Photoshop brushes can be intimidating to use for the first time. First, you don’t know where to go to download them. I would suggest BittBox, Brusheezy and Obsidian Dawn for starters. But then once you get to those sites, there is an overwhelming amount of brushes to look through!

Experiment with Defaults Instead

Well, it’s fun to start looking through all these brushes other people have made, but what about exploring the ones that come installed with Photoshop? There are so many things you can do with those that won’t require wading through pages of brushes from other people!

Navigate to the Brushes Palette (usually in the default Quick Palette tabs in the top right of the program window). If you can’t find the Brushes Palette, go to Window>Brushes, or hit F5. As silly as it may sound, if everything is greyed out in the Brushes Palette, remember to have the Brush Tool (B) selected!

Brush Tip Shape

There are some great options just here on the first tab. Besides choosing the brush you want to use, you can adjust the Diameter (but be careful about going larger than the brush was made for because it will get pixilated!), the Hardness slider that controls how fuzzy the edges of the brush are and the Spacing Slider which is a lot of fun! From the Spacing Slider alone you can achieve effects you didn’t know were easily possible in Photoshop, like a dotted boarder. Drag the Spacing Slider out to 200% and voila! Instant dotted boarder!

For the following image examples, I’ll be sticking to one brush, the Hard Round 13 px, so that you can easily see the effects each of these options has on it. The great thing about the Brush Palette is you can see the effects of changing the sliders and Control at the bottom. Also note that for many of the options within these tabs, you do not have to adjust the sliders, you can simply set the Control (to Pen Pressure for example).

Shape Dynamics

Shape Dynamics are useful when you’re looking for a hand-drawn quality because it varies the thick and thin nature of the brush strokes. If you set the Size Jitter Control to Pen Pressure you will achieve this result, provided you have a pen tablet, like the Wacom Intuos3(I highly recommend it!). Also consider experimenting with Angle and Roundness Jitter if your tablet supports it.

Scattering

Scattering can be a lot of fun and there is a wide range of effects here. If you just deal with the Scatter Slider and Control, you can simulate a particle effect with the default round brush. This is also an excellent place to go for more random, organic feel for paint brushes or for creating textures.

Texture

I don’t use the texture options all that often. In addition to choosing a texture, also try playing with the Mode drop down options. These are exactly like the layer style modes, if you’ve ever used those, and can change the look of the texture rather dramatically. Texture options act like a layer mask because the darker the area, the more transparent (see-through). I would suggest playing with the Clouds texture as a starting point. This would be a great way to add a subtle amount of texture to an object.

Dual Brush

Dual Brush allows you to use the stroke shape of the brush you choose from the Brush Tip Shape tab (first tab) and the texture of a second brush. Think of the first brush stroke as a mask for the second brush. This is another way to achieve a textured look. Spacing (use the slider on this tab to affect the “texture” brush) is important here so you can see the texture of the second brush. Also note that this tab has Modes that you can change to get different effects.

Color Dynamics

Color Dynamics is a fun one to experiment with. I like to use it when painting, again, to achieve the more organic feel of a non-digital medium. It works best with a non-round brush (as you can see above the round brush looks rather silly), but for the sake of the experiment, we’re sticking with the Soft Round 13 px. The last two tabs didn’t have Pen Pressure controls, but now we’re back to one that does. The examples that fade from one color to another are using the Control set to Pen Pressure. I usually just play around with the Foreground/Background Jitter (first slider), without the Control. For the colors, I choose a similar background color so that it’s not too different than the foreground. I love the effect this has, particularly for watercolor looks.

Other Dynamics

This is probably my most used default alteration. I use the Wacom Intuos3 quite frequently when working in Photoshop and whether I’m masking or painting, I like to turn the Other Dynamics option on and set the Opacity Jitter Control to Pen Pressure.

If you’re painting, you can also explore using the Opacity Jitter slider to vary the opacity. This gives the painting a more realistic look; it’s not so perfect. I’m not 100% sure about the difference between Opacity and Flow, but above is an example of the same pressure (light to heavy to light) with only Opacity turn to Pen Pressure on top and only Flow with the control to Pen Pressure on the bottom. It looks to me like Flow fades the color on the sides, beginning and end. The flow example reminds me of what a felt-tip pen looks like when it’s running out of ink. I know that Flow stands for the amount of ink/paint, but I struggle to define exactly what it does. Can you explain it to us?

Since this got so long, I’ll go over some preset brushes that I’ve created by experimenting with these options and I’ll also show you the options at the bottom of the Brush Palette. Make sure to subscribe to the Creative Curio feed (it’s free!) so you don’t miss it! And if you’re new here, why not check out the weekly article on how I’m doing on my blog redesign! We’re in week 3 now, so catch up with week 1 and week 2.

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