Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [21]
Brush panel
Over in the Brush panel, if you click on the Brush Presets button (circled in Figure 1.56) this opens the Brush Presets panel listing the same brush presets list as shown in Figure 1.50. You can then append or replace these brush presets by going to the panel fly-out menu shown below and selecting a new brush settings group from the list.
So far we have looked at the Brush options that are used to determine the brush shape and size, but if you click on any of the brush attribute settings shown in Figure 1.56, the brush presets list changes to reveal the individual brush attribute options (see Figure 1.57). The brush attributes include things like how the opacity of the brush is applied when painting, or the smoothness of the brush. You can therefore start by selecting an existing brush preset, modify it, as in the Figure 1.55 example, and then click on the Create new brush button at the bottom to define this as a new custom brush preset setting.
Figure 1.56 If you open the Brushes panel, the default panel setting shows an Expanded View and lists the various brush presets in the right-hand section of the panel. If you click on any of the brush attributes in the list on the left, the right-hand section changes to reveal the various options settings (see Figure 1.57). If you open or go to the Brush Presets panel menu, you can select any of the brush settings listed here, which will then ask if you want to Append or Replace the current list of presets.
Figure 1.57 If you click on a brush attribute setting in the list on the left, the right-hand side of the panel display the options that are associated with each attribute. Specific brush panel settings can be locked by clicking on the Lock buttons.
Brush panel options
The following notes and tips on working with the Brush panel will apply to most, but not all, of the painting tools. To create your own custom brush preset settings click on any of the brush attribute items that are listed on the left-hand side of the panel.
Airbrush mode
If you are looking for the airbrush tool you'll find there is an Airbrush mode button in the Options bar for most of the paint tools.
The Jitter controls introduce some randomness into the brush dynamics behavior. For example, increasing the Opacity Jitter means that the opacity will respond according to how much pen pressure is applied and there is a built-in random fluctuation to the opacity that varies more and more as the jitter value is increased. Meanwhile, the Flow Jitter setting governs the speed at which the paint is applied. To understand how the brush flow dynamics work, try selecting a brush and quickly paint a series of brush strokes at a low and then a high flow rate. When the flow rate is low, less paint is applied, but as you increase the flow setting more paint is applied. Other tools like the dodge and burn toning tools use the terms Exposure and Strength, but these essentially have the same meaning as the opacity controls. The Shape Dynamics can be adjusted to introduce jitter into the size angle and roundness of the brush and the scattering controls enable you to produce broad, sweeping brush strokes with a random scatter, while the Color Dynamics let you introduce random color variation to the paint color. The Foreground/Background color control that's included in this section lets you vary the paint color between the foreground and background color, according to how much pressure is applied (see Figure 1.55). The Dual Brush and Texture Dynamics can introduce texture and more interactive complexity to the brush texture (it is worth experimenting with the Scale control in the Dual Brush options) and the Texture Dynamics can utilize different blending modes to produce different paint effects. The new Transfer Dynamics allow you to adjust the dynamics for the build-up of the brush strokes - this relates particularly to the new ability to paint using