Overview
There are several UI/UX design tools available and today we talk about the most popular one, Adobe Photoshop.
In this blog, we will cover what brushes are, why they are useful, and how you can start using them in your design. Brushes let you accomplish some pretty cool things and people are interested in learning a little bit more deeply the power of Photoshop’s Brush tool. Every single Photoshop user has dealt with the Brush Tool at least once, but not everyone knows how to explore its full potential.
In this guide, you will learn how to use the brush presets, modify their properties and pressure controls, besides some useful tricks.
What are Photoshop brushes?
At its most basic, the Photoshop brush tool is used for drawing lines and shapes in any color on a layer in your document using strokes. After selecting a brush, you can draw simply by clicking the left mouse button a single time, or by holding it down and dragging your cursor around the page to create multiple marks with a single stroke.
Why are Photoshop brushes useful?
Despite the term “brush”, you can use brushes for much more than just replicating physical media like paints. In fact, brushes can be used for everything from textures and patterns to lighting. The ease of use and versatility of this tool make it a handy resource for both the novice and the expert designer to add depth to your project.
Brushes are used a lot in photo editing from removing blemishes and smoothing skin to dodging, burning, and painting on masks.
Installing Brushes
Installing brushes is a very easy process. Follow these simple step :
- If you don’t have any brushes, you can download free brushes from google or any other different website where you can get free online brushes.
- Download the zip file containing a few other files, one of which is a .ABR brush file.
- You can either drag this .ABR file directly into your Photoshop windows, You can go under Edit > Preset > Preset manager, select Brushes from the dropdown menu, and then add your brushes using the “Load” button.That’s all there is to it. Once your brushes are loaded into photoshop, you hit the better ‘B’ to select your brush tool, and then you can choose from your different brushes using the dropdown in the top toolbar.
How to use Brushes
After you have selected the brush you would like to use, all you have to do is start clicking. As we mentioned above you can use single clicks for a single placement of the brushstroke, or you can hold the mouse button down and drag your cursor around the screen to create some cool effects. If you notice your brush size is too big, or you just don’t quite like the look of the marks it’s creating, you can control the size, opacity, and flow of the brush using the settings in the top toolbar.
For that, you need to go and click on this icon, up in the options menu next to the “bush preset picker”. It will open up the brush options panel.
In this panel at the top of the list of options in “Brush tip shape”, we have the same options as we have seen before in “brush preset picker” such as angle, roundness, hardness, and spacing.
After that, you can start drawing with the basic brushes, something that shows as above image. The basic brushes in Photoshop are good for simple sketching, painting, and shading with the quality of brushing and for photo retouching (burning, dodging, masking, making vignettes, retouching backgrounds, skin, and clothing, swapping heads, working with masks, etc).
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Conclusion
Well, I hope that you have enjoyed this blog and that you’re ready to start working with all that the Photoshop Brush tool (B) offers. As usual, if you have any doubt regarding any step or procedure, don’t hesitate to ask us. And also we invite you to upload your design and share your work with us.