Hour 7. Paintbrushes and Art Tools
What You'll Learn in This Hour:
You are already a quarter of the way through, and now it's time to have some fun. Photoshop, as I'm sure you realize, is mainly an image editor. It was created for that purpose, and it accomplishes its purpose very elegantly. Yet there is more to Photoshop than just editing. You can also create artwork here from scratch, just as in any good graphics program. Although many of Photoshop's tools can be used to create an image where none existed before, tools that are explicitly intended for painting include the following:
Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp
Brush
History Brush and Art History Brush
Eraser, Background Eraser, and Magic Eraser
Pencil
Gradient
Paint Bucket
Figure 7.1 shows the Painting tools. We'll look at the Brushes, the Pencil, the Paint Bucket, the Gradient tool, the Art History tools, and the Eraser in this hour. We'll cover other tools you may find useful as we need them in the next couple of hours.
Figure 7.1. Tools for painting and drawing.
Each tool is highly configurable. You can easily adjust such settings as diameter, hardness, roundness, angle, opacity, and so on. You'll learn about using these tools in the next few pages.