Brush tips and shared controls

Brush tips determine stroke coverage; specialized tools determine what happens to covered pixels. Not every tool exposes every shared control.

Find the brush selector

Choose Pencil, Mix Brush, or another drawing tool. Click the brush-tip picture at the start of its options strip above the canvas to open the brush picker; change Size beside it. Healing tools use their own Square/Circle controls instead.

Choose a tip

Use the brush selector on a drawing tool to choose Pixel, Circle, or Filled circle, loaded file brushes, random file brushes, and project brushes. File brushes stamp a loaded image. Random file brushes choose from a loaded group of images as the brush updates; they suit varied texture marks. Project brushes reuse artwork from the current project. An image tip supplies its own footprint/colors. Color influence 0 uses the brush’s colors; 100 uses the selected color. Inspect the tip preview before painting. Tip availability depends on installed brushes.

Create a project brush

1. Select a visible piece of artwork on the canvas.
2. Choose Edit → New Brush. The visible selected image becomes a project brush with empty borders trimmed.
3. Open the drawing tool’s brush selector and choose the new project tip.
4. Adjust size and color influence, then stamp onto the canvas.
5. Save the project to keep its project brushes. A custom brush’s delete control removes that tip; it does not erase existing canvas marks.

Shape and size

Choose a small, hard tip for pixel detail. Larger/custom tips can stamp patterns quickly. Healing tools use their own Circle/Square footprint and size instead of the general image-tip selector. Content-Aware Fill uses its own repair-mask brush controls.

Dynamics and restrictions

Where exposed, pressure/velocity dynamics vary stroke behavior. Symmetry mirrors drawing on configured axes. Pixel-perfect drawing reduces unwanted corner pixels on supported strokes. Alpha lock and active selections constrain eligible pixels. Check the current tool’s controls rather than assuming every brush shares these behaviors.

Common problems

Wrong stamp color: inspect the tip and color influence. Uneven tablet results: compare with dynamics disabled. Mirrored unexpected marks: check symmetry. Missing controls may indicate a tool with its own footprint or an unsupported layer type.