Tools with Brush Settings

Almost all you need to know about the following tools is covered earlier in this chapter. What differs from one tool to another can be found in the Options Bar when you choose each tool. Those options are discussed below.

Brush

The quintessential painting tool. This paints with the foreground color. To erase, hold down the grave accent (`) key for an eraser with the same brush characteristics as the Brush tool, or hold down the E key to access the Eraser tool with its own, previously set options.

Symmetry

The Symmetry options create axes around which your brush strokes reflect to create (hopefully) interesting forms. Here, I created a 7-axis Radial Symmetry and painted just four strokes with a highly elliptical brush tip.

Pencil

This is essentially a hard, aliased-edged brush. The edges of a stroke with the pencil are crisp with no fade-off whatsoever. I use this primarily when I need to paint literally one pixel at a time with no slop.

The Pencil tool has an odd option: Auto Erase. When enabled, starting a pencil stroke with the cursor’s center over pixels that match the current foreground color actually paints with the background color.

Mixer Brush

As the name implies, this tool samples color from the image as it paints, mixing colors. You can control the process, as you might with real paint and brushes, by adding more fresh paint to the brush (“loading”), cleaning the brush, or painting when previous paint is dry.

If you find this function appealing, you will likely adore Adobe Fresco, the iPad app that leverages traditional media even more powerfully and intuitively.

Retouching Tools

See the “Retouching & Repair” chapter of this Compendium for details on using these tools.

Color Replacement

This rather destructive tool is like painting with the Brush tool set to a blend mode of Color (or Hue, Saturation, or Luminosity). But unlike that, it cannot affect colors on a separate layer.

Pattern Stamp

Similar to, but less flexible than painting the mask of a layer filled with a pattern. You choose a pattern from the Options Bar, as well as brush attributes, and the pattern appears as you paint.

History and Art History Brushes

These tools leverage the History panel, which contains a list of document states created after each act you perform. Those states are named after the tool or action performed that created that state. Clicking a history state’s name restores the document to that state, typically graying out the states listed below. If you perform another action, the grayed-out states vanish and the new action’s resulting state takes their place. Just like in science fiction, if you travel back in time and do something, it will create a new timeline.

To the left of each history state is a space in which you can click. This sets that state as the source of data with which the History Brush tool paints. As long as the layer or element existed when that state was made, you’ll be able to paint on it, restoring the areas where you paint to the condition they had when that state was made. It’s like painting with undo.

The Art History Brush tool uses the same method as the History Brush tool, but it paints an interpreted, impressionistic version of the history state. I think it is preferable to use the Mixer Brush tool or the Oil Paint filter on an image to achieve a painterly interpretation.

Erasers

The Eraser tool uses a brush whose settings you can configure in the Brush Settings panel. On layers that support transparency, it truly erases; otherwise, it paints with the background color. In almost all circumstances, it is better to mask images rather than erase them. There are a few exceptions. I will erase retouching I later discover to be inadequate, or brush strokes that I didn’t execute well.

Background and Magic Erasers

These old tools were introduced before we had marvelous nondestructive ways of masking (hiding) pixels we didn’t want to see. Far better results can be more quickly achieved with the Select Subject command or the Object Selection tool and the Select and Mask workspace.

Tone and Focus Tools

As with the erasure tools, there are tools for tone and focus for which there are superior workflows and functions.

Dodge/Burn/Sponge

These three tools lighten, darken, and desaturate, respectively. However, once done, there is no going back. In other words, they are destructive techniques, unlike adjustment layers on whose masks we can paint to achieve precise adjustments to areas of images. The Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools are coarse and amateurish by comparison. They do, however, use Brush Settings to apply their result.

Blur/Sharpen/Smudge

These tools also use painterly methods to affect focus in images, but again, we can achieve better, more controlled results with filters applied to Smart Objects. The Smudge tool can be useful to artists in conjunction with other brushes when literally painting in Photoshop.

Gradient Tool

I admit, this isn’t really a painterly tool, but I sometimes use it as if it were, especially in masks. When I need a layer to gradually fade out, I create a layer mask and then drag a white-to-black gradient with the Gradient tool. It’s faster and more precise than painting white and black where I need them.