Drawing tools

In Photoshop, drawing tools are used to create lines and fill areas with color or several colors mixed together. Knowing how to use drawing tools is important for any artist who wants to work in Photoshop.

Brush tool (Brush)
In order to use the brush tool in its entirety, it is important to clearly understand what a brush is in Photoshop. Brush uses brush presets (brush settings) that are predefined (or user-defined). Brush presets (brush settings) - any brush imprint with certain characteristics (such as size and shape).

In other words, Photoshop brushes are a huge collection of different brushes, each of which has its own imprint shape. Imagine, when you press the imprint of one of the brushes on top of the canvas, its shape is immediately imprinted on it. This is a crude explanation, but it gives a general idea of ​​how the tool works.

Brushes in Photoshop have many other characteristics that make them quite unlike brushes in the real world. By controlling these characteristics, we can create completely new brushes that are unique in their work.

You can create a brush that changes its shape and size while drawing: a brush that scatters in different directions, and even a brush that becomes more and less transparent while creating a stroke. The possibilities are truly endless.

Let's create a quick brush to demonstrate the possibilities.
Create a new 200x200px document with a white background. Select the Brush tool and select the first brush setting in the Brush Preset Picker (activated by clicking the left mouse button on the arrow next to the current brush) in the option bar ( activated).

Go ahead and draw an arbitrary line in the active image area with these settings. Choose the one you would like to draw as the foreground color, position the cursor where you would like to start drawing. Hold down the left mouse button and create a line.

Setting brushes
This brush setting creates a hard line with a size of 1px. We can customize some of the characteristics of this brush to create a completely different effect.
To change the brush setting, you need to go to the Brush Palette (Brush Palette). To open it, go to the menu Window > Brushes (Window> Brushes). Here is a quick overview of the palette.

A - Brush Settings - various settings for the selected brush print.
B - Brush Stroke Preview (Preview of the brush outline) - preview of the current brush outline, how it will look during use.
C - Selected Brush Tip ( Selected Brush Imprint) - the imprint of the currently selected brush.
D - Brush Tip Shapes - List of available brush print shapes.
E - Brush Options (parameters of the brush) - the parameters for the conversion of the currently selected brush. Changes will not be permanent until the brush setting is saved.

In the Brush Tip Shapes settings, the user can select a form from the list of available forms (standard and user-defined).
By clicking on any of the various brush settings on the left, a settings panel will appear, which can be customized according to your preferences.
In the Brush Tip Shape setting, set the brush diameter to 20px. Changing the diameter, you affect the size of the brush.

Now go to Shape Dynamics and set the size jitter setting to 100%. By changing the dynamics of the shape, you adjust the change of the brush imprint during drawing.

Finally , go to Scattering and set the scatter to 300% with count (number) 1.
Scattering affects the placement and number of brush prints.

( if you want to learn more about the Brush tool (Brush), refer to this lesson ).

Eraser tool (Eraser).
We will not go into details of the work of the Eraser tool (Eraser ), simply because you are already quite aware of the work of this tool. What does it mean?
So, like other Photoshop tools, the eraser tool uses brushes that change s ize (size), shape (shape) and hardness (hardness) of the tool. Essentially, the eraser tool is controlled in exactly the same way as the brush tool, only it erases, rather than draws.

Attention! If you erase directly on the “Background” background layer, you erase it with the color selected as the background color. Always check the background color before erasing the background layer.

Paint bucket tool (Fill).
The Paint Bucket tool (Fill ) is used to fill the area with one color. It can be used to fill the selection with a selected foreground color (foreground color) or to fill areas of the image that are similar in color to which you clicked. To use the fill, select the foreground color (foreground color) that you would like to fill, and click somewhere in the active area of ​​the image that you would like to fill.

Gradient tool (Gradient).
The Gradient tool (Gradient) is very similar to the Paint Bucket tool (Fill) in that it fills the entire area or selection with colors. However, instead of filling the area with one color, G radient (Gradient) creates a series of colors that blend into each other.

When you select the G radient (Gradient ) tool, its settings can be changed in the gradient picker ( located in the settings panel). G radient (Gradient) can be created on the active part of the image. To do this, hold down the left mouse button and place it in the direction in which you would like to place it. Release the button where you would like to stop applying the gradient.

There are 5 different gradient styles that can be chosen to create different effects. You can select them in the settings panel.

( For more information about the tool, see here ).

By David Leggett