{"id":13017,"date":"2024-01-28T09:35:35","date_gmt":"2024-01-28T17:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/us\/?p=13017"},"modified":"2025-02-28T09:32:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T17:32:35","slug":"guide-to-photoshop-brushes-pt-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/guide-to-photoshop-brushes-pt-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The complete guide to Adobe Photoshop brushes, Part 1: The toolbar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you're just getting into creating digital art with Adobe Photoshop<\/a> and your Wacom device, or have been using them for a while but want to deepen your understanding of how Photoshop works so you can level up your artistic practice, this guide is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over this four-part series, you'll learn everything you need to know about Adobe Photoshop Brushes. From the basics, including the Photoshop toolbar and how brushes work, to the different kinds of brushes available, to how to manipulate them and change their settings for different results, and finally to creating your own custom brushes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. The Toolbar<\/strong> (You are here)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Types of Brushes<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Brush Settings Panel<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Making Your Own Brushes<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    This article is Part 1, which will walk you through the most basic knowledge of brushes and create a strong foundation. The table of contents above will be updated as each part publishes. Let\u2019s start with the most basic topic of all:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What is a brush?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

    Photoshop imitates the fundamentals of traditional media by taking a single image -- called a Brush Tip<\/strong> -- and replicating it, usually by layering it over itself to create the illusion of a single stroke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    \"Photoshop<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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    Clicking the brush icon, or pressing B (if you still have the default hotkeys), will open up the Brush Options Toolbar. From there, can assign the tip a color with the Color Picker -- and so much more. The Brush Options toolbar lets you change all of your brush tip settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Brush options toolbar<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

    Here's what the Brush Options Toolbar looks like in Photoshop 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Yours may look slightly different if you have an different version of Photoshop, but everything should be almost exactly the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Tool presets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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    This is the multi-tool shortcut menu. If there are certain tools you use often with the same settings, you can save them here. Click here<\/a> to watch a video from Adobe that explains in depth how this works.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    2. Brush preset picker<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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    This is where you\u2019ll do most of your brush selection and adjustment on-the-fly while you're drawing or painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A: Angle and roundness<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    This adjusts the tilt direction and height-to-width ratio of the brush tip. You change the angle by rotating the arrow, and the roundness by dragging the anchor points in or out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    B: Size<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Adjusts the size of the brush tip. There are also hotkeys for doing this -- by default it's the bracket keys or by holding Alt\/Option and dragging. Most users of Wacom devices use pressure sensitivity to adjust brush tip size, however -- more on that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    C: Hardness<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    For round brushes only:<\/strong> This increases or decreases the sharpness of the tip\u2019s edges. Hard brushes, especially at high flow, create a drawing <\/em>effect, whereas soft ones, especially at low flow, are best for smooth blending<\/em>. You can also control it with shift + brackets if you have default hotkeys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    D: Settings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The menu behind this gear has changed a lot in recent versions of Photoshop. Here are the current ones for 2022:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"Photoshop<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Some of these are just toggles for the preset picker. Here's a breakdown of the rest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    1. New Brush Preset: <\/strong>See above.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. New Brush Group<\/strong>: Creates a new folder for sorting brushes.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Rename Brush: <\/strong>Use this to name brushes so you can search by name and find them easily.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. Delete Brush\/Delete Group: <\/strong>If you want to be safe, make sure you back your folder up as an ABR first.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    5. Append Default Brushes<\/strong>: This adds the default brushes onto the end of your brush panel.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    6. Import Brushes: <\/strong>This loads up a brush set you\u2019ve downloaded to your hard drive. Brushes are saved as ABR files, each of which is a group containing one or more brushes Imported brushes will be appended to your brush panel as well.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    7. Export Selected Brushes: <\/strong>If you select a handful of brushes or a folder, this will pack them into an ABR so you can back them up.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    8. Get More Brushes: <\/strong>This takes you to Adobe\u2019s brush packs page. They have a huge variety of free options, but it's recommended that you learn more about the basics first.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    9. Converted Legacy Tool Presets: <\/strong>This one\u2019s not helpfully named, but it\u2019s the same thing as the legacy brushes option below, except it imports the default tool presets into the Presets window.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    10. Legacy Brushes: <\/strong>This appends all the default brushes from previous versions of Photoshop, giving you about a hundred times more than 2022\u2019s defaults. Once again, it's recommended that you hold off until you have a little more experience.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      E: New Brush Preset<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      We\u2019ll be covering custom brushes in Part 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      F: Brush Picker<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      This is where you choose a brush. Photoshop 2022 comes with just four folders of default brushes, most made by Kyle T. Webster: General brushes<\/strong>, which are your Round Brushes; Dry Media Brushes<\/strong>, your pencils and charcoals; Wet Media Brushes,<\/strong> your paints and inks; and Special Effect Brushes<\/strong>, which are actually a mix of splatter and texture brushes. But you can add more with the Legacy Brushes option in the settings menu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      G: Slider<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      This controls the size of the preview in the brush picker. Older versions of Photoshop will have a Reset Brushes<\/strong> option that returns the panel to its default appearance. They took that away, so if you want the panel back to default for a fresh start, you\u2019ll have to highlight all the folders you want to remove with Shift, then Right Click > Delete Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      3. Painting Mode<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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      Just like layers, brushes have blending modes. \"The blending mode \u2026 controls how pixels in the image are affected by a painting or editing tool,\u201d according to Adobe in this article<\/a>, which goes into depth on how this works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The main difference between layer and brush modes is that the latter are destructive, meaning once they\u2019re applied, you can\u2019t change them. They can be more convenient to change dynamically, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Brushes have two secret modes layers don\u2019t, however:<\/p>\n\n\n\n