Photoshop: Brushes - things you did not know

When the brush tool is active, you can hold down alt to make it to a colour picker, so you can change colour of the brush by clicking on the image.

To change the colour of the active brush from the current image: hold down alt to temporarily make it to a colour picker, and then click on the colour in the image.

To change the opacity of the active brush: just type a number. 1=10%, 2=20% and so on. Or use one of these methods.

To get a straight line with the brush tool: click on one place - shift click on another, and the line will appear between the two. If you go on shift-clicking somewhere else, you get another line, which makes it easy to make a polygon.

Usability trap: In the Brushes palette, you can activate a feature, like Scattering or Noise by clicking on the checkbox next to its name. However, this will not display the options for that feature. You have to click on the feature name to see the options.

When you create a Brush (Edit > Define Brush Preset...), it does not matter if you leave white space around the brush, as all white will be discarded. This is different from when you create a pattern, where the white space is taken into account.

To change the size of a Brush there are two shortcuts: Method 1: Press [ or ]. Method 2: Hold down ctrl+alt and drag horizontally. To change the Brush softness: Command + Ctrl + Option + click-drag.