Angle

Photoshop's Shape Dynamics allows us to dynamically control the angle of our brush as we paint in much the same way that we can control its size. In fact, most of the choices we're given for controlling the angle are the same. Before we continue though, I'm going to select a different brush tip from the Brush Tip Shape options in the Brushes panel, for the simple reason that I currently have a round brush selected and a round brush looks, well, round no matter which angle you set it to. I'll choose the Hard Elliptical 45 pixel brush from the list:

With my new brush tip now selected, I'll switch back over to the Shape Dynamics options. Click on the drop-down box to the right of the angle Control option to view our choices for controlling the brush angle:

Fade, Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, Stylus Wheel
As we can see in the list, Fade, Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, and Stylus Wheel are all here again, and they all work in a similar fashion except that this time, they'll control the angle of the brush rather than its size. For example, Fade will rotate the brush 360° over a specified number of steps. The default number of steps is again 25. I'll select Fade and lower the number of steps to 15 just as I did with the Size control:

The preview area at the bottom of the Brushes panel updates to show us the result. The brush now rotates along the path of the stroke, taking exactly 15 stamps of the brush tip before it returns to its original angle:

Selecting Pen Pressure allows us to vary the angle of the brush based on the amount of pressure being applied to the pen tablet. Pen Tilt controls the angle by tilting the pen as we paint. Here's an example of a brush stroke I painted with the angle control set to Pen Pressure. I've increased the spacing between the individual brush tips to make things more obvious:

Direction and Initial Direction
Of all the choices available to us for controlling the brush angle, the one used most often is Direction:

The Direction option works exactly the same whether you're using a pen tablet or a standard mouse. The brush tip automatically rotates to follow the direction you're painting in:

You can also try the Initial Direction option:

Initial Direction locks the angle of the brush to the direction you first drag your mouse or pen in. Regardless of which direction you move in after that, the angle remains unchanged:

Angle Jitter
Just as we saw with the Size section, the Angle section also includes a Jitter option directly above the Control option. We already know that "jitter" means randomness, and in this case, we can use the Jitter slider to tell Photoshop to randomly change the angle of the brush as we paint. The further we drag the slider towards the right, the more randomness will be applied:

Again, the Jitter slider has nothing to do with the Control option below it. We can use Jitter by itself to add nothing but randomness to the brush angle, or we can combine Jitter with one of the Control options for a "best of both worlds" effect. Here's a brush stroke I painted with the Control option set to Direction combined with a Jitter value of 20%:

Up next, we'll complete our look at Photoshop's Shape Dynamics options by learning how to dynamically control the roundness of the brush!