6.0 Airbrush Tool
Used for painting
In PS6 is found at #4 in the Toolbar diagram at left
In Photoshop 7, the airbrush is no longer a stand alone tool.
It exists only as a button on the options bar of many of the tools that
use brushes. Look for this button to activate the airbrush characteristic
of continuous build-up of color whether or not the cursor if moving.
All of the material below refers only to the tool as it exists in Photoshop 6—for those of you who have not yet upgraded.
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 [#12 in the diagram at left], or the Colors palette 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.
If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity and blend mode of the strokes you have just applied.
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.
See also the Color palette, Swatches palette, and Brushes pages.
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 slider is shown in use. The slider is accessed by clicking on the arrow just to the right of the Pressure amount box. 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.
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.
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