The most common tool, used for painting in the canvas. Can be set to have soft edges (airbrush) or hard edges. In Adobe Photoshop 7.0, these brushes can be modified using the brush engine.

To reach this tool just press the keyboard button "B".


ALT + Mouseclick
Quick eyedropper mode: Hold down ALT and click on the painting to pick the color beneath and use it as the current drawing color. Very handy! I think I use this function the most when painting.

SPACEBAR
Move in canvas: Hold down the SPACEBAR when using the brush tool to use the Hand Tool and you can then move on the canvas. When you release the SPACEBAR you can continue painting. Good to use when working on details zoomed in.

SHIFT
Draw straight lines: If you hold down SHIFT while painting your brush strokes will become vertical or horicontal straight lines.

SHIFT + mouseclick
Draw more specific lines: If you hold SHIFT and click in the canvas the line will go from point A to next click point. This is realy good for doing perspective layouts. See example image here:




Opacity
Opacity defines how much color to paint with and how much of the background to shine through. 50% will paint with half the color you choose and let the background be 50% visible.

While using the brush tool you can set the opacity using following options:

To use 45% in opacity you first click 4 and directly after a 5.






. and , (semicolon and dot)
Select brush
There also is a keyboard shortcut for choosing brushes. You can go forward and backwards in the brush list. I usually paint with the default brushes. They come in sizes from 1 pixel to 300 pixels. So i'ts a quick way to increase and decrease size of brush.


[ and ]
Increase and Decrease brush size
Using these keys to change the size of the current brush.
Note: I haven't been able to use this on my swedish keyboard, if you have any information or tips on this, please contact me.


Exact brushes
Most artists want to see the exact size of the brush when you are painting. This is not turned on by default. To change this, go to "Edit" in the menu. Then choose "Preferences" and "Display and Cursors". Set the settings for the cursors to look like in the image below.

  
 

Note: If you can't find this tool do the following. See if you find the tools you have here to the left. They are called the "Dodge Tool" and the "Sponge Tool". You see the little arrow in the right bottom corner. If you hold down the mousebutton on these tools with an arrow a list of other tools folds out. All of the tools in the list have the same keyboard shortcuts, you can choose the next tool by holding down SHIFT and the tools shortcut. For example: SHIFT+O to change between Dodge, Burn and the Sponge tool.

ALT + mouseclick
Dodge mode: Hold down ALT and use the burn tool as usual, but when holding down ALT it will dodge the painting instead of burning. In other words, holding down ALT will switch to lightening the image instead of darkening.

Using the Burn tool to add basic depth and shadows.
When I paint my paintings i usually start with a sketch, then I do a quick base coloring. After that begins texturing, first step I do when I texturize is to add shadows. I add shadows using the Burn tool.




Darkening painted areas.
As I continued working on my painting Skullbridge i needed to add more contrast and mood to the painting. By darkening some areas my overal feeling changed greatly. Below you can see a before and after picture. It makes a great difference.



I usually add details that have a brighter color on top of the parts i just darkened. This will make the details "pop" out and give depth.
 

TIP - Don't undo faulty brushstrokes!
If you are painting a sketch or an outline where you for example needs to draw a line, but you don't manage to get it correct - don't erase or undo your faulty brushstrokes (apply this only if you are painting on a transparent background). Instead have the faulty stroke visible and draw the new on top over the old one. Then you can more easily avoid doing the same mistake again.

When you have a correct brushstroke, use the eraser tool to remove the faulty one. If you are used to layers, why not draw the new stroke on a seperate layer. Then it's just to remove the other layer.
 

Hides all dialogs and windows in Photoshop. Leaving an empty work-space where you can work with a big canvas without beeing distracted.

Note. You can still paint on this canvas! If you already know shortcuts for the most used tools then it should be a breeze.

 

Hides all dialogs and windows except the toolbox and the tool setting window. Good for quickly hiding the layer, history, info window and still be able to edit and paint on your painting.

 

Click "F" once to switch to full screen mode with menus. It will hide all open files and canvases, centering the current selection canvas - and the workspace around the canvas will be a grey color.

Click "F" one more time to go from full screen mode with menus to a complete full screen mode without menus. The workspace will now be black. This mode combined with "TAB" will let you paint without any distraction only showing the canvas. - This is how I paint. Try it if you haven't already and see the advantages!

 

When working in full screen mode you can force the menu to be hidden or reappear again by pressing "SHIFT+F". If the menus are hidden a little arrow will come on the top part of the toolbox. Clicking on this arrow will bring up the menu.

 

In Adobe Photoshop 7 come some partly annoying functions such as the slices. Although they can be very useful for a web designer such as myself, they become a burden for a painter.

"CTRL+H" will hide all "Extras" such as slices, guides, audio, notes selections and so on. If you press "CTRL+H" while these are hidden they will become visible once again. When starting on a new painting I always hide these elements directly.

 

"CTRL+R" will hide or show rulers to the painting. Rulers can be a great tool when doing perspectives and web designs. If you click on the ruler and drag out to the canvas a guideline will be created.

Using the move tool these guides can be moved or deleted. To delete a guide just drag it to the ruler or outside the canvas. If you just paint you usually don't need the rulers to be visible.

Shortcut for zooming in on the painting. Zooming is useful for adding details. When zoomed you can navigate on the canvas using the hand tool. A shortcut for this when your are painting is to hold down the SPACEBAR.

 

Shortcut for zooming out on the painting. When working on paintings for print, the size often increases to severeal thousand pixels in both height and width. It can be practical to paint in 25%, or 50% on a 5000 pixel big painting. When working in zoomed out mode the painting looks best in 12.5%, 25% and 50%.

 

This zooms in on the painting and increases the canvas window according to the zoom.

 

This zooms out on the painting and decreases the canvas window according to the zoom.

 

Most new mouses have a scroll wheel attached to itself. Some of these (most Microsoft and Logitech mouses) can be used as a zoom shortcut in Photoshop. Scroll the wheel up to zoom in on the painting.

 

Very useful :) Poor traditional artists, but when you start getting used to painting and you are getting good you don't use this feature as much as a beginner. Instead of undoing every missplaced stroke I simply paint over it and use the faulty stroke as a texture. You need a little practicle for that, though. "CTRL+Z" will only undo latest change. Pressing undo again directly after undoing will undo the undoing :)

 

In Photoshop there is a history window, it stores all your actions (up to a miximum of 99 actions, but this can be configured in the Photoshop settings). This shortcut will go one step back in the history window, allowing you to undo multiple actions.

 

This shortcut will instead go one step forward in the history window. If you just have undone several steps and went one step too much, use this shortcut to go forward again. It looks like a shortcut from hell but when you know it, it's very useful.

Brings up the Color Balance window. I will in detail go over this further down in this tutorial (read more here).

 

Brings up the Hue/Saturation window. I will in detail go over this further down in this tutorial (read more here).

 

Brings up the Curves window. I will in detail go over this further down in this tutorial (read more here).

Mostly useful when editing. If you have selected a part of a painting this will let you freely transform the selection. Can be useful for adding perfect reflections in water.