Introducing the pencil and brush tools

272 Introducing the Pencil and Brush Tools

The most important difference between the Brush and the Pencil tools is that, by default, the Brush tool produces soft-edged lines that Photoshop renders smoother by a process known as anti-aliasing. This technique substi-tutes partially filled pixels along the edges of lines to produce the illusion of gradual fading. Our eyes merge the transparent pixels together, so the line looks smooth rather than hard-edged.

Although jaggy edges are most appar-ent in diagonal lines, Photoshop applies anti-aliasing to brush stroke edges even in horizontal and vertical lines. The
fuzzier the brush, the more semi-filled pixels used to produce the effect, as you can see in Figure 1-3.

Pencil line

Hard-edge brush line

The Brush tool has several other options to select from:


� Toggle the Brushes Palette: At the far right of the Options bar is a button (a palette icon) that shows or hides the Brushes palette. It’s a quick way to access this valuable palette, and is also available


Brushes palette later in this chapter.	you to create smoky strokes.

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� Click the Brushes palette button on the right side of the Options bar.

� Press F5 to toggle the Brushes palette open or closed.