Hue Jitter

The Hue Jitter, Saturation Jitter and Brightness Jitter options in the Color Dynamics section of the Brushes panel all work in a similar way as the Foreground/Background Jitter option we just looked at. Each one will randomly control a certain aspect of our brush's color as we paint. The "hue" is what most people think of as the actual color itself, and by dragging the Hue Jitter slider towards the right, we let Photoshop randomly change the color of our brush. The further we drag the slider, the more variety we see in the colors.

By default, Hue Jitter is set to 0%, which means "off". At this setting, Photoshop will simply paint with the current Foreground color, which in my case is orange (I've turned off the Foreground/Background jitter and controls). I'll add just a hint of randomness to my brush color by increasing my Hue Jitter value to 10% with the slider:

A Hue Jitter value of 10% means that Photoshop can only choose colors that are within 10% of the current Foreground color on the color wheel. If I paint a brush stroke, we see that all of the random colors are very similar to the original orange color:

If I increase my Hue Jitter value to 25%, Photoshop can now choose any color within 25% of the current Foreground color on the color wheel. We start to see a bit more variety, but the colors are still fairly similar:

At 50%, the colors of the leaves really start to become random as Photoshop is given a wide range of colors to choose from:

If we increase Hue Jitter all the way to 100%, we get truly random colors as Photoshop can now choose any hue it likes:

Saturation Jitter

The Saturation Jitter control works the same way, but it randomly changes the saturation of the brush color as we paint. The default value is 0%, but by dragging the slider towards the right, we let Photoshop randomly adjust how saturated the color appears. The further we drag the slider, the more variety we'll see in the saturation.

I'll start by setting my Saturation Jitter value to 25%:

A Saturation Jitter value of 25% means that Photoshop can randomly change the color saturation as we paint but only within 25% of the Foreground color's original saturation value. Here, we see the difference is quite subtle:

If I increase my Saturation Jitter value to 50%, Photoshop can now choose any saturation value within 50% of the original. In my case, we're now seeing some leaves that are getting closer to gray:

At a Saturation Jitter value to 100%, Photoshop can choose any saturation value, from fully saturated to completely desaturated, each time it "stamps" a new copy of the brush tip:

Brightness Jitter

The Brightness Jitter option lets Photoshop randomly choose the brightness of our brush's color as we paint, and it works the same way as the Hue Jitter and Saturation Jitter options. Dragging the slider towards the right will add randomness to the brightness, and the further we drag the slider, the more variety we see. I'll increase my Brightness Jitter value to 25%:

At 25%, we see only minor differences in the brightness values since Photoshop is limited to choosing values within 25% of the Foreground color's original brightness level:

If I increase Brightness Jitter to 50%, we see more varied brightness levels, with some leaves now much darker than others:

Finally, with Brightness Jitter set to 100%, Photoshop can choose any brightness level with each new stamp of the brush tip:

Purity

The Purity option below the Hue, Saturation and Brightness Jitter options controls the overall saturation of the brush color. Unlike the Saturation Jitter option we looked at earlier which lets Photoshop randomly change the saturation as we paint, there's nothing random about the Purity option. We can use Purity to increase or decrease the brush color's saturation by dragging the slider left or right, and it will remain unchanged until we adjust the slider again. If you're painting with both the Foreground and Background colors using the Foreground/Background option at the top of the Color Dynamics section, Purity will affect both colors.

By default, Purity is set to 0%, which means it has no effect on the saturation:

To decrease color saturation, simply drag the Purity slider towards the left. The further to the left you drag the slider, the lower the saturation level becomes. I'll lower mine down to a value of -50%:

If I paint a stroke, we see that the brush's color saturation has been greatly reduced. I've set my Foreground/Background Jitter value to 100% so we get a nice mixture of both colors. Notice that there are no random changes to the saturation this time. The adjustment we made with the Purity option is consistent throughout the entire stroke and affects both the Foreground and Background colors:

To increase the brush's color saturation, drag the Purity slider towards the right. I'll increase mine to +50%:

In my case though, increasing the Purity value doesn't give me results that are much different from my original Foreground and Background colors, and that's because my original colors were already quite saturated. If I had chosen colors with low saturation levels to begin with, I'd see much more of a difference:

And there we have it! Up next, we'll finish off our look at Photoshop's Brush Dynamics with the sixth and final category, and also the one with the least interesting name - Other Dynamics!

Or, jump to any of the other Brush Dynamics categories using the links below:

• Shape Dynamics
• Scattering
• Texture
• Color Dynamics

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