User Manual

Pressure Sensitivity and Pen Tablets 167
Pressure sensitivity
Pressure sensitivity is a property of individual brushes, and is only applicable if
you're a pen tablet user wanting to:
Using:
• retouch photos by painting out specific
areas.
Paintbrush Tool
• retouch photos by erasing specific areas.
Standard Eraser Tool
Background Eraser Tool
• retouch photos to lighten and darken
areas.
Dodge Tool
Burn Tool
• creatively paint over photos for stylistic
effect (e.g., Matte painting).
Paintbrush Tool
In simple terms, pressure sensitivity means that your brush stroke changes in
size, opacity, etc., in proportion with the amount of pressure you apply using
your tablet's input device (e.g, Pressure Stylus, Eraser or Airbrush).
For more information about tablets, see Using pen tablets (p. 168).
Enabling pressure sensitivity
Where appropriate, only selected PhotoPlus brushes are pressure sensitive by
default (i.e., Basic, Calligraphic, Stamps, and selected Effects or Media
brushes). Some brushes are not pressure sensitive because of their inherent
characteristics (e.g., spray brushes).
For the tablet user, you normally don't need to do anything apart from paint or
draw with your pressure-sensitive device. This is because the attributes of Size
and Opacity for those selected brushes are already pressure-enabled.
However, for less-commonly used attributes such as Spacing and Shape,
pressure is disabled by default, although you can manually switch on pressure
sensitivity for these brush attributes at any time via the brush's Context toolbar
(Brush Options).