Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [107]
Hiding and showing brush edits
You can use the Preview button in the Camera Raw dialog to toggle showing and hiding all Adjustment brush edits.
Brush settings
Below this are the brush settings. The Size slider adjusts the brush radius, plus you can use the keys to make the brush smaller or larger. It is also possible to resize a brush on screen. If you hold down the key (Mac) or use a right mouse-click (Mac and PC), you can drag to resize the cursor before you start using it to retouch the image. The Feather slider adjusts the softness of the brush and you can also use the keys to make the brush edge softer and to make the brush harder. Note that these settings are reflected in the cursor shape shown in Figure 3.68 . The Flow slider is a bit like an airbrush control. If you select a low Flow setting, you can apply a series of brush strokes that successively build to create a stronger effect. As you brush back and forth with the brush, you will notice how the paint effect gains opacity, and if you are using a pressure-sensitive tablet such as a Wacom™, the flow of the brush strokes is automatically linked to the pen pressure that you apply. The Density slider determines the maximum opacity for the brush. This means that if you have the brush set to 100% Density, the flow of the brush strokes can build to a maximum density of 100%. If on the other hand you reduce the density, this limits the maximum brush opacity to a lower opacity value. For example, if you lower the density and paint over an area that was previously painted at a density of 100%, you can paint with the adjustment brush to reduce the opacity in these areas, and if you reduce the Density to 0%, the adjustment brush acts like an eraser tool.
Figure 3.68 The outer edge of the adjustment brush cursor represents the overall size of the brush, while the inner circle represents the softness (feathering) of the brush relative to the overall brush size.
Adding a new brush effect
We are now ready to start painting. When you click on the image preview, a pin marker is added and the Adjustment Brush panel shows that it is now in Add mode ( Figure 3.69 ). As you start adding successive brush strokes, these are collectively associated with this marker and will continue to be so, until you click on the New button and click to create a new pin marker with a new set of brush strokes. The pin markers therefore provide a tag for identifying groups of brush strokes. You just click on a pin marker whenever you want to add or remove brush strokes, or need to re-edit the brush settings that were applied previously. If you want to hide the markers you can do so by clicking on the Show Pins box to toggle showing/hiding the pins, or use the key shortcut.
Figure 3.69 In this example I added several pin markers, which represent different groups of brush strokes. The one at the top was used to darken the sky and the one that is currently active was used to lighten the park sign with a positive Exposure value.
Editing brush adjustments
To edit a series of brush strokes, just click on an existing pin marker to select it (a black dot appears in the center of the pin). This takes you into the Add mode, where you can add more brush strokes or edit the current brush settings. For example, in Step 2 (opposite), I might have wanted to drag the Exposure slider to darken the selected brush group more. You might also want to erase portions of a brush group, which you can do by clicking on the Erase button at the top of the Adjustment Brush panel, where you can independently edit the brush settings for the Eraser mode (except for the Density slider which is locked at zero). Alternatively, you can hold down the key to temporarily access the adjustment brush in Eraser mode. When you are done