Photoshop Brush Tutorial: Shape Dynamics - Angle Controls

See Also: Shape Dynamics - Size Controls  |  Shape Dynamics - Roundness Controls

In the previous section, we looked at how Photoshop allows us to control the size of our brush dynamically using Shape Dynamics. In this section, we're going to see how we can control the angle of our brush dynamically as well using the Angle controls, which are located directly below the Size controls and are shown below:

Like the Size Jitter option that we saw in the previous section, we can allow Photoshop to change the angle of our brush randomly while we paint using the "Angle Jitter" option, or we can give ourselves precise control over the angle with any one of a number of options, all of which can be found in the drop-down box to the right of the word "Control":

Before we begin, I'm going to go back to my Brush Tip Shape control panel by clicking on the word "Brush Tip Shape" in the upper left corner of the Brushes palette, where I'm going to make sure that I have my standard 19 pixel brush selected (the same brush I used in the Size Controls section) by selecting it in the preview of the brush tip shapes on the right. I'm also going to set my "Spacing" back to 100% so we can clearly see what's happening to the brush shape as the angle changes:

There's one more thing I need to change first before we can continue, and that's the roundness of my brush (we'll look at how to change the roundness dynamically in the next section). The brush that I've selected for this lesson is one of Photoshop's standard round brushes, which means that it's, well, round. Circular, even. Why is that a problem? Well, it's a problem because no matter which way you turn a circle, it makes no difference. It still looks like the same old circle, which means that if I leave my brush as a circular brush, we won't notice anything happening when we're changing the angle of the brush.

So how do I fix that? By changing the brush's roundness value, which I can do very easily in the section of the Brush Tip Shape control panel shown below:

Since the brush I have selected is a round brush, the value showing in the "Roundness" input box is 100%, which is not what I want. I'm just going to quickly type a value of 50% into the box, which will not only change the roundness of my brush to 50%, it will give me a nice preview of the brush's new roundness value in the preview area to the right:

Now that I have my 19 pixel brush selected, my Spacing set to 100% so we can see what's going on, and the roundness of my brush changed from 100% to 50%, we can go back to the Angle controls in the Shape Dynamics control panel by clicking on the words "Shape Dynamics" in the left column of the Brushes palette. Or can we....

If I take a quick look back at the preview of my brush at the bottom of the Brushes palette, I see that I no longer have that "string of pearls" effect I achieved in the Size Control section when I changed my Spacing to 100%:

I'm back to having a "lumpy" looking stroke, which is because the roundness of the brush "stamps" has been reduced to 50%. I'm going to have to increase my Spacing amount if I want to clearly see each individual brush shape. I'll increase the spacing to 200%. As I can see in my preview below, this gives me what I want. I can now see each brush shape individually along the length of the stroke:

Now, we can safely go back to the Angle controls in the Shape Dynamics control panel.

Changing the Photoshop Brush Angle Randomly with 'Angle Jitter'

As we saw with Size Jitter in the previous section, we can tell Photoshop to change the angle of our brush randomly while we paint using "Angle Jitter". The term "jitter" simply means "randomness". By increasing the Angle Jitter percentage, we can increase the range of angles that Photoshop can randomly choose from. By default, the Angle Jitter value is set to 0%, which means that it has no effect on our brush while we paint, as shown below:

If I increase my jitter value to, say, 50% by dragging the Angle Jitter slider bar to the left:

I can clearly see the effect it's having on my brush as my brush angle twists and turns randomly along the brush stroke:

Increasing or decreasing the Angle Jitter value will give Photoshop a wider or narrower range of angles to randomly choose from.

Giving Ourselves Control Over The Photoshop Brush Angle

Letting Photoshop change the angle of our brush randomly as we paint is great, but what if we want to control the angle ourselves? Photoshop gives us lots of ways to achieve that control, all of which can be found in the drop-down box to the right of the word "Control", below the Angle Jitter slider bar:

We can control the brush angle ourselves using "Fade", "Pen Pressure", "Pen Tilt", "Stylus Wheel", "Rotation", "Initial Direction", and "Direction". As with controlling the brush size, many of these options require that you have a pen tablet installed on your computer, and you'll see a small warning icon to the left of the word "Control" if you try selecting one of these options without having a pen tablet. You can still select the option if you wish, and Photoshop will provide you with a preview of what effect the option will have on your brush, but the effect won't actually be applied to the brush when you go to paint without having that pen tablet installed.

Let's look at a few of the most commonly used options for dynamically controlling the angle of the brush as we paint.

Off

The first option in the list is "Off", which effectively turns off dynamic control. With "Off" selected, unless you've specified some sort of randomness in the Angle Jitter setting, your brush will remain set at its normal angle while you're painting, unless you manually change the angle yourself in the Brush Tip Shape control panel.

Fade

The "Fade" option works the same way as it does for controlling the brush size, as we saw in the previous section, although the effect is completely different. With brush size, the fade command gradually reduced the size of the brush until it reached a size of 0 pixels, effectively "fading" it from view, and it used a specified number of steps in order to reduce the brush from its current size down to 0 pixels. "Fading" the angle of the brush is done the same way, by specifying a specific number of steps to use. The difference though is that, rather than making the brush size smaller, it rotates the brush 360 degrees, beginning with the first brush "stamp" on the canvas and ending at the final "step", based on the number of steps you've specified. By default, the number of steps is set to 25, as you can see in the screenshot above. The input box for specifying steps is located directly to the right of the Control drop-down menu.

With "Fade" selected and the number of steps set to 25, here's the result I get when I paint a stroke with my brush. Remember that my Spacing is set to 200%, which is why the brush steps are so far apart:

As you can see above, Photoshop rotated my brush 360 degrees along the length of my stroke, using my specified 25 steps to complete the rotation. It may be a bit difficult to really see what's going on with this brush, so I'm going to temporarily switch to a different brush and paint the same stroke. I'll use the "Scattered Maple Leaves" brush that comes with Photoshop:

With this brush, it's much easier to see what's happening. Photoshop rotated the leaf a complete 360 degrees using the 25 steps I specified for Fade. If I was to use a larger or smaller number of Fade steps, Photoshop would give me the exact same effect but using whatever number of steps I specified.

Direction

Let's look at another fun one, the "Direction" option.

Painting with the 'Scattered Maple Leaves' brush using 'Direction' as my brush angle control

As the name implies, "Direction" will follow the movement of your brush as you paint and continuously change the angle of the brush to match the direction you're moving in. This is one of my favorite settings for controlling the brush angle dynamically.

I'm going to keep my current "Scatted Maple Leaves" brush for this example because it makes it very easy to see what's going on, and now I'm going to paint with my brush, with "Direction" selected as my means of controlling the brush angle:

With "Direction" selected, the angle of the brush is followed the direction I painted with my brush.

Initial Direction

Another commonly used option for dynamically controlling the angle of the brush is "Initial Direction".

"Initial Direction" works similarily to "Direction", with one key difference. Rather than continuously changing the angle of the brush to match the direction you're moving in, Photoshop sets the angle of the brush based on the initial direction you move the brush, and then locks the angle in place. I'll use the leaves brush again as an example:

Notice the difference between "Direction" and "Initial Direction". With "Direction", Photoshop continued to change the angle of my brush to match the direction my brush was moving. With "Initial Direction", Photoshop set the angle of my brush only once, based on the direction I first moved the brush, and then kept that same angle for the remainder of my brush stroke.

Pen Pressure and Pen Tilt

Just as with the dynamic Size controls, we can add even further control to the angle of our brush by using a pen tablet. With a pen tablet, we can control the angle based on how hard we're pressing the pen into the tablet or by how much we tilt the brush. If you know you're going to be using Photoshop's brushes often, I highly recommend that you invest in a pen tablet. Even a relatively inexpensive pen tablet, which won't run you much beyond $100, will at least give you pen pressure control, which is by far the most popular and widely used way of controlling Photoshop's brushes.

We've now looked at how to change the size of our brush dynamically using the Shape Dynamics controls, and how to change the brush angle. In the next section, we'll look at how to change the roundness of our brush dynamically as we paint.

Back to: Size Controls  |  Go to: Roundness Controls