7 Brush Tool
Used for painting
Found at #20 in the Toolbar diagram at left
The brush and pencil tools are grouped together in the toolbar. If the
brush is not visible, click on the icon of the pencil in the toolbar,
and choose the brush tool from the pop-up menu.
Dragging in the image with this tool creates colored strokes similar to what might be created by a paintbrush. The way the paint is applied varies according the options you have selected.
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 Color palette 2) set your options (explained below) 3) select a brush from the pop-up palette in the options bar 4) 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. Pressing Shift with the bracket keys will increase or decrease brush softness. Shift-right-clicking on your document while using this tool will open the blend modes menu next to your cursor.
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.
If you have chosen “brush size” in Display & Cursors preferences, (find at Edit > Preferences > Display & Cursors ), you can toggle to “precise” by pressing Caps Lock. If you have your preference set to “precise”, it will toggle to “brush size”. A preference of “standard” will go to “precise” when Caps Lock is pressed.
The keyboard shortcut key for the brush tool is the letter B. Toggle between the brush tool and pencil by pressing the Shift key, and the shortcut letter.
For an extensive explanation of how to use brushes go to my Brushes in 7 tutorial.
The illustration below is the brush tool’s options bar. To find any tool presets that have been made for this tool, click on the tool’s thumbnail at the left end of the options bar. To reset the tool to its default settings, right-click on the tool’s thumbnail and choose Reset Tool from the menu that appears.
To choose a brush size and type, click on the brush thumbnail. A pop-up
palette of available brushes will appear. Press Enter or click on your
document’s blue title bar to close the palette after you’ve
chosen a new brush. If you want to access the full brushes palette with
its many options, click the brushes palette button at the far right end
of the options bar.
You can also right-click on your document to open the brushes pop-up palette next to the cursor. For more information on brushes, please see the Brushes in 7 tutorial. If you are still using Photoshop 6, find information on the your brushes palette on the old brushes page.
Access the Opacity slider by clicking on the arrow to the right of the percentage box. You can make your paint less opaque (more transparent) by moving the slider to a lower percentage.
The box titled Mode, and showing Normal contains a drop down menu of the blend modes which you can choose from.
Click the airbrush button if you want color to continue to be applied
for as long as you keep the left mouse button pressed, even if you are
not moving the cursor.
If you have doodled with a tool’s options and want to get back to the default settings, right-click that tool’s icon at the far left end of its options bar (in Photoshop 6, left-click). 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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