The most common tool, used for painting in the canvas. Can be set to have soft edges (airbrush) or hard edges. In Adobe Photoshop 7.0, these brushes can be modified using the brush engine.
To reach this tool just press the keyboard button "B".


ALT + mouseclick
Quick eyedropper mode: Hold down ALT and click on the painting to pick the color beneath and use it as the current drawing color. Very handy! I think i use this function the most when painting.

SPACEBAR
Move in canvas: Hold down SPACEBAR when using the brush tool to use the Hand Tool and you can then move on the canvas. When you release SPACEBAR you can continue painting. Good to use when working on details zoomed in.

SHIFT
Draw straight lines: If you hold down SHIFT while painting your brush strokes will become vertical or horisontal straight lines.

SHIFT + mouseclick
Draw more specific lines: If you hold SHIFT and click in the canvas the line will go from point A to next click point. This is realy good for doing perspective layouts.

Opacity
Opacity defines how much color to paint with and how much of the background to go trough. 50% will paint with half the color you choose and let the background be 50% visible in the background.

While using the brush tool you can set the opacity using following:

To use 45% in opacity you first click 4 and directly after a 5.







. and , (semicolon and dot)
Select brush
There also is a keyboard shortcut for choosing brushes. You can go forward and backwards in the brush list. I usually paint with the default brushes. They come in sizes from 1 pixel to 300 pixels. So i'ts a quick way to increase and decrease size of brush.


[ and ]
Increase and Decrease brush size
Using these keys to change the size of the current brush.
Note: I haven't been able to use this on my swedish keyboard, if you have any information or tips on this, please contact me.




Exact brushes
Most artist want to see the exact size of the brush when you are painting. This is not turned on by default. To change this, go to "Edit" in the menu. Then choose "Preferences" and "Display and Cursors".
Set the settings for the cursors as the image below.

  


 

Burn tool is a great tool for darkening areas you painted. Some uses it for shading in their paintings. I mostly use this tool for adding texturising and dynamic lighting. When using this tool you can configure it the same as with a brush.

Note: If you can't find this tool do the following. See if you find the tools you have here to the left. They are called the "Dodge Tool" and the "Sponge Tool". You see the little arrow in the right bottom corner. If you hold down the mousebutton on these tools with an arrow a list of other tools folds out. All of the tools in the list have the same keyboard shortcuts, you can choose the next tool by holding down SHIFT + and the tools shortcut. For example: SHIFT + O to change between Dodge, Burn and the Sponge tool.

ALT + mouseclick
Dodge mode: Hold down ALT and use the burn tool as usual, but when holding down ALT it will dodge the painting instead of burning. In other words, holding down ALT will lighten instead of darkening.




Using burn tool to add basic depth and shadows.
When i paint my paintings i usually start with a sketch, then i do a quick base coloring. After that begins texturing, first step i do when i texturize is to add shadows. I add shadows using the burn tool.

Darkening painted areas...
As i continued working on my painting Skullbridge i needed to add more contrast and mood to the painting. By darkening some areas my overal feeling changed greatly. Below you can see a before and after picture. It makes a great difference.




I usually add details that have a brighter color on top of the parts i just darkened. This will make the details "pop" out and give depth.

  
 
  

Eraser tool practicaly much do what it suppose to do, it erases what you have painted. It acts just as a brush, so you can configure the eraser just as an brush. All brush shortcuts also works on the eraser.