frequently used tools in Photoshop, it is used to create textures, backgrounds, clean and even edit pictures and thus its one of the most customizable and option stacked tools. In the next part we will cover how to create a new brush preset and we will see more options for the brush tool such as scattering, randomness and much much more
Posts
