PhotoPlus X6 User Guide - Serif

128 Painting, Drawing, and Text
If you scroll down the gallery, you’ll note that some brushes have hard edges,
while others appear fuzzy, with soft edges. The hardness of a brush is expressed
as a percentage of its full diameter. If less than 100%, the brush has a soft edge
region within which the opacity of applied colour falls off gradually.
Brush attributes (blend mode, opacity, size, and flow) can be modified via a
context toolbar (along with more advanced Brush Options) and, if necessary,
saved for future use with the Tool Presets tab.
If a more bespoke brush tip is required, you can also customize your own brush
tip and save it in its own user-defined category. (See Creating your own brush
tips in PhotoPlus Help for details.)
An important factor when applying brush strokes is the level of opacity applied
to the brush. This attribute affects brush strokes significantly when the stroke is
applied onto already transparent standard layers. The greater the opacity the
more opaque the brush stroke. Experiment to achieve the right combination of
opacity and colour for your brush strokes.
To use the Paintbrush or Pencil tool:
1. From the Tools toolbar's Brush Tools flyout, select the
Paintbrush Tool or Pencil Tool.
2. Choose a brush tip preset on the Brush Tip tab. If you've picked a Basic
brush, set a brush colour (i.e. the foreground colour) from the Colour tab
before painting.
3. (Optional) Change brush tip's attributes, if necessary, on the context
toolbar. These changes do not affect the brush presets present in the Brush
Tip tab.
4. Drag the cursor on the active layer, holding the left mouse button down to
paint in the foreground colour.