Use Brushes in Photoshop CS6
Edited by Freya, Amanda, Eng
You're watching VisiHow. In this video, I'm going to show you how you can use the brush tool in Photoshop CS6 in Windows 7. To begin, you should have Photoshop CS6 open, and then have either a new document or an existing document open. I've shown you how to do this in other tutorials. I have a new document here with a blank canvas. It's called "Untitled 1", as indicated by the tab on the left-hand side. Underneath this, we have a toolbar.
Steps
- 1Find the paintbrush icon in the toolbar that runs down the left-hand side of the program. Click on the paintbrush.
Advertisement - 2Look along the top of the screen, beneath the navigation bar. Note that the options changed when we clicked on the paintbrush icon.
Advertisement - 3Click, hold, and drag on the canvas to draw. Release and repeat as needed. We will draw a smiley face. We can see generally what the brush is able to produce on the settings it has.
- 4Right-click anywhere on the canvas. This brings up a menu with options and settings.
- 5Move the scroller under "Size". This changes the size of the brush. As we pull the scroller, the numbers in the adjacent box are changing. We can also just click in that box and type a number.
- 6Click off the options menu to close it.
- 7Click and drag to test the new brush size. It makes quite a difference.
- 8Right-click on the canvas again. Let's edit the "Hardness".
- 9Drag the slider under "Hardness" or click in the adjacent field and type a number. We will set ours to "100%".
- 10Click off the options menu and test the brush again. Now that the "Hardness" is high, the edges are no longer fuzzy.
- 11Right-click on the canvas once more. We will set our "Hardness" a bit lower.
- 12Click on an image to select a different brush style. We generally keep to the few brushes along the top row. We use either a soft brush or a hard brush. We also have these interesting ones. There are quite a lot to choose from. We can scroll down to see more. When we click on one that has an effect, a little preview window will pop up on the left to illustrate the kind of brush tip it is.
- 13Click off the options menu and test a brush tip. With this one, we could maybe draw hair or something. The brush tips are quite interesting. They take some practice, but we can get really interesting effects with them.
- 14Right-click on the canvas and select a new brush tip to test.
- 15Click and drag on the canvas to try it out. This one is more like a pen.
- 16Continue choosing brush tips and testing them. Experiment.
- 17Right-click to bring up the options menu again.
- 18Click on a textured brush tip.
- 19Use the slider to make the brush tip bigger. This will help us see the texture.
- 20Click or click and drag on the canvas to test the textured brush tip. We are clicking but not dragging, creating a sort of stamping effect. We could also add brushes to Photoshop, which we will show in another tutorial. When we do, they will be added to the bottom of the options menu that we access by right-clicking on the canvas when the brush tool is selected.
- 21Look at the options along the top that run beneath the navigation bar.
- 22Click the downward-pointing arrow next to the icon of a paintbrush. Here, we can change the brush type.
- 23Click the downward-pointing arrow next to the icon of the brush tip. It's the next icon over, moving from left to right. This opens the same menu that we have been opening by right-clicking on the canvas. We can change the nib or brush tip, as well as the size and hardness. We find the right-click method a little bit more practical when we're trying to do something.
- 24Click on the dropdown menu next to the word "Mode". The default is "Normal". Click any mode in the dropdown menu to change it.
- 25Click the colored square at the bottom of the left-hand toolbar. It will be the same color as the paint we've been using with the brush. Ours is black.
- 26Click a different color. We will choose red. This will allow us to continue experimenting, and our new lines will show up better.
- 27Right-click on the canvas and increase the size.
- 28Click on the dropdown menu next to "Mode" and choose one to test. We will try "Color Dodge".
- 29Click and drag on the canvas to test the brush with the selected tip, size, and hardness, in the mode selected. It can be quite interesting. Even though this is on the same layer, it's actually drawing behind what was already on the canvas.
- 30Select a different mode. We will try "Vivid Light".
- 31Test the brush in the new mode. Depending on what we're going for, or what image we're using to edit or draw over, we can get some really fun effects using modes.
- 32Continue experimenting. We would recommend becoming familiar with modes, which we have mentioned in some of our other tutorials as well. We can get some very interesting results by experimenting.
- 33This is a VisiHow video. I've just shown you how you can use the brush tool in Photoshop CS6 in Windows 7. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them to the section below, and we'll do our best to get back to you.
Video: Use Brushes in Photoshop CS6
If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.
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Categories : Software
Recent edits by: Amanda, Freya
