Photoshop CS5’s boldest and most far-reaching innovations are its new painting tools. This upgrade adds the bristle brushes, which simulate real-world traditional art brushes, down to the quantity and stiffness of the hairs. It also adds the mixer brush, which lets you mix the foreground color with a base photograph as if the photo were rendered in wet oils.

In a recent Photoshop CS5 Top 5 video, I showed you how to combine these tools to transform a photo of Colleen (below) into a hand-brushed painting (below that), complete with textured brushstrokes.

But in order to really grok things, I need to show you how the bristle brushes, which are demanding little devils, work. (You’ll have to be a member of dekeOnline to view this article.)

You see, if anything Photoshop CS5 has been a tad bit too ambitious about its implementation of bristle brushes. The glut of options affords you a staggering degree of control. But it also makes the bristle brushes overwhelming and borderline unapproachable, even by Photoshop’s legendary standards of complexity. I’ve spent considerable time banging my head against my monitor—not literally, that would leave grease marks, but I visualized doing so—and I want to see your transition go more smoothly.

Tip: The bristle brushes work both when painting with the brush tool and when editing with clone stamp, dodge, and all but the healing brush. On a side note, be sure to check out the enhanced sharpen tool. Previously the single worst tool in of Photoshop, the sharpen tool now produces desirable effects (as opposed to reducing your image to a pile of iron filings). And it works with the bristle brushes.

That said, here’s how to use CS5’s new bristle brushes—from initial frustration to high moments of “ah ha!” understanding—whether you own a mouse or pen tablet.

Introducing the Bristle Brushes

Photoshop CS5 offers a total of ten bristle brushes, all of which provide multiple points of contact and more nuanced responses than the program’s standard brush set. Here’s how to select, adjust, and use them:

• Select the brush tool (the easiest place to start) and right-click in the image window to bring up a subpanel of brushes. Select a bristle brush (they look like sideways brush tips) from one of the second two rows and press Enter or Return.
• Photoshop displays the unnamed “bristle brush preview,” a floating panel that shows your brush from one of three angles: front, side view, and bird’s eye, as witnessed below. To switch views, just click in the preview panel. You can also move the preview and resize it by clicking in the dark gray title bar.

  

• An X lets you close the preview, but don’t click it! As distracting as it may seem at first, you’ll find the preview quite useful once you come to terms with it. And it’s a pain to get back. (There’s no menu command or shortcut; instead, you click a wee little eye icon at the bottom of the Brush panel.)
• The better way to get the preview out of your face: Press the M key to switch temporarily to the marquee tool. When you’re ready to paint again, press B to switch back to the Brush tool.
• Choose Window > Brush (or press F5) to bring up the Brush panel. Then customize the bristle brush using Bristles, Length, Thickness, and the like. Keep an eye on the bristle brush preview (that floating thing) to see how your changes affect the brush itself. Watch the preview area at the bottom of the Brush panel to witness each setting’s affect on a sample brushstroke.
• If you don’t own a pen tablet, take heart: All the options (Bristles, etc.) have a dramatic impact on brushstrokes drawn with a mouse.
• The last option, Angle, is designed specifically for mouse use. But bear in mind, each setting has a static affect on mouse strokes.

Working with a Pen Tablet

If you own a Wacom or other pressure-sensitive pen device, your experience gets better. And then worse. And then better again:

• Experiment with painting and changing the angle of the stylus inside a blank image to get a feel for how a given bristle brush works. Watch the bristle brush preview to see what Photoshop thinks you’re doing. (It’s highly illuminating.) The dotted line near the bottom of the preview represents the “canvas” and demonstrates when and how the brush deforms into the image.
• At first, the brush may not seem to respond to stylus pressure. This takes some getting used to. (Recall my visualized head banging.) Don’t change the dynamics in the Brush panel as you would with another brush. Size Jitter is not even available. Instead, try positioning your stylus exactly upright, perpendicular to the tablet, and paint a light stroke. Now paint a heavy one. The example below illustrates light and heavy pressure applied using the Flat Fan brush, the last of the bristle brush options.

  

• Reduce the Bristles value and increase Stiffness for more delicate strokes. You may also want to open the control panel installed with your tablet and increase the firmness setting. (Wacom calls this Tip Feel.) A higher firmness setting requires you to bear down harder for thick strokes, but it also delivers finer results when painting light.
• Once you become comfortable with pressure, try tilting the stylus to see how the slope of the bristle brush affects a brushstroke. Photoshop also animates the brush tip cursor to reflect the tilt.
• Raise the Length value to achieve more heavily pigmented, sometimes thrillingly unpredictable results.
• Click Shape Dynamics on the left side of the Brush panel and link Angle Jitter—that is, variations in the angle of the brush—to Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, or even Rotation if your stylus supports it. (Rotation support is rare and typically requires the purchase of a specialized stylus.)
• When you discover a group of settings that you particularly like, click the little page icon in the bottom-right corner of the Brush panel to save the brush for later use.

Some graphic artists will find the bristle brushes useful for creating original artwork. But the majority of us—whether artists, designers, photographers, or mere enthusiasts in the digital mayhem—will find them of most use in augmenting existing photographs. And that’s where my video comes in handy. Seriously, play around with the tools a little. Then grab a photographic image and try it out.