Using the brush or pencil tools

Use the brush tool to paint with soft or hard strokes of color and to paint with special effects such as strokes that fade out. Use the pencil tool to paint hard-edged lines of color.

To use a painting tool:

1. Select a color to paint by setting the foreground color. (See Selecting foreground and background colors.)
2. Select the brush tool or pencil tool .
3. Click the inverted arrow next to the brush sample, choose a brush category from the Brushes pop-up menu, and then select a brush thumbnail. To learn more about using the brush presets, see Using pop-up palettes.
4. To set the brush size in the options bar, drag the Size pop-up slider or enter a size in the text box.
5. Choose a blending mode to control how painting affects existing pixels in the image. (See Selecting a blending mode.)
6. To set the color opacity, drag the pop-up slider or enter an opacity value. (See Specifying opacity, strength, exposure, or flow.)
7. Set additional tool-specific options:
• For the brush tool, select airbrush to enable airbrush capabilities. This option applies gradual tones to an image, simulating traditional airbrush techniques. Click the More Options button to specify additional options. (See Specifying brush dynamics.)
• For the pencil tool, select Auto Erase to paint the background color over areas containing the foreground color.
8. Drag in the image to paint.

To draw a straight line with a painting tool, click a starting point in the image. Then hold down Shift and click an ending point.