Photoshop Airbrush VS. Paintbrush

[AkaNezumi]

I'm sorry in advance, because this is probably a really played out question. I even asked it before on another forum but still don't get it.

What is the difference between the airbrush and paintbrush in Photoshop?

[Giottoface]

i guess nothing, since they got rid of the airbrush in PS7

[AkaNezumi]

Hmm..thats strange. I use PS7 at home and unless I'm going insane, there is an airbrush. It is just in the options bar on the top when you have paintbrush selected.

[Jin]

In Photoshop 7.1, when the Brush tool is active, there's:

1. An icon on the right side of the Options bar you can "Set to enable airbrush capabilities".

2. In the Brushes palette, there's a checkbox for Airbrush.

[AkaNezumi]

Thanks. :) I thought I wasn't losing it. lol

You wouldn't happen to know what the difference between the airbrush and paintbrush are, would you? :)

[Jin]

Since I teach Painter not Photoshop, and am not an expert with Photoshop, the best thing I can suggest (and it's what I'd suggest for a Painter user) is to try both and see for yourself what the differences are.

Then if you have specific questions about them, post a message here and someone who is an expert with Photoshop can help.

[AkaNezumi]

True...the thing is I've tried them both and for the life of me can't find any difference. Maybe it has to do with the coverage...

Since you teach painter, I have to ask you....do you know if there is any difference between the PC and MAC version?

Meaning is the MAC version more optimized for speed? I posted awhile ago regarding painter. The situation was that on my computer it runs very slow, and my computer is roughly the speed of the G5. (But its a PC) I wrote Corel and they basically said the program wasn't optimised, and "oh well".

So when I work at 300 DPI 8.5 X 10, I can't fill in backgrounds with very large brushes without having to wait about 5 or 10 minutes for one measley stroke to finish. Meanwhile this isn't a problem with any other program I use. (Photoshop, Illustrator, and even 3D design is SUPER fast.)

The responses here said basically set the undos to 1, and get rid of as much stuff as possible, clean out caches etc. (Which right off to me seems strange to even offer options that you cant use, regardless of how fast your machine is.)

What is your take on it? Do you use MAC or PC, and at what size are your images? I've heard it about working at 72 DPI then attempting to upsample..but when I can just work right out of the box in photoshop it doesn't seem right to bother with all this other stuff that the program should be able to handle?

Reason I feel this way is that I love the idea of painter...its just frustrated me. I'm hoping that I can find some loophole here, since so many people use it and get beautiful results.

[MrKayne]

I don't know if this is acurate, but the only big difference I've noticed is the paintbrush paints at your brush opacity setting (using the mouse), and the airbrush takes a sec to reach that opacity.

eg... one click with brush gives a blue dot, while one click of the airbrush produces a very slightly lighter (less opaque) blue dot. Does anyone know if it does this, or am I just seeing things?

[AkaNezumi]

Hmm...sounds just like a real airbrush. Which would make sense. As soon as I get back from work I'll test it out to see. :)

Thanks so much!!!

[ainley88]

Hi,

I have found that the airbrush button in Photoshop makes the brush react like a spray can/airbrush. If you stay in the same place and keep pressing or press harder then more paint goes on the canvas.

The standard paintbrush will not do this. You have to have movement to make a mark.

Hope that helps. I have been wondering for a while also!