3.3. Brush Tools (Pencil, Paintbrush, Airbrush)

Figure 14.61. Painting example

Three strokes painted with the same round fuzzy brush (outline shown in upper left), using the Pencil (left), Paintbrush (middle), and Airbrush (right).

The tools in this group are GIMP’s basic painting tools, and they have enough features in common to be worth discussing together in this section. Features common to all paint tools are described in the Common Features section. Features specific to an individual tool are described in the section devoted to that tool.

The Pencil is the crudest of the tools in this group: it makes hard, non-anti-aliased brushstrokes. The Paintbrush is intermediate: it is probably the most commonly used of the group. The Airbrush is the most flexible and controllable. This flexibility also makes it a bit more difficult to use than the Paintbrush, however.

All of these tools share the same brushes, and the same options for choosing colors, either from the basic palette or from a gradient. All are capable of painting in a wide variety of modes.

3.3.1. Key modifiers

Ctrl

Holding down the Ctrl key changes each of these tools to a Color Picker: clicking on any pixel of any layer sets the foreground color (as displayed in the Toolbox Color Area) to the color of the pixel.

Shift

This key places these tools into straight line mode. Holding Shift while clicking the mouse left Button will generate a straight line. Consecutive clicks will continue drawing straight lines that originate from the end of the last line.