Description of Retouch Brushes

Brush

Effect

Dodge

Lightens and brings out the details in areas that are in shadow. This tool mimics the traditional photographic darkroom technique of holding back some of the light when printing photographs to produce lighter areas. The Dodge tool is the opposite of the Burn tool.

Burn

Darkens areas of the image that are too light.

Smudge

Spreads color and image details from the starting point and picks up new color and image details as it moves; the effect is similar to smearing paint.

Push

Spreads color and image details from the starting point but does not pick up any new color or image details.

Soften

Smooths edges and reduces contrast.

Sharpen

Heightens edges and accentuates contrasts.

Emboss

Causes the foreground to appear raised from the background by suppressing color and tracing edges in black.

Lighten/Darken

Lightening increases brightness; darkening decreases brightness. (Choose to affect the RGB or Lightness value of pixels).

Saturation Up/Down

Increases or decreases the saturation (affects the HSL value of pixels).

Hue Up/Down

Increases or decreases the hue (affects the HSL value of pixels).

Change-to-Target

Changes pixels based on a characteristic of the current foreground color (on the Materials palette): color, hue, saturation, or lightness.

If you choose the color as the target, the tool applies the foreground color without affecting the luminance.

If you choose the hue, saturation, or lightness as the target, it applies the foreground color’s hue, saturation, or lightness value without changing the other values.