How do we "taper off" when using the brush?

[turner111]

In some painting programs, you can "load" your brush with paint, which "runs out" - so that you may start with a solid stroke, which becomes narrower & transparent as this happens.

Is there a way to do this in Photoshop?

thanks!

[Semaphoric · Accepted solution]

In the Brush Settings panel, several of the controls have an option for Fade.

[Trevor.Dennis]

It works in conjunction with brush spacing, so the tighter the spacing, the higher the fade value needed for a given stroke length.  This had spacing set to 10%, which looks much nicer than the default 25% with this sort of stroke. Brush diameter was 15 pixels, and fade set to 3000.

You can also use fade when stroking a path, which gives you better control of the shape of the stroke.

[Trevor.Dennis]

I thought I'd add that Fade is how I draw in hair using a 1 pixel fully hard brush.  The upper strokes have size fade set to 1000.  The lower strokes also have opacity fade set to 1000.  I usually also reduce layer oppacity to make the hair look more real.  This is how some folk make impossibly good hair selections, as in they don't really.  They add flyaway hair with the brush.

[George_F]

I'm going to remember this awesome tip for the future!  Thanks for sharing!

[turner111]

Wow! Been using Photoshop for a LONG time, never had the need to do this before... thanks.