PHOTOSHOP TOOLS - Working with brushes

Here we will look at some different types of brushes, how to resize them, how to make the edges hard or soft.
The Brush Tool is located in the tool bar, and its shortcut is simply the keystroke B. Right clicking (1) this will give youth Pencil tool as well.
Enlarging or reducing the brush size is by using the Open Bracket { } keys.

ADJUSTING THE SOFTNESS OR HARDNESS OF YOUR BRUSH
This is a simple matter of right clicking the slider when using the Brush Tool (2, 3). Sliding to the right increases the hardness of the brush. Once the Brush has been selected from the Tool Bar, you can adjust the opacity (4), o r the pressure that you apply to the brush in much the same way as an air brush. Note the two circles painted with a hard brush, one is at 100% and the other is at 25% opacity. So you can see that with a soft brush at 25% it is almost indistinguishable from the shadow areas. So painting with this will darken selected areas that you choose.

1. Tool bar with right clicking to reveal the fly out menu

2. Brush hardness applied

3. Brush softness applied

4. Left circle at 100%, right circle opacity changed to 25% (Opacity slider at top)

PAINTING WITH BLEND MODES
Here is how to use different painting modes with your brush, so that anything you paint ‘merges’ with the image content and does not cover it.
With theBrush Tool selected, choose from the top menu a Blend Mode, such as Soft Light. The images below have had the black brush applied in this way.

5. Original

6. Painting highlight areas with a soft black brush to balance the image

7. Painting in the same way but using a colour with the Eye Dropper Tool from the light area of the image

Soft Light selected with a lower Opacity

A few different brush effects

Brush drop down menu

Brush attributes sub menu

So it’s a cool way to add shadow and highlight by painting with black and white or a colour.
Click here for another example.

All photography and information © Jon Davison 2022.

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