Understanding the Mixer Brush Tool in Photoshop

On these videos, portrait photographer Nathaniel Dodson (from the website tutvid), looks at another tool in Photoshop and this time he focuses on the pretty complex mixer brush tool which has quite a few interesting features.

Don’t feel too bad if you are not familiar with the exact workings of the mixer brush in Photoshop – it is far less used tool than the regular old brush tool (see below video) but it has quite a few interesting (and pretty funky) properties.

Basically, think about the mixer brush like a real world painter’s brush. It can be used to mix several colors togther, it can be used to take up a specific portion of color and use it until it runs out and more interestingly – it can do things that no real world brush can do like sample colors from one place and re-use them in exactly the same way/pattern in your image. You can do all of that and more by playing with the wet, load, mix and flow functions of the tool.

We are not sure if the mixing brush is that important for photographers (although if you are into visual art more than photography it can be an extremly powerful tool to master).

If you want a quick look at the more common and familiar brush tool in Photoshop – check out the video below.

Bonus video: Using the brush tool in Photoshop

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJAu8w6lhnE[/youtube]

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section. You can also check Dodson’s previous videos here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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