Photoshop - Brushes
With hundreds of brush types, sets, styles and variables, Photoshop's brush facility is truly awesome. Add to this the ability to create new brushes and the availability of thousands of free brushes over the internet and the possibilities are, literally endless.
It simply isn't possible to describe every single permutation - we recommend that you open a big, blank image and just play! You need never have picked up a real paintbrush in your life, although we would suggest that a graphics tablet gives greater flexibility as you can adjust such things as pressure etc. However if you don't have/like such a device, don't despair because a mouse will more than enable you to create effects that are infinitely pleasing.
So the purpose of this section of our site is to give a general overview of what's on offer, give guidelines and a good few tips along the way.
So start by choosing the Brush Tool (B) from the toolbar and going to the Options bar:

Starting in the top-left corner - "Master Diameter". Forget it! This is an extremely cumbersome way of altering the size of your chosen brush. Instead, choose your brush and use the keyboard key [ to decrease the size and ] to increase it.
The main window gives a preview (and pixel size) of the default brushes on offer but, as is always the case in Photoshop, clicking on the arrow in the top-right (circled in red) offers up a whole host of possibilities.
Towards the bottom of the fly-out list (beginning with "Assorted Brushes") is a list of brush sets that are available. Choosing any of these will bring a dialog box asking if you want to replace the existing brushes. Say Yes to this (you can always use "Reset Brushes" in this list to get back to the default set. |