Brush Modes, Rake & Pen Settings

Brush Mode

The Brush Mode dropdown under Save Brush holds the familiar Photoshop blend modes — Darken, Multiply, Color Burn, Lighten, Screen, Color Dodge, Overlay, Soft/Hard/Vivid/ Linear/Pin Light, Hard Mix, Difference, Exclusion, Subtract, Divide, and the Hue/Saturation/Color/ Luminosity group. The painted color is first combined with what's already on the surface by the mode's own math, and the brush's opacity blends toward that result — exactly Photoshop's brush-mode behavior. It applies to the Color/Albedo channel and is saved per brush; Normal simply paints the color.

Rake Brush & Drop Brush

In the Brush Shape accordion, Rake Brush rotates the brush image to follow the direction you're painting in — the classic rake/streak behavior for bristle, scratch and fur brushes. Turning it on sets Angle Jitter to 0, since the two fight over the same rotation. Drop Brush solves "first click regret": with it on, the initial click doesn't stamp a dab — the first dab lands the moment you start moving, already pointing along the stroke instead of at an unrotated angle. Both are saved per brush.

Manual brush rotation

While painting, ←/→ rotate the brush by 15° and Shift+←/→ by 1°, with the current angle shown beside the brush cursor as you turn it. The rotation is additive on top of Rake, so it works as a plain "twist the brush" dial either way. The brush cursor's own image preview tilts to the surface and turns live with every rotation source, so the cursor always shows the stamp you're about to make.

Pen Settings

With a pressure-sensitive tablet, the Pen Settings accordion maps stylus pressure onto the brush: pressure affects size and pressure affects opacity each with a minimum percentage, so a light touch gives a thin, faint stroke that swells with pressure — Photoshop's mapping. With no pen (or the feature off), the mouse paints at full size and opacity, unchanged.