Elements Brushes

Used for creating, and choosing brush type and size
Found in the options bar of tools that use brushes

You can create your own brushes by editing an existing brush. With the old brush selected, choose New Brush from the palette menu shown below. Or you can click on the brush thumbnail in the options bar to bring up the brush editing dialog box. Play with the options to make a brush that you like.

New brushes can also be created by drawing a square selection with the rectangular marquee tool around the pixels you would like to make into a brush, and then choosing Edit > Define Brush. You will then see a dialog box asking you to name your new brush. Once named, it will appear in the brushes palette. However, it is best to save your custom brushes in their own set. To do this choose Edit > Preset Manager. Choose Brushes from the menu, and then click, and Shift-click to select all the brushes you want to include in your set. Choose Save Set, and name your custom set. After closing and reopening Elements, your set will appear in the brushes pop-up palette menu.

Keyboard shortcuts for brushes include the bracket keys for cycling through all available brushes. The left bracket [ will move you to the next smaller size, and the right bracket ] will move you up one size. Holding down the Shift key while pressing the left bracket will decrease brush (edge) softness. Shift plus the right bracket increases softness.

When editing an image with any tool that uses brushes, you can right click on the image and the brushes pop-up palette will appear right next to your cursor. Likewise, the palette will appear next to your cursor if you press Enter while any tool that uses brushes is selected. You can then use the arrow keys to navigate to the brush that you want, or click on a brush to select it (as usual).

In all cases, once the brushes pop-up palette is open, pressing Enter will close it for you.

Be sure and set your brush cursor preference in Display & Cursors preferences. Find them at Edit > Preferences > Display & Cursors. If you have chosen “brush size”, you can toggle to “precise” by pressing Caps Lock. If you have your preference set to “precise”, it will toggle to “brush size”. A preference of “standard” will go to “precise” when Caps Lock is pressed.

At the extreme right end of all options bars that use brushes, you will see a paintbrush icon. Clicking on this will bring up the Brush Dynamics options. Here you can choose whether to have your brush strokes fade away in size, pressure, and/or color. Or, where it shows Fade in the example below, you can choose Stylus from the drop down menu. This only applies to those of you using a stylus tablet. The third option is Off, which is the default setting and allows you to paint normal, non-fading brush strokes. The settings on the right, steps, determine how far the brush goes before fading away. A step is one brush width. This applies only to the Fade option.

Use this menu to load different brush sets. If you would like to get the default brushes back, choose Reset Brushes.

On the right below is the dialog box you find if you choose New Brush from the options menu. You can create, preview, and save your own brushes here. Diameter sets the brushes size. Hardness affects the fuzziness of the brushes edges. Spacing determines how often an imprint of the brushes tip is applied. Spacing can be set to give a dotted line, or one where the brush dots barely overlap, like a beaded necklace. To paint without spacing, deselect this option by un-checking the Spacing check box.

Note that the brush featured in the illustration at below right, is one of the Elements default brushes, and it has a setting of 25 % for Spacing, which gives a smooth, continuous stroke..

To the right, are the Assorted Brushes set, which you can load by choosing it from the palette menu (click the little arrow in the upper right corner). See the menu, above, left.

The bottom two illustrations show two sets in Large List view. On the left is the default set, and on the right is the Faux Finish set.