NemoClaw Knowledge Wiki

Julianne Kost using brush tool in photoshop

4 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ealkbzfud0 Here are 10 Quick Tips for Painting in Adobe Photoshop presented by Julieanne Kost.

1. Changing Brush Size & Hardness

There are multiple ways to adjust your brush on the fly:

  • Bracket Keys: Tap [ or ] to decrease or increase brush size.
  • Shift + Bracket Keys: Hold Shift and tap [ or ] to change the edge hardness.
  • Heads Up Display (HUD):
    • Mac: Hold Control + Option and drag.
    • Windows: Hold Control + Alt + Right-click and drag.
    • Drag Left/Right changes size; Drag Up/Down changes hardness.
    • Tip: You can change the vertical movement to control Opacity instead of hardness via Settings/Preferences > Tools > Uncheck “Vary Round Brush Hardness based on HUD vertical movement.”

2. Cursor Display Options

  • Caps Lock: Toggles the cursor between your preferred brush tip and “Precise” (crosshairs) mode.
  • Brush Tip Preferences: Go to Settings/Preferences > Cursors.
    • Normal Brush Tip: Shows the area where the brush paints with greater than 50% effect. Soft brushes will paint outside this circle.
    • Full Size Brush Tip: Shows the area of all pixels being painted.
    • Show Crosshair in Brush Tip: Adds a center crosshair to the brush outline.
    • Show Brush Leash: helpful for visualizing the “pull” when using stroke smoothing.

3. Temporarily Switch to Eraser

Painting tools usually retain their own individual settings (size, opacity). To erase using your current brush settings:

  • Hold the Tilde (~) key while using the Brush tool to turn it into an eraser with the exact same size and shape.
  • Note: This changes the blend mode to “Clear.”

4. Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

You can assign shortcuts to specific brush functions that don’t have defaults:

  • Go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.
  • Select Shortcuts for: Tools.
  • Scroll down to assign keys for functions like Decrease/Increase Brush Hardness, Next/Previous Brush, or Toggle Brush/Eraser (useful if your keyboard lacks a Tilde key).

5. Sampling Colors

  • Hold Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) while using a painting tool to temporarily switch to the Eyedropper to sample a color.
  • HUD Ring: You can toggle the “Show Sampling Ring” in the options bar if you find the large color wheel distracting.

6. Drawing Straight Lines

  • Constrained Line: Hold Shift while dragging to paint a perfectly vertical or horizontal line.
  • Connect the Dots: Click once to make a dot, release, move the cursor, hold Shift, and click again to draw a straight line connecting the two points.

7. Fading a Stroke

Immediately after painting a stroke, select Edit > Fade Brush Tool. This allows you to lower the opacity or change the blend mode of the specific stroke you just made without affecting previous strokes.

8. Toggling Counterpart Tools

Similar to the Brush/Eraser toggle, other tools have temporary toggles using the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key:

  • Dodge Tool: Holding Option/Alt switches it to the Burn Tool.
  • Blur Tool: Holding Option/Alt switches it to the Sharpen Tool.

9. Erasing to History

You can use the Eraser tool to restore an image to a previous state (Snapshot) rather than erasing to transparency or the background color.

  1. Open the History Panel.
  2. Click the left column next to the desired history state (or snapshot) to set the “source.”
  3. Select the Eraser Tool.
  4. Hold Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) and paint to erase/restore from that history state.

10. Auto-Create New Layers

By default, if you try to paint on a layer that cannot accept pixels (like a Smart Object, Shape layer, or Type layer), Photoshop automatically creates a new raster layer for you.

  • Disable: If you prefer to see a warning instead (to prevent accidental painting on the wrong layer), uncheck “Create new layer when brushing” in Settings/Preferences > General.

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