The brush and the pencil

Among PhotoShop users there are many artists and designers as well as photographers, and they need to draw new pictures as well as process ready ones. The main drawing tools are Brush and Pencil; they sit under one button (together with Mixer Brush and Color Replacement), are called with the B key and switched with Shift+B; the Line tool for straight lines is in the shapes group (U). The Brush options bar has the shape and size, Mode (how colours blend), Opacity, Flow and the airbrush button; the detailed settings are in the Brush Settings panel (F5): shape, hardness, angle, roundness and the distance between marks (Spacing). At Hardness 100% the edge is sharp, at 0% it is soft; at Spacing 100% the marks only just touch, and if it is reduced the line becomes continuous. The look of a brush mark depends on speed, pressure and airbrush (with a graphics tablet pressure is also taken into account), while the Pencil draws a hard-edged, crisp line and such parameters do not affect its result. The colour is the Foreground colour. Useful keys: [ and ] make the brush smaller and larger; clicking two points with Shift held draws a straight segment, and dragging with Shift held gives a horizontal or vertical line; Alt turns on the Eyedropper for a moment to take a colour from the picture. It is recommended to draw on a separate layer: if you make a mistake, you only fix that layer.