Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Tutorials
Brush Tools / Basic Brush Tools pt. 2
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers / Brush Tools / Basic Brush Tools pt. 2)
You also have to specify how hard or soft you want the brush to be. A hard brush is going to make a discrete edge and a soft one a soft edge. Let's come up here. We've got the harness set at 100 percent. When I draw a line, you can see that the edges are very sharp. If I come and I drag the slider all the way to zero, I use the same size brush, the brush actually appears to be making a smaller line because the edges are very feathered and soft. Similarly, I could opt to use a hardness somewhere in the middle. There are times when you're going to want hard brushes, times for soft brushes and times for in between so you need to know how to make that change and think about what you want the edge of your brush to be. There's also a shortcut that you can use to adjust the hardness if you're really into shortcuts and that is to hold down the Shift Key while you're using the Bracket Keys and that will adjust the hardness or softness of the brush. Most of the time, as I said, you're going to use a somewhat soft brush to create natural-looking transitions. Notice that in the Tool Options Bar, you can also choose the mode but most of the time we're going to leave that normal as it is right now, but occasionally you may need a different mode so that perhaps you only affect the hue or the luminosity or the saturation, et cetera. We'll talk about using these other modes in other movies such as the movie about the Color Replacement Tool. The Opacity Setting determines the opaqueness or transparency of the effect that the brush will apply. At 100 percent, the effect is 100 percent opaque. But at lesser percentages, it's partially transparent. You can set the opacity from the drop-down menu, adjusting the slider or you can use a shortcut of using the number keys. For example, five is 50 percent opaque, one is ten percent opaque, nine is 90 percent opaque. The zero key will return your opacity to 100 percent. For photographic work, you'll leave the flow at a hundred percent except perhaps in a rare creative situation. You can click this icon to access more of the brush controls. Notice that if you click on the brush tip shape, you could also control the size of the brush and the hardness if you chose. I think you'll find it less convenient to set it from here. But notice that there are lots of different shapes of brushes that are available to you for creative work. Most of the time photographers work with round brushes but occasionally when creating unusual edges or borders, one of these other shapes can be helpful. And you can click the icon over here to add even more brush shapes if you choose to append your brushes. If you're working with a pen tablet, such as a Wacom, I recommend clicking on Other Dynamics and then choose Control, Pen Pressure for the opacity jitter. That way the harder you press with your pen, the stronger the effect and that can make working with a layer mask a lot easier as you'll see in movies on the layer mask. Lastly, down here is the Color Picker. By default the foreground color of the brush is set to black and the background to white. You can click this little black and white icon up here to reset the default colors to black and white or you can press the D, as in dog, Key to get back to black and white if your color picker is set to some other color. Because if I click on it, the color picker appears and I might have a different color selected. So to get back to my default colors of black and white, I can click here or the D Key. I can use the double-edged arrow to toggle between black and white as my foreground color or I can use the X Key. Remembering these basic controls will help you whenever you use any of the brush tools.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers |
| Author: | Ellen Anon |
| SKU: | 34036 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-74-2 |
| Release Date: | 2009-09-23 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 112 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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