Written By Steve Patterson

Everything we've looked at so far as we make our way through Photoshop's various Brush Dynamics options has had one thing in common. They've all had something to do with the shape of the brush. We've seen how to dynamically change the brush size, angle and roundness with Shape Dynamics, how to scatter multiple copies of the brush tip with Scattering, how to add a texture or pattern to the brush with the Texture options, and how the Dual Brush options allow us to blend two different brushes together! In this tutorial, we move away from the shape-related features and into the wild world of color as we learn how Photoshop's Color Dynamics allow us to control the hue, saturation and brightness of our brush as we paint, and even how to randomly swap between our Foreground and Background colors!

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To access the Color Dynamics, click directly on the words Color Dynamics on the left side of the Brushes panel:

As soon as you click on the words, the options and controls for the Color Dynamics appear on the right side of the Brushes panel. At first glance, it looks like we have quite a bit of control here over the color of our brush, since we see options for Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and Purity, and even an option at the top that has something to do with our Foreground and Background colors:

However, if you look closely, you'll notice that there's only one Control option in the entire Color Dynamics section, and it's tied to the Foreground/Background option at the top:

None of other headings (Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and Purity) have a Control option associated with them, which means we can't control these other options ourselves with pen pressure, pen tilt, or even the Fade command. Instead, Hue, Saturation and Brightness each have the word Jitter to the right of their name:

Jitter, as we know by now, means randomness in Photoshop, which means we can use these options to let Photoshop randomly change these three aspects of our brush's color as we paint! Let's look at each of the Color Dynamics options more closely.

Foreground/Background

Normally, Photoshop uses our current Foreground color as the color for our brush, so if we wanted to paint with red, yellow, blue, or whatever the case may be, we'd set our Foreground color to the color we wanted before we started painting. But why settle for painting with just one color when we can paint with two! The Foreground/Background option at the top of the Color Dynamics section allows us to switch between our current Foreground and Background colors as we paint!

You can see what your Foreground and Background colors are currently set to by looking at their color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette. The square in the upper left is the Foreground color swatch. The lower right square is the Background color swatch. By default, these are set to black (Foreground color) and white (Background color):

To change either color, simply click on its color swatch and choose a new color from Photoshop's Color Picker. I'm going to paint with the Scattered Maple Leaves brush tip, so I'll choose a couple of more traditional colors for leaves. First, I'll set my Foreground color to orange (for a nice Fall color) by clicking on the Foreground color swatch:

This opens the Color Picker. I'll choose my color, then click OK to exit out of it:

I'll do the same thing for the Background color. First, I'll click on its color swatch in the Tools palette:

When the Color Picker appears, I'll select a medium green, then click OK to once again exit out of it:

If I look again at my Foreground and Background color swatches in the Tools palette, I see that the colors have now changed:

By default, Photoshop will paint using only the Foreground color. Here's a simple brush stroke (with the brush tip set to Scattered Maple Leaves) with none of the Color Dynamics options selected. I've added some Angle jitter from the Shape Dynamics section for some variety:

Control Options
So far, we get exactly what we expected. Photoshop paints with the Foreground color. Watch what happens, though, when I set the Control option to Pen Pressure:

This time, Photoshop blends both the Foreground and Background colors into the brush stroke based on the amount of pressure I apply to the tablet with my pen. With a minimum amount of pressure, Photoshop uses the Background color (green). As more and more pressure is applied towards the center of the stroke, more of the Foreground color (orange) is mixed in, until finally, at maximum pen pressure, we see the pure Foreground color. As I reduce the pen pressure towards the end of the stroke, Photoshop gradually switches back to the Background color:

If you don't have a pen tablet, you can try the Fade command which works the same here as it does in the previous Brush Dynamics sections we've looked at. Once you've selected Fade from the Control drop-down list, enter the number of steps you want Photoshop to use to fade between the Foreground and Background colors. Here I've set mine to 10 steps:

If I paint a new brush stroke, we see that the color of the leaves now fades between orange (the Foreground color) and green (the Background color) over 10 "stamps" of the brush tip. After 10 steps, the stroke continues on using the Background color:

Jitter
We can also let Photoshop randomly switch between the Foreground and Background colors as we paint using the Jitter slider. Dragging the Jitter slider towards the right increases the maximum percentage of the Background color that Photoshop can mix in. For example, here, I'm setting the Foreground/Background jitter to 25%:

This allows Photoshop to randomly blend up to 25% of the Background color in with the Foreground color, creating a subtle tinting effect with the leaves:

Here's another brush stroke, this time with the Foreground/Background jitter set to 50%, which means Photoshop can now mix up to 50% of the Background color in with the Foreground color. We're starting to see a stronger greenish tint in some of the leaves:

At a jitter value of 75%, we're seeing much more green appearing:

Finally, if we crank the jitter value all the way up to 100%, Photoshop is given complete control over how much of the Foreground and Background color is mixed in for each new brush tip:

Up next, we'll look at the Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and Purity controls!