in this video we'll explore some of the most powerful features of the paintbrush tool from the
basic brush settings to how more advanced brushes work I'll take you through the essential settings
that can help you get the most out of your photo editing by the end of this video you'll have a
better understanding of the paintbrush tool and how to use it to take your photo editing to the
next level when using the brush tool it helps to have the color and Brushy Studio panels visible if
you can't see them check they're visible using the window menu if there's a tick to the left of the
name it's already visible if not click it once in the Brushy Studio panel the brushes are organized
into categories I have the basic category selected but if I click on the drop down you can see some
of the others these are typically arranged by media type like oils and watercolors and we'll
take a look at some of these later when I click on one of the brush presets it sets the brush
controls in the Affinity photo toolbar for example a brush preset may change the size
of the brush or perhaps the hardness or the flow let's look at what some of these basic controls
do because I know there are some misconceptions amongst photographers the width slider is how
we change the size of the brush but there's also a useful keyboard shortcut that I prefer use the
left square bracket key to make the brush smaller and the right square bracket key to make it larger
this is the default setting for most installations but some countries may be different I find it's
better to use the bracket keys because you can position your brush over the image whilst you're
resizing it know when I click once with my mouse it paints a black circle that's because I'm using
black paint you can see this at the bottom of the tools palette where there's a black disc on top
of a white disk these discs are the foreground and background colors in Affinity photo you can switch
between the two by clicking the small curved Arrow just below of the disks alternatively you
can press X on your keyboard if I double click on the foreground color disk it opens a Color Picker
dialog which I can use to change the color notice also that when I move the brush I see a preview
of what it'll paint with if I click this lasts a few seconds and then vanishes now a quick way to
reset the foreground and background colors to black and white is to press D on your keyboard
did you notice that when I painted the black disc I only needed to click once with my mouse we can
control this Behavior by using the opacity and flow sliders when these are at full strength like
they are now each click or brush stroke produces the foreground color at full strength Watch What
Happens though when I reduce the opacity to 10 percent and paint with black this time I produce a
light gray disc then if I click a second time and then a third time the paint builds up to become
darker let's reset the opacity now and reduce the flow to 10 percent instead know when I paint
the three overlapping discs it looks exactly the same but there's an important difference between
the two settings let's go back to using a low opacity with a flow at full strength this time
I'm going to click and paint whilst holding down my mouse button notice that I can paint
over a large area to produce a consistent light gray color then if I release the mouse button
and paint over the area a second time it builds up the effect let's do the same though using a
low flow but a 100 opacity setting this time the effect of the paint builds up as I actually move
my paintbrush over the same area what's happening is that the lower flow setting causes the paint
to be applied gradually until it reaches the value set by the opacity slider for example if I reduce
the opacity to 50 and then paint over an area the darkest the area becomes is a mid-tone gray let's
reset the opacity note to 100 because there's something else I want to show you notice that as
I'm painting I'm producing lots of separate disks that are overlapping this also happened when I use
the lower opacity setting with 100 flow but it wasn't as obvious another way to make the effect
less obvious is to reduce the brush hardness this softens the edge of the brush making the different
discs blend into each other the reason this is important when editing is that it could make your
changes visible let's set the hardness back to 100 because we need to look at some more controls if
I click the more button it opens the Affinity photo dialog where I have a lot more settings
I can use in fact there are so many settings here that they're arranged into four separate tabs what
we've just been looking at is the spacing between the circles in the brush stroke this is controlled
by this spacing slider when I increase this it increases the space between the circles which
you can see in the dialog preview if I don't want to see a space between the circles I can reduce
the slider right the way down to one percent then when I paint a new brush stroke it looks smooth
and black the reason it looks black rather than like gray now is that there are lots of discs
being painted over each other it's only at either end of the brush stroke that you see them fading
out to produce a gray brush stroke rather than a black I could reduce the flow further down to
one percent now my brush Strokes look gray but I can still build up the color density if I paint
over the area for long enough using these General controls together can produce lots of different
and interesting effects but you can also go much further using other brush controls let's reset
the brush and change to another in the owls category I'll select the fine fibers brush
this sets the size opacity flow and hardness settings as before but notice what's happened
in the brush preview as I move my mouse around the brush tip is made up of just a few Speckles rather
than being a solid Circle also the brush tip is rotating and juddering as it's moved using brushes
like this can bring a new level of refinement to your photo editing don't just limit yourself to
the basic circular brush now let's click the more button up in the dialog I want to show you some of
the settings to control the effects you're seeing for example we can increase the spacing and reduce
the accumulation setting this produces a lighter paint buildup as if I was using thinner oils to
paint with let's switch now to the dynamic tab where you can see the settings producing the juddo
when I'm painting if I set the rotation Jitter to zero percent you can see that the brush tip
is stable now when I paint then if I switch to the textures tab you can even see the shape of
the brush tab it's these settings in this dialog that are creating the special brush effects that
you see but let me give you a word of warning if you're going to experiment with your brush
settings it's best to First create a duplicate brush if you do forget to do this you can always
use the reset button to go back to the default for that brush now once you've created a custom brush
you can also share it with other Affinity photo users by exporting it you can do this from the
menu at the top right of the Brushy Studio panel this is also where you can import custom brushes
from other people like this custom Watermark brush I created and if you want to know how to
create your own custom Watermark brush you'll need to watch this video next thanks for watching today
and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already I'll see you soon for another video