Work Basics: Painting (Video Included)

Let's look at the Toolbox once again. As you can see it is full of some (supposedly useful) instruments. And there are tools that we can't even see yet! Some of these buttons contain hidden tools. Press any button that has a small arrow in the corner, to select a hidden tool. Now you may begin painting.

1. First of all, let's create a new document. Pull down menu File > New... A dialog box pops up. Set Image Size: 640x480 pixels; Background Contents: Transparent, then click OK. A new document opens in a new window strangely resembling a chessboard. The gray and white checks mean that we are dealing with a totally transparent area. It is not very easy to paint on.

2. From the Toolbox, choose the Paint Bucket Tool.

3. In the Swatches palette, click on the white swatch (movie).

4. Click with your Paint Bucket over the image. The canvas is primed (movie).
Surely, we could have created a "white" image from the very beginning (in the "new document" dialog), but wasn't it a pleasure to pour the paint right out of the bucket?

5. From your Toolbox, select the Brush Tool.

6. On the Options bar, open the Brush Preset picker and choose a brush. The two essential properties of a brush are size and hardness. In the movie I choose a big and soft brush.
* More about brush choosing

7. In the Swatches palette, choose yellow color.

8. Try to paint. What a nice yellow cloud!

9. There are some other options for the Brush Tool on the Options bar. Open the Mode menu and select "Color" (movie). Now our brush can change only the color of objects without entirely painting over them.

NB On the Options bar  you can adjust any tool as your choices update based on the tool you have selected.

10. In the Swatches palette, select cyan color. In the Brush Preset picker, adjust brush size.

11. Paint over your previous strokes (movie). When finished, set the brush mode to "Normal" for future work. The settings are saved even after you quit Photoshop, so when you restart the program, your layout and menu choices will be as they were when you quit the program. 

12. Activate the  Eraser Tool; choose brush size and style.

13. Test the tool out.  Great! Let's call it "A Furious White Lightning in Methanoic Atmosphere of Jupiter".