To change the Opacity, tap a numeric key to add the percentage of the tapped number.

Flow controls the speed at which paint is laid down (are you pressing the nozzle of the can of spray paint just a little, or all the way down?).

Opacity controls the opaque/transparent quality of the paint (are you using an opaque metallic paint or a transparent varnish?).

To change the Brush cursor preview color, click in the red swatch under Brush Preview and choose a new color.

Choose to set additional tools icons (such as the Eyedropper tool) to Standard or Precise.

To temporarily access Precise Cursors, enable the “caps lock” key.

– Check Show Only Crosshair While Painting – to display the cross hairs only while painting – Check “Show Cross hairs in Brush Tip” – to easily see the center of the brush – Full Size Brush Tip – the circle icon size represents all pixels to be painted – Normal Brush Tip – the circle icon size represents pixels to be painted with greater than 50% effect – Standard – to display the small iconic cursors

To customize the display of the painting cursors, select Preferences > Cursors and select from the following:.

To use the change Brush Opacity (instead of the Brush Hardness), based on the vertical drag movement, select Preferences > Tools and uncheck “Vary Round Brush Hardness based on HUD vertical movement”.

On Windows: Control + Alt + Right click -drag left/right to decrease/ increase brush size and up/down decrease/ increase brush hardness.

On Mac: Control + Option (Mac) –drag left/right in order to decrease/increase brush size and up/down to decrease/ increase brush hardness.

Resizing Using the HUD (Heads-Up Display)

Scroll down (almost the bottom of the list) and enter any single character to set a new shortcut for Decreasing/Increasing Brush Size.

To customize the keys used to increase/decrease brush size and hardness (as many international keyboards do not have brackets), under Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts – choose “Shortcuts For: Tools”.

Hold the left/right bracket to continuously decrease/increase brush size.Tap the left/right bracket decrease/increase brush size.Although I often use the Brush tool as the example, many of these shortcuts also work for other painting tools such as the Pencil, Mixer Brush, Clone/Pattern Stamp, Eraser, Gradient, Paint Bucket and more.

Here are twenty of my favorite shortcuts for the Brush and painting tools in Photoshop.

Adobe photoshop brushes