Create the perfect brush

One of our absolute favourite aspects of Photoshop is the ability to customise brushes. Their use for digital painting is obvious, but creating a perfect brush is also important for controlling photo-editing jobs, such as a super-soft brush for retouching portraits.
The hub of brush control is the Brushes palette. If you haven’t got yours open, access it from Window>Brushes. You’ll see a list of settings on the left of the palette, which just need to be clicked on in order to activate.
We’ve compiled a rough guide to the best options, along with examples of how they affect a brush tip. We haven’t listed every one as the results differ so much depending on what brushes are loaded. But there’s enough here for you to start experimenting and see about creating your perfect brush!

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Brushes galore

You’re not limited to the standard Photoshop brushes – there are hundreds of others available. Just click on the small arrow in the top left of the palette to choose another brush library.

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Brush Tip Shape

From here you can choose your brush tip and change its size. Use the Angle and Roundness values to angle your brush and squeeze its shape. The Spacing slider determines how close the brush dabs are placed together.

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Dynamics

There are various dynamic controls that alter the brush tip as you are using it. These are fantastic for digital painting, as you can achieve the effect of paint running out. You have dynamic options for the size, colour, angle and opacity of a stroke, and you can also set these dynamic elements to be controlled by your pen stylus.

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Scattering

Modify this slider to scatter brush dabs either side of the central line of the brush stroke – a great way to create brushes with lots of texture.z

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Texture

Here, you can click in the Pattern swatch and pick a texture from the standard Photoshop ones. The Artists Surfaces are a great way to create natural media effects.

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Dual Brush

This is a fantastic method of getting the exact brush you want. With the Dual Brush activated, you can merge your selected brush with another brush of your choosing, creating a tip made up of two brush types. This gives you untold possibilities when it comes to brush creation. Use the Spacing option to decide on the distance between each tip mark in a stroke.

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Other options

In addition to the options above, all of which can be controlled, you also have five other options to play with – Noise, Wet Edges, Airbrush, Smoothing, Protect Texture. Out of these, the most interesting are the Noise and Wet Edges options. Both do as you’d expect and can give a final flourish to your brush.