PSHERO | Photoshop Tutorials | Rotating Brushes

Rotating Brushes

In this Photoshop Tip I will demonstrate how to change the angle of any brush in the Brushes palette quickly and easily. Posted In Tips & Tricks | Comments 28

Step 1

You all know that I’m a huge fan of keyboard shortcuts and simplifying the Photoshop workflow, but I don’t often get as excited about a Photoshop tip as I did when I learned this one.

I’ve always been annoyed at Photoshop Brushes because they’ve seemed so static. Sure, you can easily change the size of any brush by using the bracket keys "[" and "]" and that’s convenient, but half the time the brush is facing the wrong way or is set at a bad angle for a certain job, often times rendering it useless. Well, those days are past and the solution is so easy you’re going to feel a little retarded at never figuring this one out… or maybe that was just me. For those of you who knew about this, shame on you for not telling me about it!

OK.. grab the brush tool by pressing B, then from the brushes drop down choose a brush that isn’t round. I’ll choose this nice grunge brush that’s bothered me for years because it only works on a right bottom corner…

Step 2

You can see in the Brushes palette that it\’s a lower right hand corner grunge brush and painted on the canvas it obviously is.

Step 3

But, if we open the Brushes window by selecting Window>Brushes from the main menu (*note: this tool may already be open and tucked neatly away in the top bar, so check there too.)

Clicking on the Brush Tip Shape header opens up a whole window of hidden possibilities that will amaze and excite you… especially this great little circle over on the right! Yes, that’s right, you can just click and drag that neat little circle with the arrow in it until the brush is oriented exactly the way you’d like! Now every brush is multi-directional at the click of your mouse! What a GREAT trick!

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Installing And Managing Brushes And Other Presets

28 Responses to Rotating Brushes

koekie

March 17th, 2008 at 4:23 am

Haha, I always brushed on a new layer and rotated that.
This would be way easier, thanks!
Cancerkitty

April 3rd, 2008 at 8:22 am

Holy cats, I’ve been wondering how you do that. I’ve actually been doing the same thing as Koekie.
aronil

April 9th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

They’ve had that option for quite some time, but yea not many people know about it :) I suppose if you spend a lot of time fiddling with photoshop you will notice it soon enough.
DARKCAST

April 19th, 2008 at 9:03 am

THEBLOGGERMUSTDIE.BLOGSPOT.COM
LOVE YOUR TUTORIALS
Fendrel

May 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 am

Clicking on the shape dynamics tool is pretty darn cool too, you can set it so that the angle of the brush will randomize with every click!
asano

June 16th, 2008 at 3:16 am

finding it 3 whole months after them…! its a gr8 tip. Thanks
Rebecca

July 16th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

I don’t feel so bad now. I still have some trouble with PhotoShop features but the brush tip I truly stumbled into it on my own when I got all frustrated with their brushes and learned how to make my own.
I’ll give you one better though! I’ve had PS for a few years, used it every now and again and just the other day finally figured out how to do the mask! It never seemed to work for me, until I learned…*blush* – “hide all” was set by default.
HERO

July 16th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

REBECCA,
You’re right, that’s definitely better! … AND funnier! I totally laughed. Thanks for sharing!
Kalynn

September 9th, 2008 at 11:24 pm

oh for…I’ve been doing the same thing as Koekie…rotating the whole layer. This is sooo gonna change my brush work! Love your tutorials.
siri

September 29th, 2008 at 10:45 am

this is the second place i’ve seen that has this nifty tool tip. however i can’t get the presets to open in cs3 on vista…? is this only good on mac? when i open the brushes window it just shows me all my loaded brushes, when i double click on one of the brushes it the ‘brush preset’ window opens, but all i can change is the name of the brush. guess i’ll be rotating layers for now then. -S
HERO

September 29th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

SIRI,
It sounds like you’re accessing the brushes through the Brush Picker Options Bar that appears at the top of PS when you’ve got the Brush tool selected. You need to actually open the Brushes Palette. Choose Window>Brushes from the main menu, then just click on the Brush Tip Shape link on the left side of the dialog to change the brushes angle.
Rob

October 2nd, 2008 at 7:24 pm

I agree this is a good tip, by Adobe really needs to make it easier to rotate the canvas.
HERO

October 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm

ROB, Because clicking Image>Rotate Canvas is too difficult? You know, you could always define a keyboard shortcut to make things just that much easier.
jls

November 15th, 2008 at 2:17 am

I love you
Devlin

December 11th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

Thanks so much. Amazing that for years I have been making extra layers and rotating and it never occurred to me to rotate brushes this way. I am so embarrassed! What a great time saver.
Raymond Selda

December 13th, 2008 at 10:46 am

Thank you for this trick. I will put this in my handy-dandy notebook!
Luc

December 26th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

I just wanted to take some time to thank you 4 your great tutorials and whish you a happy Birthday !!
Ottaviano

December 26th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

I’ve been wondering about this for some time, thanks for the fantastic tip. Can’t wait to try it out.
Eddi Hughes

March 5th, 2009 at 7:25 am

Nice, I wasn’t aware that you could rotate brushes. Thanks for the quick tip!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! !!
Momono

March 8th, 2009 at 7:40 am

And you can make it even easier to work with… you can also rotate the brush by keyboard only. Highlight the angle value in the brushes window and use the up and down arrow keys to rotate, use shift + arrow keys for bigger rotation steps :-)
Brock

April 9th, 2009 at 2:13 am

WOW! I was a click brush, then rotate layer person too. Those darn adobe guys are so smart, there is a million little things in PS to do basically anything. they must just get a good laugh when they “hide” the simple things we are always looking for.
Deborah

May 12th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

Ahhhh, this is sweet. If I wanted something to go 360* from a hub (like the veining feather) I ended up creating 8 additional brushes by rotating it and then defining it. This tip will save me gobs of time (and space on my brush palette!)
Wijang

July 2nd, 2009 at 3:41 am

Ah… yes.Thank’s again
wantana

August 20th, 2009 at 7:50 am

Oh my god!!! Thank you so much!!!
Suzanne

November 16th, 2009 at 11:28 pm

AHA! I was sure I’d stumbled upon a bunch of brush options once but when I needed them couldn’t figure out where the hell they were. I’d just about decided I imagined it. Heh. Great tip, and good to know I’m not losing my mind.

This is my first visit to your site, and I can see I’ll be hanging around for a while. Thanks!
evilkitty75

November 22nd, 2009 at 6:20 am

lol i knew of this but used it lil till recently when i stepped up my game n now
im a brush wizard!! lol lol thx babs
Topcat

January 5th, 2010 at 6:30 am

I read a tut the other day and the person who wrote it just said “…. if you know how to rotate the brush….”, I don’t think she knew how to rotate it herself..hahaha.

Thanks for this tip……heeeehaaaa
redi

January 15th, 2010 at 8:23 pm

thank you so much for the tips, it works!