Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

The Specialty Brushes

So far you've learned about brushes that behave pretty much as brushes do in the real world—they paint a stripe of something, whether that's color, light, or even transparency.

But in the digital world, a brush doesn't have to be just a brush. With some of Elements' brushes, you can paint stars, flowers, disembodied eyeballs, gravel, or even rubber ducks with just one stroke, as shown in Figure 12-10.

If you click the arrow next to the brush's thumbnail in the Options bar, you'll see the list of brushes in the current category and a pull-down menu that lets you investigate Elements' other brush sets. The brushes used in Figure 12-10, for example, came from several different categories. Most brushes are sensitive to your pen pressure if you're using a graphics tablet (Graphics Tablets).

The Specialty brushes respond readily to changes in the Additional Brush Options palette's settings (covered earlier in this chapter). Your choices there can make a huge difference in the effect you get—whether you're painting swaths of smooth grass like a lawn, or scattered sprigs of dune grass, for instance.

Figure 12-10. You can digitally doodle using brushes, even if you can't draw a straight line. Everything in this lovely drawing was done with brushes that come with Elements. The leaves were painted with a brush that paints leaves; the yellow ducks come from a brush that paints ...