Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [20]
On-the-fly brush changes
Instead of visiting the Brush Picker every time you want to adjust the size or hardness of a brush, you will often find it is quicker to use the square bracket keys as described in Figures 1.51 and 1.52 to make such on-the-fly changes. Also, if you right mouse-click on the image you are working on, this opens the Brush Preset menu, directly next to the cursor. Click on the brush preset you wish to select and once you start painting, the Brush Preset menu closes (or alternatively, use the key). Note that if you are painting with a Wacom™ stylus you can close this pop-up dialog by lifting the stylus off the tablet and squeezing the double-click button. If you -click or right mouse-click in the image while using a brush tool, this opens the blending mode list shown in Figure 1.53. These blend modes are like rules which govern how the painted pixels are applied to the pixels in the image below. For example, if you paint using the Color mode, you'll only alter the color values in the pixels you are painting.
Figure 1.51 There is no need to visit the Brush or Tool presets each time you want to change the size of a brush. You can use the right square bracket key to make a brush bigger and the left square bracket key to make it smaller.
Figure 1.52 You can combine the square bracket keys with the Shift key on the keyboard. You can use to make a round brush edge harder and use to make a round brush edge softer. Note that this only applies when editing one of the round brush presets.
Figure 1.53 When using any of the paint tools in Photoshop, a -click or right mouse-click opens the Brush Preset menu shown above, while a -click or right mouse-click reveals the brush blending modes list shown on the right.
On-screen brush adjustments
Providing you have the OpenGL option enabled in the Performance preferences, Photoshop offers you on-screen brush adjustments and a HUD (heads up display) Color Picker. If you hold down the keys (Mac), or the key and right-click (PC), dragging to the left makes the brush size smaller and dragging to the right, larger. Also, if you drag upwards this makes a round brush shape softer, while dragging downwards makes a round brush shape harder. Note here how the brush hardness is represented with a quick mask type overlay. If you hold down the keys (Mac), or the keys and right-click (PC), this opens the Heads Up Display Color Picker where, for as long as you have the mouse held down, you can move the cursor over the outer hue wheel or hue strip, to select a desired hue color, and then inside the brightness/saturation square to select the desired saturation and luminosity. The point where you release the mouse selects the new foreground color. Figure 1.54 shows examples of how the paint tool cursor looks for both the on-screen brush size/hardness adjustments and the Hue Wheel HUD Color Picker displays.
Figure 1.54 You can dynamically adjust the brush size and hardness of the painting tool cursors on-screen, or open the Heads Up Display Color Picker using the modifier keys described in the main text (providing OpenGL drawing is enabled). See Chapter 2 for more information on how to select alternative HUD display options.
Non-rotating brushes
If you use the rotate tool to rotate the canvas, Photoshop CS5 now prevents the brushes from rotating too. You can continue to paint with the same brush orientation at all canvas rotation angles.
Brush preview overlay color
If you go to the Photoshop Cursors preferences you can customize the overlay color that's used for the brush preview.
Hue, brightness and saturation
When you use the key combination described here to access the HUD Color Picker, you can hold down the Spacebar to freeze the cursor position.