Elements Airbrush
Used for simulating
spray painting
Used to be found at #5 in the Toolbar diagram at left
[Elements 2 users will not find this tool in their toolbox. It has been relegated to a button on the brush tool’s options bar.]
This tool imitates the airbrush used by commercial artists. It gives a soft edged stroke, similar to spray painting. If you hold down the mouse button without moving the cursor, the color will continue to build up.
The basic painting procedure is to 1) choose your foreground color by clicking on the foreground square in the toolbox [#13 in the diagram at left], 2) pick a painting tool 3) set your options [explained below] 4) select a brush from the pop-up palette in the options bar 5) drag in the image to paint.
Note that you can limit the area that paint can be applied to by making a selection and then painting inside it. Paint will only appear within the selections outline, even if you drag over areas outside of it.
Straight lines can be painted by clicking once in the image where the line should begin, and then Shift clicking where you would like the line to end.
A shortcut for changing brush sizes while using any of the painting tools is to press the left bracket [ to decrease brush size, and the right bracket ] to move to the next larger brush.
When editing an image with any tool that uses brushes, you can right click on the image and the brushes pop-up palette will appear right next to your cursor.
The keyboard shortcut key for the airbrush tool is the letter J.
The illustration below, is the airbrush tool’s options bar. To choose a brush size and type, click on the little down arrow to the right of the brush thumbnail. A pop-up palette of available brushes will appear. For more information on brushes, please see the Brushes page.
The Pressure value can be set by typing a number into the text box, or by clicking the little arrow to its right and dragging the pop-up slider. This setting controls how fast the paint is applied. Remember, with this tool, paint continues to build up as long as the mouse button is held down, even when the pointer is not moving.
The box titled Mode, which shows an entry of Normal, is a drop down menu of all the blend modes you can choose from.
At the extreme right end of the options bar (not shown) you will see a brush icon .When clicked, this will bring up a small Brush Dynamics palette where you can set values for Opacity, Color, and/or Size to Off, Stylus, or Fade. See the Brushes page for more details.
If you have doodled with a tool’s options and want to get back to the default settings, click that tool’s icon at the far left end of its options bar. Choose either Reset Tool to reset only the current tool, or Reset All Tools to restore default settings to every tool.
Please note that all descriptions, and illustrations featured refer to files which are in Photoshop’s .psd format, and which are in RGB color mode. Other file formats, and color modes may generate different options. Some Photoshop features are not available for images not in .psd format, or RGB color mode. To find what color mode your image is in, choose Image > Mode.
Elements Tips | Palettes | PS Tips
FreePhotos | Photoshop Tips
Elementary School | Advanced Elements
Animal Rights | The Belief Game
Unreal Nature | jay@arraich.com