Paint Brush ToolThe Paint Brush tool lays down pixels on the page, creating strokes with antialiased edges. This creates a natural transition between the stroke and the surrounding pixels.
Its variable width lines can be controlled either by velocity—most useful when drawing with touch—or by pressure—for use when drawing with a pressure-sensitive device like the Apple Pencil.
Other brush-based tools use similar settings to control the appearance of the applied pixels, although there may be slight variations.
Most brushes use a soft, round brush as their default. Alternative styles can be selected from the Brushes panel.
When using the Paint Brush Tool on a RAW or image layer, a new nested pixel layer is created with the strokes applied onto it. This aids non-destructive, layer-based workflows whereby the newly created layer can be switched off from view to investigate the effects of painting quickly. This also aids layer data management as the original image or RAW layer is not rasterised.
The following settings can be adjusted using a vertical tool slider:
Opacity/Accumulation toggle—how see-through the brush is or the extent of deviation in the opacity or visibility of the stroke as it is painted, respectively. Tap to toggle the setting, then slide up or down to set the value.
Flow/Hardness toggle—how fast the brush effect is applied (1% is very slow, 100% is immediate) or how hard edged the brush is, respectively.
Width—controls the width of the stroke using a vertical slider next to the tool's location. Slide up or down to set the width.The following settings can be adjusted from the context toolbar:
Protect alpha—when enabled, you are not able to paint on the current layer's transparent regions.
Force Pressure—toggle to control brush size with pressure if using a pressure-sensitive device. This overrides brush defaults.
Wet Edges—builds paint up along the edges of your pixel brush stroke, producing a watercolour effect.
For rope mode—drag the stroke end by a 'rope' to smooth the stroke but introduce sharp corners at increasing rope Length (radius) values by redirecting the slackened rope. Set the value by toggling the Length vertical slider icon. For window mode—smooths the stroke by averaging sampled input positions within a Window whose size is configurable. Set the value by toggling the Width vertical slider icon.
Symmetry—when the Lines setting is set to greater than 0, repeats the brush stroke around a number of axes (defined by the value). The centre axis point can be repositioned by dragging it.
Mirror—with symmetry enabled, causes brush strokes to be mirrored along the X and Y axis.
Locked—when enabled, prevents the symmetry line from being moved.