Painting and Retouching - Adobe Photoshop CC - page 91

8 Using the Color panel, click a different color from the color ramp (no specific color is necessary for this
exercise). Then paint another brush stroke that crosses over, or intersects, with the first brush stroke.
Painting a second brush stroke.
Note that when you paint, the Brush tool cursor displays the diameter of the brush that is selected. To
resize the brush, you can return to the Brush Preset picker in the Options bar, but it is more intuitive to
resize your brush dynamically, using a keyboard shortcut.
If you have the Caps Lock key pressed, your Brush tool cursor appears as a crosshair.
9 Press the ] (right bracket) key to increase the brush size. Now press the [ (left bracket) key to decrease
the size of the brush. As this blank document is for experimentation only, you can paint after resizing to
see the size difference.
10 Choose File > Save to save the file. Keep the file open for the next part of this lesson.
Changing opacity
Changing the level of opacity affects how transparent your brush strokes look over other image informa-
tion. In this section, you will experiment with different opacity percentages.
1 If the Swatches panel is not visible, choose Window > Swatches. The Swatches panel appears with pre-
determined colors ready for you to use.
The Swatches panel.
2 Position your cursor over any swatch color and you'll see an eyedropper, along with a tooltip indicating
the name of the color. Click any one of the swatches; it becomes your current foreground color.
3 Now, to change its opacity, go to the Options bar at the top and click the arrow next to 100%. A slider
appears. Drag the slider to the left to lower the opacity to about 50 percent, and then click the arrow to
collapse the slider. Alternatively, you can type 50 into the Opacity text field. Understand that changing
the opacity of a color does not affect any of the painting that you have already completed, but it will af-
fect future painting.