Photoshop 101 - The Brush Tool

The brush tool is one of Photoshop's most basic tools allowing you to draw freehand shapes and lines. The tool allows precision and correction abilities as well as some tricks using brushes.

Brush Tool Basics

There are three stages to using the brush tool:

Select a colour from the colour picker
Choose a brush from the brush menu in the top left hand side
Select a mode for the brush you are using

There are many different brushes to choose from and you can also create your own. The mode for the brush allows the line you draw to behave differently. It is worth playing with these as there are some useful tools here and it is good to familiarise yourself with them. After that it is a case of clicking on the screen for some good old fashioned drawing by hand.

A drawing example

In this quick example I'm going to draw an icon of an old person sitting down. I select the brush tool, choose a size of 13px and set the mode to Normal. Then I simply draw. Watch the video below to see it in action. Note how holding the shift button creates a straight line. If you are unhappy with your line click Apple + Z (CTRL + Z on Windows) to remove it.

The Pencil Tool

I personally use the Pencil Tool heavily. There are times when you will need to correct things by eye or simply add a highlight to a grahpic. The Pencil Tool is identical to the Brush Tool other than that the Pencil tool draws with an aliased, or rough edge. If you are a fan of Pixel Art then it is likely that you will love this tool.

The Color Replacement Tool

The Color Replacment is a real gem of a tool allowing you to easily switch out sections of colour in a photograph or image. In this excellent photo by antjeverena I am going to switch the red to purple. With the Color Replacement Tool this is easy. Select a large brush - about 30px is good. Set the mode to Color, Limits to Contiguous and Tolerance to 30%. Remember to select the purple you want from the colour palette and then draw over the area you want to change. Easy!