How to Use the Brush Tool in Photoshop

The way the Brush Tool works is by adding a shaped mark to a layer. If you keep pressing the mouse button or the pen on a tablet, further marks are added until you let off the pressure, forming a stroke. 

The Brush Tool in Photoshop has five primary settings: Brush hardness, Brush list/settings, Blending modes, Brush opacity, and Brush flow. Before using the advanced settings, you must comprehend those ideas, which I will talk about later in the tutorial. 

One of the most important painting tools in Photoshop is the Brush Tool. It applies color using strokes, just like a conventional drawing tool. It is situated in the default toolbar, or you can use the brush keyboard shortcut B.

I have over five years of Adobe Photoshop experience and am Adobe Photoshop certified. In this article, I’ll teach you how to use the brush tool in Adobe Photoshop. 

Key Takeaways

• The brush tool has many different uses when it comes to editing.
• Take advantage of using the brush tool shortcuts. It will come in handy.

How to Use the Brush Tool Settings in Photoshop

Using the brush tool is easy, but setting up the right brush to draw is more complicated. I’m going to show you how to use brushes in Photoshop and change the brush tool settings so that you can customize the perfect brush for your project. 

Find the Brush tool in the Tools panel, select it, and then click and drag it to paint in the document window. The Brush tool can be chosen at any moment by using the B key on your keyboard.

We must be aware of a few possibilities the brush tool offers in order to use it effectively in our artwork. The figure below shows various options, and we can read about each one individually.

How to Change Brush Size in Photoshop

Using this feature of the brush tool, we can adjust the brush size to suit our demands. Click the brush picker drop-down button or just right-click the picture or document to alter the brush size. 

You can either enter the required number in the input box or use the provided slider to change the size of the brush. There is a shortcut for changing the brush size, which is to utilize the keyboard’s pair of brackets for increasing ] and decreasing [. 

Brush Hardness

Brush hardness refers to the intensity of the brush we use to paint; a harder brush would have sharp edges, whilst a softer brush will have smooth edges. The second slider, titled Hardness, can be found in the same drop-down as above. 

From there, we may adjust the bristles of our brush.

Photoshop Brush Settings

We may also see a list of several brush types in the same drop-down. Photoshop comes with a variety of brushes that we can choose from based on our needs along with the settings for the brushes. 

Here, we can set up some extra options for our brushes and fiddle around with them to produce excellent outcomes for our artwork

Blending mode

In Photoshop, blending mode covers a fairly broad area, but we may also see it here in the brush tool choice. So, in essence, the blending between two different brush strokes is changed by the blend mode. 

We have a few blending options in the drop-down menu for blend mode, which we can select based on our needs.

Brush Opacity 

Opacity enables us to manage how visible our brushstrokes are. We can adjust the brush opacity slider from 0% to 100%. Poor opacity indicates low visibility, whereas high opacity indicates high visibility.

Brush Flow 

The flow of the brush is yet another crucial aspect of brushes. It simply refers to how many colors can flow while painting. To avoid that, we can have a low flow value where the intensity of our color flow will be low and we can have a better outcome. If it is high, more color flows through our brush, where it could get messy. Additionally, the flow has values ranging from 0% to 100%, or we can utilize a slider.

Bonus Tips

• It’s a good idea to get acquainted with these 7 Brush tools since they are all equally as important. 
• Look through the brushes and pick a few that might be fun for you! See what you can achieve with them!

Final Thoughts

The potential of Photoshop’s Brush tool has only just begun to be explored. This tutorial’s goal is to present the fundamentals of the Brush tool so that anyone new to picture editing may get started without feeling intimidated by more complex settings and approaches. 

You can experiment with more complex methods after you’re comfortable using the Brush tool and these fundamentals. 

Any questions about using the brush tool in Photoshop? Leave a comment and let me know.

Cara fell in love with photography circa 2014 and has been exploring all corners of the imagery world ever since. When she felt limited by Lightroom, she dove headfirst into Photoshop to learn how to create the images she wanted.