Brushes in Photoshop

Photoshop CS3 comes with a variety of preset brushes that are available for your use. Twelve round soft-edged, six round, and hard edged brushes are all included in the default set of brushes. Airbrush, natural media, spatter, star shapes, leave shapes, and many more also come included in the preset brush tips. With Photoshop you have the ability to download more brushes to add to your collection. Saved brushes with defined characteristics are called preset brushes.

You can save preset brushes with the characteristics you use often. You can also save tool presets for the Brush tool. A temporary change happens when you change the size, shape, or hardness of a preset brush. The settings change back to original the next time you open them. To change the way your preset brushes are displayed. From the Preset Brush selector menu or Brush palette menu, you can select Text only to see your brushes in a list, Small or Large Thumbnail to view as a thumbnail, Small or Large Thumbnail List to view as thumbnails with the list, or Stroke Thumbnail to see a thumbnail with sample of the brush stroke. To select a preset brush click on a painting tool or editing tool and then click the Brush Preset menu in the options bar. Choose a brush and change the preset brush options. The Diameter changes the brush size temporarily by entering a value or using the slider. This is an easy way to make your brush tips larger or smaller, whichever you prefer. When a brush is active you can also press the right bracket key ( ] ) to increase the size and the left bracket key ( [ ) to decrease the size of the brush. The Hardness changes the amount of anti aliasing for the brush tool temporarily used. When you select the Use Sample Size option it will give you the ability to use a consistent size each time you stroke the brush. Without using the use sample options the sizes will vary each time you stroke the brush. When creating a new preset this will permanently change the settings.

About the author

This article is written by Kevin M. Sugrue and is an extract from 'The Essentials of Design in Photoshop' ebook.
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