Brush tip set

This part of the course is not about the “brush” tool and how its used, but about the brush tip. Or in other words, “the tip of the brush”.

The brush tip is not only the option for the “brush” tool, but there are some other. For example, the “Healing Brush”, the “Pencil”, “Eraser”, the “Brush” is an option for each of these tools in the options bar.

What you should know when working with a tool that has the “Brush” in it, is the fast manner in which the diameter and hardness can be changed.

One way is the downward pointing arrow button, next to this option in the “Options Bar”. This will open Brushes palette where you can change these options by clicking and dragging the sliders.

The higher the percentage of the hardness, the harder the edge. The lower the percentage of the hardness, the softer, or the transparent the edge.

A second, and slightly faster way is to right click on the image. This opens the same brushes palette.

However, the problem in both ways is that you have no idea how big your brush tip is. You do not see this.

A third way is through the shortcut.

This is not only much faster, but you see the “Live” size of the tip.

Here is a difference between the Dutch/English and the Belgians, or rather the QWERTY and AZERTY keyboard users.

This I had already told you in an earlier lesson, but I will reiterate.

A QWERTY user clicks the “bracket” key on the keyboard to adjust the diameter of the brush. The right bracket ‘]’ to increase the diameter, the left bracket ‘[‘ to decrease the diameter. Hold the Shift key on the keyboard pressed, the hardness of the brush also chanes.

Photoshop has not taken AZERTY users into account

This option should be set manually.

Just click “Edit” in the menu bar and choose “Shortcuts” in the drop-down menu.

In the dialog box that appears, choose “Tools” in the “shortcuts” (1).

You scroll down the list completely and provide shortcuts for the “Decrease Brush size” and the “Increase size” (2).

Click on the hotkey and give the shortcut that you want to use. Note that it should not be in use already.

I use the keys “open parentheses” and “close parentheses.”

If you are still using the keys to make the brush softer and harder in your drawing, you can set the brush tip (3) in fairly quick and smooth way.

New since Photoshop CS4 is the keyboard shortcut Alt – right click – drag.

That is, you click the Alt key on your keyboard while you click and drag left or right, with the right mouse button. This will give an example of the size and the hardness of the brush tip.

New in Photoshop CS5 is when you do the same but drag the mouse pointer over or under, you visually see the hardness of the brush edge change.

When you release the mouse on your image, you will not see anything, but you know, when you click somewhere, you will see how big the brush tip is and the hardness of the brush tip.

By default, the “Live Preview” of the brush tip is in red. This has nothing to do with the setting of the foreground or the background color.

If you prefer a different color, then you can adjust it in the “Cursor” tab of the “Preferences” dialog.

Click on “Edit” in the menu bar, choose “Preferences” and click “Cursors …”.

In the dialog box, click the “Color” (1) button, and in the second dialog box, choose the color you want (2).

Click the OK button to close the second dialog box, and then click the OK button to close the first dialog.

If you want to use this option, your computer must also have the OpenGL technology.

 

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