Control how your brush blends into the image

Use the Brush Picker to adjust brush shape and hardness, then resize your brush tip with the bracket keys for faster painting.

Published July 22, 2026

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00:01

Introduction

[Jan Kabili]: In this video, we'll go over some basics about Photoshop's Brush Style tools.

If you're following along, open this image from the downloadable practice files for this tutorial.

There are a number of tools, other than just the Brush Tool that use Brush Tips.

For example, the Clone Stamp Tool, the Eraser Tool, the Dodge Tool, and more.

So even if you don't do illustration in Photoshop, this video is relevant for you.

One thing those tools have in common is they have a Brush Picker in their Options Bar, where you go to choose the Brush Tip and set its Size and Hardness for the tool.

So, let's take a minute to go over what the Brush Pickers offer.

00:42

Exploring the brush picker: tip shapes, size, and hardness

Let's select the Brush Tool and then let's go up to the Options Bar and click on the icon that looks like a Brush Tip.

That opens this window called the Brush Picker.

In the Brush Picker, you can choose a shape of tool.

And there are many to choose from: everything from a leaf shape, to a grass shape, to a round shape.

I'm going to click on one of the Round Shapes here.

And you can vary the Size and the Hardness of the brush.

Let's see what a Hard Brush looks like.

I'll move into the image and I happen to have a white color swatch selected.

You can use any color you like if you're following along.

I'm going to click and drag, and as you can see, this brush stroke has a really hard edge.

Now if I go back to the Brush Picker again and I drag the Hardness slider the other way, towards Soft - and I drag in the image - I get a very different looking effect, a soft-edged brush stroke.

You can also change the Size of a brush here in the Brush Picker.

In other videos, in this series we introduced the idea that you don't always have to come up to the Brush Picker to change Brush Size.

It's often more efficient to change Brush Size as you're working in the image on the fly.

If I move into the image

01:55

Changing brush size quickly with keyboard shortcuts

and I press the left bracket key, which is the key just to the right of the P key on most keyboards, each time I press, my Brush Tip gets smaller by a set percentage.

And then I'll click and drag.

And you can see that I have a narrow brush stroke.

If I want a larger brush stroke, I'll press the right bracket key, which is just to the right of the left bracket key on the keyboard.

And each time I press, I get a larger brush stroke, so that when I click and drag, I have a very different looking effect.

02:28

Using opacity and brush blend modes

There are a couple of other commonly used Brush options to take a look at.

One - up here in the Options Bar - is Opacity.

If I click on the Opacity field and I drag the Opacity slider to the left, and then I paint in the image, you can see through the paint to the image below.

Next to the Opacity field in the Options Bar, is the Blend Mode field.

These various Blend Modes control how the colors of the paint that the brush applies interact with colors already in the image.

This is similar to Layer Blend modes in the Layers panel, which we'll cover later in this tutorial series.

When you're painting with the Brush Tool on a photograph like this, there's one Blend Mode you'll find particularly useful,

03:10

Painting with the color blend mode

and that's the Color blend mode down here.

I'm going to select that from the menu.

And then I'll go up and I'll change the Opacity back to 100%.

And I'm going to select another color in the Swatches panel.

But you can use any color you like.

Now, when I move into the image and I paint, as you can see, the brush isn't laying down flat paint.

Instead, it's applying a color tint to the flower that lets the tonal values of the image show through.

And this is very useful for changing the color of objects in photographs.

To finish this off, I'm going to go up to the File menu and I'm going to choose Revert, which takes the image all the way back to the way it looked at the beginning of this video.

03:53

Recoloring an object using selections and brushes

Let's select the Quick Selection Tool in the Tools panel and then move over the flower and click and drag to quickly select it.

Then, go back and get the Brush Tool again, move into the image and press the right bracket key a few times to make your Brush tip big.

Then click and drag, and you don't have to be careful about where you're painting, because the selection limits the area where the paint is laid down.

Finally, press Command + D on the Mac, or Ctrl + D on Windows to deselect.

So that's a quick and easy way to change the color of an image in a photograph using the Brush Tool and the Color blend mode.

So that's a look at some basics about Brush Style Tools.

Brushes and color are topics that go hand in hand.

Next, we'll take a deeper look at choosing and using colors.

Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.

What you’ll learn

Get familiar with the Brush Picker before every stroke

The Brush Picker sets the shape, size, and hardness of your brush tip, and other tools like the Clone Stamp and Eraser share the same picker. Open it from the Options bar, choose a tip shape, then compare a hard edge against a soft one by dragging the Hardness slider. Getting comfortable here means every brush-based tool in Photoshop behaves the way you expect.

Resize your brush without breaking your flow

Stopping to reopen the Brush Picker every time you need a different size slows down the work. The left and right bracket keys shrink and grow your brush tip right in the canvas. Your attention stays on the image instead of the toolbar.

Control how paint blends into the image below

A brush stroke doesn't have to sit flatly on top of a photo. Lower the Opacity to let the image show through, or switch Blend Modes to change how new color mixes with what's already there. Together, these two controls decide whether a stroke reads as a bold addition or a subtle shift.

Tint objects without flattening the photo underneath

Recoloring something in a photo usually means losing the detail that was there before. The Color blend mode lays down hue and saturation while letting the original tonal values show through. The result looks like a natural color shift instead of a flat coat of paint.

Recolor a selection without touching the rest of the image

Painting freehand risks spilling color outside the area you actually want to change. Select the object first with the Quick Selection tool, then paint over it with a large brush set to the Color blend mode; the selection keeps every stroke contained. It's a fast way to shift an object's color with total control over the edges.

Instruction by: Jan Kabili
Photography by: Martin Hoang

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