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Smudge areas in your images with Photoshop on the iPad

Use the Smudge tool to blend colors in specific areas of your image with Photoshop on the iPad

The Smudge tool, your favorite blending tool, is now available in Photoshop on the iPad. Use it to smudge lines or colors using the Apple Pencil or your finger.  

Customize the Size, Strength, and Hardness of your brush and control the Mode, Roundness, and Angle settings using the given dialers.  

You can also use the lesser-known Finger Painting feature to take the foreground color of your image and put that into the smudge stroke you are doing.

Use the Smudge tool to blend colors in images when working with Photoshop on the iPad.

To work with the Smudge tool, do the following:

  1. Tap the Adjustment tools icon from the toolbar to reveal the tool options and select the Smudge tool.

  2. Now choose your brush settings - SizeStrength, and Hardness - for the desired blending mode.

  3. Next, tap on the three-dot icon to go to Smudge settings and make selections for Mode (NormalDarkenLightenHueSaturationColorLuminosity), Roundness, and Angle.

  4. If you select Sample All Layers, the Smudge tool will smudge colors across all visible layers. If you deselect this, the Smudge tool will smudge colors from the active layer only.

  5. Brush over the image area where you want to smudge or blend the colors.

Pro tip: We recommend using smaller brush sizes to prevent your device from possibly slowing down. Also, your device may also slow down if you tap Sample all layers and use a bigger brush size along with.

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