You
can also modify the roundness (top) and angle (middle) by dragging
in the preview. The Hardness slider determines feathering for the
brush tip. It is only available for round brushes. When a custom or
square brush is selected, the Use Sample Size button is visible.
When not grayed out, you can click it to reset the brush to the
size at which it was designed. 
When
experimenting with the various brush capabilities, it's easiest to
see what each does when you disable all others. For example, when
determining optimal spacing for a brush tip, uncheck the dynamics
options in the Brushes palette. The Spacing variable determines the
distance between instances of the brush tip. Rather than a
continuous flow of ink from a pen, think of Photoshop's brushes as
a series of imprints of the brush tip. When the brush tip instances
are very closely spaced, they overlap and you see what appears to
be a continuous line of color. When spacing is increased, the you
see the individual instances. (From the top, three identical paths
are stroked with a 55-pixel hard round brush with spacing of 1%,
40%, and 83%.) 
When the
Spacing option is turned off in the Brush Tip Shape pane of the
Brushes palette, the spacing is governed by the speed of your drag.
the faster you drag, the greater the spacing. (As indicated, the
mouse was dragged at increasing speed through the curves.)
CONTROLLING THE DYNAMIC OPTIONS Before discussing the additional
Brushes palette options, an explanation of the Control pop-up menus
is appropriate. Many of the options explained in the following
sections are "dynamic" options - they produce variations in the
brush as the brush is used. The variety of brush instances adds a
randomness to the stroke that would be time-consuming to create
manually. You can use the Fade option to taper-off the effect on
the brush. Photoshop 7 enables you to exercise even more control
over the "randomness" of the variations when you use a drawing
tablet. OFF When Control is set to Off, Photoshop applies the
selected jitter randomly and throughout the length of the brush
stroke. The stroke is unregulated. FADE Fade is available with or
without a pressure-sensitive tablet. When Fade is selected, the
field immediately to the right of the Control menu is active. You
specify a value between 1 and 9999. If you set a jitter slider to
0% and specify a value, the Fade command specifies either the value
to which the stroke fades or when the specific jitter ends along
the stroke. 
All three
examples use the same brush and Fade set to 25. Only one jitter
option is active for each sample. The only difference among the
three strokes shown is the one jitter setting. The brush uses the
same tip and a Spacing of 100% to best illustrate the differences
among the effects of the Fade setting. The top sample shows Size
Jitter set to 25%, with a minimum diameter of 50%. Note that the
fade option forces the brush tip size to the 50% diameter after 25
instances of the brush. The middle sample shows a stroke with the
Angle Jitter set to 0% and Control set to Fade, 25. The brush tip
"angles" 360 degrees over the first 25 instances. After completing
the selected jitter, the stroke returns to its original appearance
for the 26th instance and beyond. The bottom stroke has Roundness
Jitter set to 0%, Fade at 25 as the Control, and a Minimum
Roundness setting of 20%. Like the top example, the stroke reaches
the desired Roundness (20%) after 25 instances. For the first and
third examples, the Fade field's value represents the number of
instances the stroke uses to reach the value specified for the
jitter. In the middle example, the stroke uses the number entered
in the Fade field as the extent or duration of the jitter. PEN
PRESSURE The Pen Pressure option is used with a pressure-sensitive
tablet, such as those from Wacom. Increasing the pressure of the
stylus on the tablet decreases the amount of jitter - the greater
the push of the pen, the less the variation of the stroke. This
image shows examples of Size, Angle, and Roundness Jitter with Pen
Pressure activated. (In all three examples, the pen pressure is
light on the ends and heavy in the middle.) 
PEN TILT Pen
Tilt reads the angle of the stylus on the tablet rather than the
pressure to adjust the jitter. It is especially useful for airbrush
artists using the Brush tool with the Airbrush option. STYLUS WHEEL
Some tablet accessories, such as Wacom's Intuous and Intuous2
Airbrushes, include a fingerwheel. When available, the wheel can be
used to regulate the amount of variation with Stylus Wheel selected
in the Control pop-up menu. INITIAL DIRECTION Available for the
Angle Jitter option only, the Initial Direction option determines
the orientation of the brush instances as you drag. In the next
image, the settings are identical for both samples. The Angle
Jitter is set to 25%, constraining the brush angles to -90 degrees
to +90 degrees. The top sample, created from left to right, varies
the angle in relation to the top of the page. The lower sample,
dragged from right to left, reverses the orientation. 
The 25%
setting for Angle Jitter restricts the brush tip angle to
one-quarter of a circle (90 degrees) in either direction from the
original brush orientation. DIRECTION Also available for the Angle
Jitter option only, The Direction control orients the brush tip to
the path rather than to the page. In these examples, the Angle
Jitter is set to 0% to best show the orientation of the brush to
the paths. 
The initial
direction of drag when using Direction determines which way the
brush tip instances will be pointed. The two examples in to the
right illustrate the difference. TIP: Using Angle Jitter 0% and
Control: Direction keeps the brush tip oriented to the path. This
is a great way to use custom brushes to draw dashed lines, borders,
dividing lines, even such things as railroad tracks and roads.
Read the previous article in the Brushes Palette series by here. Previously featured Planet Photoshop articles are archived under Featured Columns. Special thanks to www.planetphotoshop.com for allowing us to reprint their Photoshop tutorials here at Renderosity. You can e-mail Pete Bauer, the author of this article, at peterbauer@columbus.rr.com.
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