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Pixel brushes

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  1. Adobe Fresco User Guide
  2. Introduction
    1. What's new in Adobe Fresco
    2. What is Adobe Fresco
    3. System requirements for Adobe Fresco
    4. Adobe Fresco on the iPhone
    5. Keyboard shortcuts
    6. Adobe Fresco | Common questions
    7. Get started with the user interface
    8. Upgrade to a paid plan of Adobe Fresco
    9. Upgrade storage for Adobe Fresco
    10. Supported features on iPad and Windows devices
  3. Draw, paint, animate, and share
    1. Layers
    2. Shapes in Adobe Fresco
    3. Colors
    4. Mixer brushes
    5. Pixel brushes
    6. Ribbon brushes
    7. Live brushes
    8. Adjust pressure curve on stylus
    9. Vector brushes
    10. Smudge tool
    11. Add and modify text
    12. Publish, export, and share
    13. Layer masks
    14. Access Creative Cloud libraries in Fresco
    15. Ruler
    16. Erasers
    17. Add your own font
    18. Apply motion to artwork
    19. Grids alignment
  4. Adobe Fresco and Creative Cloud apps
    1. Adobe Fresco and Photoshop
    2. Adobe Fresco and Illustrator
    3. Easily migrate from Draw and Sketch
  5. Cloud documents
    1. Cloud documents in Adobe Fresco
  6. Troubleshooting
    1. Unable to access imported pixel brushes on Windows
    2. Adobe Fresco crashes on Windows devices
  7. Examples, Ideas, and Inspirations
    1. Create a logo
    2. Create tie-dye wash effects
    3. Creative illustration | Digital concept art

 

Learn how to draw and paint, and manage pixel brushes in Adobe Fresco.

With Adobe Fresco, you get a large collection of brushes, both raster, and vector. And you can use them on the same canvas. Use the Pixel Brushes   and Live Brushes   icons in the toolbar to access the collection of brushes for raster drawing, painting, and sketching. 

You can also import your favorite Photoshop brushes or get more brushes from Kyle T. Webster's ever-growing collection.

Discover the joy of painting with thousands of pixel brushes

How to choose and fine-tune a pixel brush

Follow these steps to choose a pixel brush and customize its settings:

  1. Double-tap the Pixel Brushes icon to see the list of brushes in different categories, choose the brush you like.
  2. Tap on Color to open the color panel and adjust the color and opacity.
  3. From the Tool Options at the bottom of the toolbar, you can change the brush size, flow, and smoothing as required.
  4. Tap the Brush Settings   icon to adjust various brush settings like spacing, angle, blend mode, stylus pressure and more.

When you start drawing with the pixel brush, you will notice this   icon on the layer thumbnail indicating that it's a pixel layer.

When using pixel brushes, you can add a range of mixer brushes to blend and mix multiple colors naturally.

Explore and choose from a huge collection of categorized Pixel brushes and also mark your favorite brushes for quick access while at work.

Explore the various settings to magically change the default brush form and see the changes live in the preview box. Press the reset button at the bottom to go back to the default form.

Tips to make a pixel brush right for you

Types of pixel brushes

Brush Type

When to use

Basic

Make use of the standard round brushes to create basic drawings.

Comics

Draw comics using Cross Hatch and Halftone brushes.

Charcoal

Make gesture studies, loose sketches, or figure construction.

Dry Media

Blend sketches with paintings using Pencil, Pastel, Graphite, Crayon, and Chalk brushes.

FX

Create artwork with special effects using Clouds, Dusty, Foliage, and Ink brushes.

Ink

Create calligraphic artwork using Comics, Brush, Blake, Fountain pens, and Belgian and Classic comic brushes.

Lettering

Make sign paintings, calligraphic, blueprints, and posters using Chisel, Chunk, Comics letterer, Gritty, and Letter Rake brushes.

Marker

Render your ideas with realistic digital markers using Marker Brush and Chisel brushes.

Mixer

Mix colors on the canvas and combine colors on a brush.

Painting

Make various paintings using Canvas, Cezanne, Bristle, and Blair brushes.

Rakes

Create multi-line strokes on canvas using Grit, Short, Textured, Tilt, and Pressure brushes.

Sketching

Make sketches before painting using Pencil and Pen sketching brushes.

Pixel brush settings

As you change a setting, you can preview the effect live while drawing in the Brush Settings panel. Tap on the reset icon, at the bottom of the panel, to go back to the default settings. You can also adjust the pressure curve for better stylus pressure.

Hardness

Use the slider to adjust the size of the hard center of your brush. At the minimum value, your brush stroke is blurred and at the maximum value, the clarity of the brush stroke is sharp and clear.

Spacing

Use the slider to adjust the spaces in your brush strokes. At minimum value, your brush stroke is continuous and at maximum value, the brush stroke is separated with white spaces like a dotted line.

Angle

Use the slider to tweak the angle of your brush so you can draw chiseled strokes. The roundness of your brush tip should be a smaller value for getting brush strokes with sharper angles.

Blend mode

Choose an option to set how two colors blend.

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Control the color blend while drawing on the same layer

Shape Dynamics

Set the size and roundness of the brush.

Scattering

Choose how you want the brush tip to scatter along the axes to create a spraylike stroke.

Transfer

Color dynamics

Enhance any paint's color, hue, saturation, brightness jitter settings, and color dynamics while drawing a stroke in Fresco.

Transform your designs by using brush settings like Hue jitter, Saturation Jitter, etc.

To modify your color dynamics, tap on Brush settings and then on Color dynamics to pick one of the brush options from below: 

Brush settings

Used to

Off

Specify no control over the color variance of brush marks.

Fade

Vary the color of paint between the foreground color and the background color.

Pen Pressure / Pen Tilt / Stylus Wheel / Rotation

Modify the paint color between the foreground and background colors based on the pen pressure, tilt, position, or rotation.

Hue Jitter

Define a percentage by which the paint hue can vary in a stroke. Type a number, or use the slider to enter a value. 

Saturation Jitter

Choose a percentage by which the paint saturation can vary in a stroke. Type a number, or use the slider to enter a value. 

Brightness Jitter

Mention a percentage by which the paint brightness can vary in a stroke. Type a number, or use the slider to enter a value.

Purity

Increase or decrease the saturation of the color. Type a number, or use the slider to enter a percentage between –100 and 100.

Apply per tip

Specify changing color for each distinct tip stamp in a stroke. If unchecked, dynamic changes occur once at the beginning of each stroke.

 To set a percentage by which the paint color can vary, type a number, or use the slider to enter a value. 

Import additional pixel brushes

Photoshop pixel brushes are the industry-standard brushes. In addition to the default pixel brushes, import Photoshop brushes saved to your library, or choose from the huge collection of celebrated brushmaker Kyle T. Webster.

To import additional pixel brushes:
  1. Click the + icon at the bottom of the Pixel Brushes panel. 
  2. Do the following:
    • For Kyle T. Webster's brushes, tap Discover new brushes and sign in to adobe.com.
    • For your own favorite pixel brushes, tap Import from files, navigate to the downloaded file, and then tap the file.
kyle
Kyle T. Webster brushes for Creative Cloud members

Manage brushes

You can hide all the brushes that you never use, by hiding entire Pixel brush categories or any individual brushes within categories.

At least one brush collection must be visible. You cannot hide all of your brush collections.

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Brush management

To manage your brushes:

  1. Tap Pixel brushes  
  2. Tap the More options   icon in the upper-right corner, and then tap Manage pixel brushes.
  3. Select the category of brushes you want to hide and toggle the setting to off. You can also hide specific brushes within a category. 
  4. Tap the Show all or Hide all options at the bottom, to show or hide all the pixel brushes.

 

Hide and show brushes

Brush stamp preview

Brush stamp preview enables you to use pixel brushes and eraser more precisely by creating patterns the moment your finger or pencil touches the screen surface. Your brush stamp preview is set to Off by default.

 Live brushes or Vector erasers can also use the brush stamp preview feature.

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Enable brush stamp preview

To enable the brush stamp preview:

  1. Select Settings > App settings. 
  2. Choose Input and click Brushes. You can increase or decrease the stamp size by altering the brush size. 
  3. Set the Brush Preview indicator, which is set to Off by default, to Brush stamp. 
  4. Click Pixel brushes icon   and select any brush from the menu and also pick a color from the Color wheel.
  5. Touch down the canvas and see that the stamp preview has a clear outline for identification. 
  6. Move around and with every stroke see the stamp preview.

Here are some sample previews of brush stamps: 

Sample preview of brush stamp with pixel brushes

Sample preview of brush stamp with pixel brushes

Sample preview of brush stamp as oil paint

Have a question or an idea?

We've got you started with pixel brushes in Adobe Fresco. The interface of Adobe Fresco is intuitive. We hope you will find it easy to unleash your creativity with pixel brushes, live brushes, mixer brushes, vector brushes, colors, and more.

If you have a question to ask or an idea to share, come and participate in Adobe Fresco Community. We would love to hear from you and see your creations.

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