Brushes

Every time you select a Paint tool a dialog is displayed with an array of brushes. Although the same brushes are common to each of the Paint tools, the dialogs in which the brushes are displayed are slightly different from one another, depending on the particular tool selected.

image\ppBrushes.gif

The brushes vary in size, shape and solidity, and determine how quickly color is applied, toned or erased, and over how large an area. This allows you to work, on the one hand, very quickly with large uniform patches of color, and, on the other hand, to concentrate on the details in a small area of an image. You can switch between brushes with ease.

The two main tools for painting are Pencil and Paintbrush (see Paint Tools). Whenever you choose a paint tool, you have the option to choose a brush through which the paint tool can be applied. If you do not specifically select a brush, the last brush used by the particular paint tool remains selected. (Pencil produces a "harder" outline than Paintbrush, which employs a technique called "dithering" to soften the edges of a painted shape.)

Whenever you select a brush its name and the number of pixels in the brush shape are displayed above the "Brushes" box. For instance, one of the squares has this attached information: Square <10, 10>. This means that the selected shape is a square that is 10 pixels by 10 pixels. Another option is: Circle, radius = 17 <35, 35>, for a circle with radius 17 pixels, and vertical and horizontal axes through the center of the circle i.e. the diameter, of 35 and 35 pixels respectively.

There are 53 standard brush styles in all. You can create and edit your own brushes by right-clicking in the "Brushes" dialog and selecting an option to open up the "Brush Options" dialog. Alternatively, select the Brush Editor from the Tools menu, where there is a full set of tools for editing and creating brushes. (See Brush Editor)

The effect of applying any Paint tool and therefore the particular brush style used with a tool, is to change the color value of every pixel that comes into contact with the brush. Three concepts relating to the application of Paint tools need to be understood:

Base color: the pixel color before the brush is applied.

Blend color: the color you wish to apply.

Resultant color: the color after the blend color has been combined with the base color using a particular brush style.

These notions are important in understanding the way the various Brush modes work (see Brush modes), that is the way the applied color blends with the already existing color. The default value for the blending mode is Normal, as you can see in the Mode box.

Another important concept when selecting a brush style and blend mode is that of opacity, which is set in the Opacity box. If an applied brushstroke has opacity of 100% and the mode is set at Normal, the brushstroke will completely over-paint any color that it comes into contact with. The lower the opacity the more transparent or "see-through" the applied color will be, hence enabling you to see through to the colors beneath. Obviously opacity is a matter of degree and it is certainly worth experimenting with it to understand its full effect.

See:

Brush Editor