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Getting Acquainted With The Photoshop Brush Tool!Let's talk about the Impact of Photoshop as a program before I get into talking about the Photoshop brush tool.If I could describe the impact that Photoshop has on the image manipulation industry, it would be beyond words! When photographers wanted to make their pictures better, they would spend hours and days getting it right. However, with the introduction of Photoshop, the workload of the post-production image manipulation industries has been reduced to only a few minutes! It is a standard that most company wants to meet and a standard that most digital artists use today as it allowed many amateur and professionals alike to create their own original art. All the tools are there! The tools available and what you can do with them are limited only by your imagination. However, you don’t need them at all. Remember, you’re the artist. You can do anything with a very set limited of tools! With that said, the tools in Photoshop are one of the best in the industry, if not the best! Let’s take a quick tour at what you need. I assure you that you probably won’t go beyond what is there—at least not for a while. 1. Understanding the brush tool
The Photoshop brush tool icon looks like small paint brush. If you hold down on the icon, it will pop up with a window of additional tools related to the brush tool. The pencil tool, as shown in the illustration, draws solid shapes, regardless of brush type you put in the options, whereas the brush tool works like an airbrush to draw solid shapes as well as air brushed shapes! On some versions of Photoshop, the color replacement tool may not be available. This is just as well because I have yet to use this tool for anything significant. In fact, you won’t even need it at all! Basically, this tool will paint over the existing color but not its shape. For example, you have a green sock. You choose this tool and you picked the color blue. Depending where you paint, it will change the part of the green sock into a blue sock!It’s handy, but not very useful in my opinion because it’s just the Photoshop brush tool with set effect modes of painting! Anyway, you will be using the Photoshop brush tool a lot! It’s a good idea to understand what options are available as this tool will mimic the real life painting environment the best it can. Now, as soon as you click the brush tool icon, these options appear:
There are about a few things that you can do here. The icon with the little circle and number underneath indicates what brush type it is and how many pixels the diameter is for that particular brush. Try playing around with what brushes are available and what options you can do with it! 2. Understanding the modes of paintingThe blend modes are an interesting idea. In addition to defining the brush, the mode tells you what effects the brush will paint in the program! The modes are as followed (separated by similarity):
Phew! That’s a lot of blending modes! On top of that, depending on which version of Photoshop and what tool you are using, certain blend modes aren’t available. Do you need to know all of them? Not at all! You can play around with them to get a sense of what they do. However, most of these aren’t necessary as you’re a digital artist and not a photographer. It’s up to you to decide which works for your painting and your style. For me, I don’t apply any of them when I'm using the brush tool. I just leave it on normal. The only time I use them is on my layers only--and that’s on a very minimal basis! 3. Understanding opacity and flowA relatively simple option but albeit an important one! It is this option that will make or break a painting as it simulates how much pressure is applied to the brush tool. The significance of pressure will determine the depth of your painting and how realistic it will look! As I keep my blend mode on normal, I change the parameters on this option on a stroke to stroke basis. Basically, opacity means how solid the trail painted by the Photoshop brush tool should be set at. For example, you can paint as hard as you can, but if your opacity is set at 25%, your shape will be a light version of the color you picked. In conjunction, flow mimics how hard you’re pushing on the brush. If it’s set on 100%, it will paint that color as it is. But if it’s set at 25%, it will paint a gradient of that color. That means that it will get progressively darker and closer to the color you selected depending on how long you hold the brush tool on that area. Use these options of the brush tool to its fullest and you will have a wonderful and realistic painting! Play around with the options for awhile. The more you experiment with the brush tool, the more better you become at utilizing what you need and as well as understanding what it can do. It is this level of persistence that will activate the 2d digital art master in all of us!
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