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Meet the Paint and Edit Tools

Photoshop provides two basic varieties of brush tools. There are paint tools, which allow you to apply colors to an image. Then there are edit tools, which modify existing colors in an image. Either way, you operate the tool by dragging the cursor inside the image, much as you might drag a real brush across a real sheet of paper.

This might lead you to think that the paint and edit tools require artistic talent. In truth, each tool provides options for almost any level of proficiency or experience. Photoshop offers get-by measures for novices who want to make quick edits and put the tool down before they make a mess of things. It also provides a wealth of features so complex and powerful that only the most capable artist will want to approach them. But no matter who you are, you'll find the tools more flexible, less messy, and more forgiving than their traditional counterparts.

In all, Photoshop CS provides two paint tools: the brush and the pencil. You also get seven edit tools: blur, sharpen, smudge, dodge, burn, sponge, and the new color replacement tool. Figure 5-1 shows all the tools along with the keyboard shortcuts for selecting them.

Figure 5-1: Here we see the two paint tools and the seven edit tools, all available from flyout menus.

You can vary the performance of the active tool by using the controls in the Options bar along the top of your screen. If you don't see the Options bar, choose Window Options or double-click a tool icon in the toolbox.

The paint tools

The paint tools apply strokes of color. In most cases, you'll be painting with the foreground color, though you can also create multicolored brushstrokes using the Color Dynamics options in the Brushes palette, as we'll see later. Here's how the paint tools work:

Brush: This tool paints a line of any thickness that you specify. You can make the line sharp or blurry, but it's always slightly soft — that is to say, the edges of the brushstroke blend to some extent with the background. Known as antialiasing, this softness produces halftone dots when printing, ensuring smooth transitions between a brushstroke and its surroundings.

Normally, the brush tool applies a continuous stream of color and stops applying paint whenever you stop dragging. However, if you activate the airbrush function by clicking the airbrush icon next to the Flow setting in the Options bar, the color continues to build up as long as you press the mouse button, even when you hold the cursor still. In Figure 5-2, the first line was painted with a 65-pixel soft brush and the airbrush option off. To make the second line, I turned on the airbrush setting and reduced the Flow value to 50 percent. The result is a buildup of color at the corners and at the end of the stroke.

Figure 5-2: Three lines painted in black with the brush and pencil tools. To create the second stroke, I turned on the airbrush setting. I created the color buildup at the bottom of the line by slowing my stroke and, at the very end, holding the cursor in place for a moment.

Pencil: Like the brush tool, the pencil paints a line of any thickness in the foreground color. However, whereas brush tool lines are always soft, pencil lines are always hard edged, with no interaction between the pencil line and background colors. Figure 5-2 shows a 45-pixel pencil line printed at 360 ppi. At such high resolutions, pencil lines appear sharp. At low resolutions, pencil lines have jagged edges.

When you select the pencil tool, a unique check box, Auto Erase, appears in the Options bar. When selected, this option instructs Photoshop to paint with the background color — thereby erasing — whenever you begin painting on an area already colored with the foreground color. A throwback to old black-and-white painting programs such as MacPaint, this option is useful when editing screen shots, custom icons, and the occasional Web graphic.

The edit tools

The edit tools don't apply color; rather, they influence existing colors in an image. Figure 5-3 shows the effect of dragging with each of the edit tools except the sponge and color replacement tools, both of which work best with color images. Future sections cover the tools in more detail, but here's a brief introduction:

Figure 5-3: The effects of dragging with five of Photoshop's edit tools. The boundaries of each line are highlighted so you can clearly see the distinctions between line and background.

Blur: The first of the two focus tools, the blur tool blurs an image by lessening the amount of color contrast between neighboring pixels.

Sharpen: The second focus tool selectively sharpens by increasing the contrast between neighboring pixels.

In general, neither the blur tool nor the sharpen tool is as useful as its command counterpart in the Filters menu. Each provides little control and requires scrubbing at the image. The sharpen tool is especially ineffective, tending toward too much sharpening or no sharpening at all. I might use it to dab at the occasional edge, but that's about it.

Smudge: The smudge tool smears colors in an image. The effect is rather like dragging your finger across wet paint. Although simple, this tool can be effective for smoothing out colors and textures. See "Painting with the smudge tool" later in this chapter for more information.

Dodge: The first of three toning tools, the dodge tool lets you lighten a portion of an image by dragging across it. Named after a traditional darkroom technique, the dodge tool is supposed to look like a little paddle. Before computers, a technician would wave such a paddle (or anything, really) over photographic paper to prevent light from hitting the paper, thereby leaving areas less exposed. Thank golly, we no longer have to wave little paddles in our modern age.

Burn: The burn tool is the dodge tool's opposite, darkening an area as you drag over it. Returning once again to the dark room, technicians would create a mask by, say, cutting a hole in a piece of paper or cupping their hands. This would protect areas of photographic paper that had already been exposed and darken the area inside the hole. Photoshop's metaphor for this is a hand in the shape of an O, kind of a lazy man's mask. I can't testify how well that would work — never tried it myself — but I imagine the burn tool is a lot easier and more effective than the old hand trick.

Sponge: The sponge tool robs an image of saturation when working inside a color image or contrast when working in grayscale. Or you can set the tool so it boosts saturation or adds contrast. For more information, stay tuned for the upcoming section "Mopping up with the sponge tool."

PhoteshopColor replacement: The final toning tool, the color replacement tool, is an important addition to Photoshop CS. Although grouped in the toolbox with the healing brush and patch tools, the color replacement tool stands firmly shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the edit tools. At its most basic level, it provides a great way to correct the age-old problem of red-eye, but the tool is also capable of much, much more. We'll delve into the details in the "Using the color replacement tool" section later in this chapter.

You can replace the blur tool with the sharpen tool in the toolbox by Alt-clicking (Option-clicking on the Mac) on the tool's icon. Alt-click (or Option-click) again to select the smudge tool and yet again to cycle back to the blur tool. Likewise, you can Alt-click (Option-click on the Mac) the dodge tool icon to cycle between the dodge, burn, and sponge tools.

The keyboard shortcut for the blur tool is R; the shortcut for the dodge tool is O (the letter shared by "dodge" and "toning tools"). These keys also toggle between the tools. When the blur tool is selected, press R to switch to the sharpen tool. Repeated pressings of R take you to the smudge tool and back to the blur tool. When the dodge tool is selected, press O to toggle to the burn tool; press O again to get the sponge tool.