by: Madalin Tudosein: Drawing, Tutorials

How to use the Brush Tool in Photoshop

In this lesson,you`ll learn all about the Brush tool and how to use it in Photoshop.

I`ll speak about its many options and features and I`ll show you how to install brushes on your computer.

Presenting the tool

The brush tool is one of the most useful tools in Photoshop , with an excellent range of features available. It has a very comprehensive options bar and a lot of options,this being the reason why you may feel a little bit lost when you use it.But don`t worry.One after another.

The brush tool may be selected by pressing the “B” key or by clicking the brush tool icon from the tools sidebar.

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Once the tool is selected,its options bar appear on the top of the screen.

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The options bar offers 4 major options:Brush,Mode,Opacity and Flow.

  • Brush has its own menu with two second options:Master Diameter,from where is set the diameter of the brush and Hardness,used for increasing and decreasing the hardness of the brush,making it softer or harder.

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    In the top right of the menu,there`s a play button.Here you`ll find more options about how to display the brushes and,the important thing,here are the brushes.

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  • Mode sets the painting mode in which the brush will be used.
  • Opacity sets the opacity of the brush.
  • Flow sets the flow rate of the tool.

    • And if it wasn`t enough,the brush tool has some more options,other than those explained till now and more let`s say “professional” than them.Controlling and managing those options gives you the possibility to become a great digital artist.

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    All of these settings are reasonably self explanatory with a little experimentation but I`ll present you some of the most important options of this menu:

  • Shape Dynamics modifies the shape of the brush while you paint.
  • Scattering dictates how rigidly the brush marks stick to the line of the stroke. It is expressed as a percentage of the brush size.
  • Color Dynamics progressive modifies the color of the stroke,creating some nice effects.
  • Dual Brush creates a duality between an independent brush and the standard brush-the line.You may see in the next image how this option works:

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    Here`s an example of combining those options and applying them:

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    The Brush tool is certainly a fantastic instrument, and if all those options are put in use,can be a greater asset to to create some nice stuffs.Next I`ll show you how to install brushes in Adobe Photoshop.

    Install brushes in Adobe Photoshop

    Adobe Photoshop has a folder named Brushes where you may store the new brushes.To find the folder,go to the folder where you installed the Photoshop application and open the Presets folder.Here is the Brushes folder.

    The path to the brush folder is Folder_where_you_installed_Photoshop/Presets/Brushes.

    So,if you have a brush set and want to use it in Photoshop,copy the brush set in this folder and open the Photoshop application.Then find the respective brush in the options bar of Brush tool.

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    Then press the “Play button” situated in the top-right of the menu:

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    It will be revealed all your brushes installed in Photoshop.

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    Select the desired brush and use it in Photoshop.

    The brush tool is one of the most important and essential tool that I use in my works.Almost all my tutorials have elements created by brushes.For example,the Unreal underwater scene and The fantasy illustration tutorials are in a big part created only with brushes.

    The unreal underwater scene:

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    The fantasy illustration tutorial:

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    If you let your imagination work there`s no doubt that you`ll succeed in creating some great stuff,using this tool and combining it with other tools.

    That`s all for now!I hope you learned something today.See you next time for another lesson!

    Bye bye!

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    Madalin Tudose

    A web developer with a crush on SEO. Having my skin in the game of website development and digital marketing for more than 10 years already, you might consider me an expert. At least this is what people call me. Honestly, I HATE that term. I prefer to describe myself as a person who takes action and risks. I test every hypothesis, document every step of the process, and implement what works.