Adobe ® Photoshop® 7.0 opens up a whole new range of possibilities for creating artistic effects. With the new painting engine, you can create imagery that looks as if it was painted using natural media. Follow along and learn a few of the ways you can customize the brush tool.

1. Choose a brush tip.
Select the brush tool and choose Window > Brushes to
display the Brushes palette. Select Brush Tip Shape on
the left side of the palette, and then select a brush tip.
When you’re exploring the options in the Brushes
palette, it’s best to choose a simple tip, such as Hard
Round or Soft Round, so you can clearly see the effects.

2. Fade the size of the brush.
Select Shape Dynamics on the left side of the Brushes
palette. (Click on the words, rather than the check box,
to view the Shape Dynamics options.) Choose Fade
from the Control pop-up menu below the Size Jitter
slider; then enter a number of steps. The more steps you
enter, the longer the stroke. You can view results at the
bottom of the Brushes palette.
Now try adjusting some of the other shape dynamics.
Drag the sliders to add randomness to brush elements.
(At 0%, an element does not change over the course of
a stroke; at 100%, an element has the maximum
amount of randomness.) Choose options from the
Control pop-up menus to control the variance of brush
elements.

3. Add scattering to the brush.
Select Scattering on the left side of the Brushes palette.
The options in this section of the Brushes palette
determine the number and placement of marks in a
stroke. Adjust the Scatter percentage to specify the
maximum percentage of scattering in a stroke. Adjust
the Count value to specify the number of brush marks
applied at each spacing interval. Adjust the Count Jitter
percentage to add variance to the number of brush
marks applied at each spacing interval.

4. Add texture to the brush.
Select Texture on the left side of the Brushes palette.
The options in this section of the Brushes palette let you
make strokes look like they are painted on textured
canvas. First, click on the pattern sample at the top of
the palette, and choose a pattern from the pop-up
palette. (You can load additional patterns by clicking
the triangle at the top right of the pop-up palette, and
choosing a pattern library from the bottom of the
palette menu.) Use the Scale slider to adjust the size of
the pattern.
Now you’re ready to use your brush.

5. Paint in the image.
Choose a color and paint freehand in an image.
Alternately, you can apply the brush stroke to a path.
(For more information on creating paths and using the
Paths palette, see Photoshop online Help.) We used a
work path to create brush strokes on a new layer.
We then used the same method to create additional
fireworks in different colors.

6. Experiment with other brush options.
Now that you know the basics, you can experiment
with some of the other brush options. For example,
we added color dynamics to our brush and painted
freehand to create particle streaks falling from the
fireworks.