Photoshop Brush Palette

This tutorial introduces you to the Photoshop brush palette. The brush palette is a powerful tool inside Photoshop that allows you to change brush tip shape, diameter, and apply textures. You can create a huge variety of different styles using the same brush. All you need to do is modify the settings within the brush palette.

How to Access the Brush Palette

The brush palette can be access by either selecting Window>Brushes or by hitting the F5 key.

Settings Within the Brush Palette

The image below is a close up of the brush palette. As you can see, there are a lot of settings within this palette. The user has the ability to modify the brush tip shape, set different scattering levels, apply textures, modify brush diameter, and more.

The palette shows a small thumbnail image of each brush that is currently loaded in the upper right corner of the brush palette. There is also a preview image at the bottom of the palette that shows how the brush will look after you apply changes.

Brush Shape Dynamics

The shape dynamics settings are used to modify the shape and angular position of the brush.

Refer to the image below to see how the shape dynamic settings allow you to modify the appearance of the brush strokes.

I am using one of the Photoshop default brush tips for this demonstration. You can see in the preview image how the brush appearance changes as I modify the angle, roundness, and spacing of the brush.

Changing the Scattering Option

The image below shows how the brush stroke changes when you select different values for scattering. The larger the value used, the further away each brush stroke will appear relative to each other.

Applying Texture to the Brush Tip

Another great feature that you can control within the brush palette is the ability to add textures to brush tip. The image below show the different appearances possible using the same brush tip with texture and shading modes applied.

As you can see, the Photoshop brush palette allows you to modify your brush tips to help achieve some awesome results. Spend some time experimenting with the brush palette settings to learn how to achieve unique results.