To edit the shape of the currently selected brush, click the brush icon in the Options bar to display the brush options shown in Figure 5-17. (Be sure to click the icon and not the adjacent triangle; otherwise, you display the Brush palette.) After you select your brush settings, press Enter, click an empty area of the program window, or just begin working with the tool to close the dialog box. If you change your mind and decide to leave the brush alone, press Esc or click the brush icon again to close the dialog box.
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Figure 5-17: To change the size, shape, and hardness of the current brush, click its icon in the Options bar.
If you want to create a new brush shape, choose New Brush from the palette menu or click an empty brush slot in the palette. Photoshop displays the New Brush dia- log box, which is just like the dialog box in Figure 5-17 except that it has a title bar.
Whether you’re editing an existing brush or creating a new one, you have the following options at your disposal:
✦Name: You now can give your custom brushes a name to help you keep track of them. If you don’t enter a name, Photoshop labels the brushes Brush 1, Brush 2, and so on. If you later want to rename a brush, just double-click its icon in the Brush drop-down palette.
✦Diameter:This option determines the width of the brush shape. If the brush shape is elliptical instead of circular, the Diameter value determines the longest dimension. You can enter any value from 1 to 999 pixels. Brush shapes with diameters of 30 pixels or higher are too large to display accurately in the Brush drop-down palette and instead appear as circles with inset Diameter values.
✦Hardness:Except when you use the pencil tool, brushes are always antialiased.
You can further soften the edges of a brush, however, by dragging the Hardness slider bar away from 100 percent. The softest setting, 0 percent, gradually tapers the brush from a single solid color pixel at its center to a ring of trans- parent pixels around the brush’s perimeter. Figure 5-18 demonstrates how low Hardness percentages expand the size of a 100-pixel brush beyond the Diameter value (as demonstrated by the examples set against black). Even a 100-percent hard brush shape expands slightly because it is antialiased. The Hardness set- ting is ignored when you use the pencil tool.
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Figure 5-18: A 100-pixel diameter brush shown as it appears when set to a variety of Hardness percentages.
I changed the background pixels below from white to black so that you can see the actual diameter of each brush shape. The tick marks indicate 10-pixel increments.
✦Spacing:The Spacing option controls how frequently a tool affects an image as you drag, measured as a percentage of the brush shape. Suppose the Diameter of a brush shape is 12 pixels and the Spacing is set to 25 percent (the setting for all default brush shapes). For every 3 pixels (25 percent of 12 pixels) you drag with the paintbrush tool, Photoshop lays down a 12-pixel wide spot of color. A Spacing of 1 percent provides the most coverage but may also slow down the performance of the tool. If you deselect the Spacing check box, the effect of the tool is wholly dependent on the speed at which you drag; this can be useful for creating splotchy or oscillating lines. Figure 5-19 shows examples.
✦Angle:This option enables you to pivot a brush shape on its axes. Unless the brush is elliptical, though, this won’t make a difference in the appearance of the brush shape.
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Figure 5-19: Examples of lines drawn with different brush Spacing values. Gaps or ridges generally begin to appear when the Spacing value exceeds 30 percent. The final line was created by turning off the Spacing option.
✦Roundness:Enter a value of less than 100 percent into the Roundness option to create an elliptical brush shape. The value measures the width of the brush as a percentage of its height, so a Roundness value of 5 percent results in a long, skinny brush shape.
You can adjust the angle of the brush dynamically by dragging the gray arrow inside the box to the left of the Angle and Roundness options. Drag the han- dles on either side of the black circle to make the brush shape elliptical, as demonstrated in Figure 5-20. And try this trick: Click anywhere in the white box to move the arrow to that point.
I heartily recommend that you take a few moments soon to experiment at length with the available brush options. By combining paint and edit tools with one or more specialized brush shapes, you can achieve artistic effects unlike anything permitted by traditional techniques. Starting with a PhotoDisc image lightened and filtered to serve as a template, I painted Figure 5-21 using the flat, 45-pixel brush shape shown in the dialog box. No other brush shape or special effect was applied.
Think of what you can accomplish if you don’t limit yourself as ridiculously as I did.
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Figure 5-20: Drag the gray arrow or the black handles to change the angle or the roundness of a brush, respectively.
The Angle and Roundness values update automatically, as does the preview of the brush in the lower-right corner of the dialog box.
Figure 5-21: Just to show off, I painted over a scanned image with the paintbrush tool, using the brush shape shown in the dialog box at the top.
After you edit a brush, you can click the new brush icon, labeled in Figure 5-17, to save it as a new brush. Photoshop stores the brush as part of your program prefer- ences so that it’s preserved between editing sessions. Note that if you delete the preferences file (discussed in Chapter 2), you lose your custom brushes.