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

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 21, 2023
3 replies
1877 views

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!

macOS

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Correct answer Semaphoric

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

T

turner111Author

Inspiring

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

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

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

Community Expert

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.