Using the painting tools (Photoshop)
Painting involves changing the colors of pixels using a painting tool. You can apply colors gradually, with soft edges and transitions, and manipulate individual pixels using powerful filter effects.
Photoshop provides the Brush tool and the Pencil tool to let you paint with the current foreground color. By default, the Brush tool creates soft strokes of color and the Pencil tool creates hard-edged, freehand lines. However, you can change these default characteristics by resetting the tool's brush options. You can also use the Brush tool as an airbrush to apply sprays of color to an image.
To use the Brush tool or Pencil tool:
- Specify a foreground color. (See Choosing foreground and background colors.)
- Select the Brush tool
or Pencil tool 
. - Do the following in the options bar:
- Choose a brush and set brush options. (See Working with brushes.)
- Choose a bending mode from the Mode menu. (See Selecting a blending mode.)
- Specify an opacity by dragging the Opacity slider. (See Specifying opacity, flow, strength, or exposure.)
- For the Brush tool, specify a flow rate by dragging the Flow slider. (See Specifying opacity, flow, strength, or exposure.)
- (Photoshop) Click the Airbrush button
to use the brush as an airbrush. (See Creating airbrush effects (Photoshop).) - For the Pencil tool, select Auto Erase to paint the background color over areas containing the foreground color. (See Using the Auto Erase option.)
- Do one or more of the following:
- Drag in the image to paint.
- To draw a straight line, click a starting point in the image. Then hold down Shift, and click an ending point.
- When using the Brush tool as an airbrush, hold down the mouse button without dragging to build up color.
