Easier Edge Control For Digital Painters (Part 2): Rotate Brushes In Photoshop With Custom Wacom Settings

In part one of this tutorial, I explained how to combine custom Brush Presets, Keyboard Shortcuts and Actions to quickly and easily rotate your Photoshop Brushes as you paint.

That trick alone can make your brush technique smoother, more intuitive and more like traditional painting.

However, there are two points of friction that can be relieved if you have access to a Wacom Tablet or Cintiq with programmable ExpressKeys or a Touch Ring.

In this tutorial we will:

1. Set up the Touch Ring and/ or ExpressKeys to rotate your brush.
2. Create a Radial Menu for quick selection of your Rotating Brushes.

Smoother, more intuitive digital painting techniques are just minutes away…

Before You Begin:

For this tutorial, you’ll need a Wacom Tablet or Cintiq with customizable ExpressKeys or a Touch Ring.

If your Tablet/ Cintiq has one or both of those features, it most likely has Radial Menu capability as well.

More on that later…

The Wacom ExpressKeys (a.k.a. “Soft Keys”) have been around since the Intuos3 Tablet and the Cintiq 21UX. The Touch Ring first appeared on the Intuos4 Tablet.

How To Customize The Touch Ring and ExpressKeys:

STEP 1: Set Up The Touch Ring and/or ExpressKeys:

Personally, I prefer the one-brush-angle-per-click precision of the ExpressKeys.

I find that the Touch Ring and the Touch Strips (on older models) don’t do a very good job of controlling the brush rotation.

Here are the ExpressKey Settings:

Choose the ExpressKey that you want to use for counter-clockwise brush rotation and make that one the “,” (comma) key.

The “,” key is the default Photoshop shortcut for “Previous Brush.”

Likewise, choose an ExpressKey for clockwise rotation and make that one the “.” (period) key.

Like I said before, I’m not crazy about using the Touch Ring for the brush rotation, but here are some settings to get you started.

You can increase the precision of the brush rotation by adjusting the Slow/Fast Speed Setting on the Touch Ring.

The step-by-step process for programming the ExpressKeys and Touch Ring is demonstrated in the Wacom video above.

Either way, now you can paint with your stylus in one hand and rotate your brushes with the other using the ExpressKeys or the Touch Ring!

STEP 2: Create A Radial Menu To Select Your Rotating Brushes:

This step resolves one of the biggest points of friction in the workflow we set up in part one.

Previously, to select one of your Custom Rotating Brushes you had to:

• Scroll through a long list of Brush Angle Presets or…
• Remember which Function Key selects each Rotating Brush.

Now we will create a custom Radial Menu from which you can select the first angle for each Rotating Brush you create.

…so you don’t have to scroll through a bajillion Brush Presets or remember which Function Key does what.

It’s simple.

Just set each “pie piece” in the Radial Menu to a different Function Key and name the “pie piece” after the corresponding brush.

How To Customize The Radial Menu:

If You Already Use The Radial Menu For Something Else:

*I already use the Radial Menu in my digital painting workflow.

I have it set up to select my favorite Tools and Keyboard Shortcuts so I just created a Submenu that contains my rotating brushes…

STEP 3: Set Up The Stylus:

You can’t program the Radial Menu until you set it to an ExpressKey or Stylus Button.

I use the FRONT Stylus Button to activate the Radial Menu (for quick selection of my favorite Photoshop Tools as well as my Rotating Brushes).

STEP 4 [OPTIONAL]: Rotate Brushes With The Stylus:

(This step is completely optional. If you get overwhelmed, just skip it.)

I have been experimenting quite a bit with the BACK Stylus Button over the past year.

At different times, I have used it for Undo, Right-Click and the Command or Shift keys. (Your Wacom Settings panels categorize those last two as Modifier Keys).

For optimal brush rotation, I set the BACK Stylus Button to be the “Next Brush” Keyboard Shortcut. (The same key you used in STEP 1.)

With this set up you can do all of your brush rotation trickery with the Stylus alone!

1. Click the FRONT Stylus Button to pop up the Radial Menu.
2. Quickly select any rotating brush from the Radial Menu with the tip of the Stylus.
3. Roll your finger backwards and click the BACK Stylus Button to rotate the brush.

Breezy brush rotation in one, elegant motion!

STEP 5 [OPTIONAL]: Rotate Brushes In Both Directions With The Stylus:

(This step is completely optional. If you get overwhelmed, just skip it.)

With the Stylus set up I just described, you can perform the Rotating Brush workflow basically keyboard-free.

If you accidentally rotate the brush too far, you can to reach up to the ExpressKeys or down to the keyboard to rotate it back a click or two.

…but if you want to get really fancy, you can remove this awkward motion with one custom keyboard shortcut and a slight tweak to your custom Wacom Settings.

If you don’t know how to create Custom Keyboard Shortcuts check out this tutorial by Matt Kohr.

Leave the “Next Brush” keyboard shortcut the way it is but change the “Previous Brush” shortcut to be “.” plus the Shift Key. This will show up as a “>” in the Custom Keyboard Shortcuts list.

Photoshop will warn you that “This shortcut > is already in use and will be removed from Last Brush if accepted.”

Go ahead and click “Accept” and then “OK” to commit and save the change.

Now set one of the other ExpressKeys to be the Shift Key.

Now, if you rotate the brush too far with your BACK Stylus Button, you can hold this ExpressKey (or the Shift Key) and click the BACK Stylus Button again to correct the mistake.

Yes, sure. You could just try to click the “Previous Brush” ExpressKey but you’re already clicking the BACK Stylus Button.

This way, all you have to do is add just add Shift and keep clicking that BACK Stylus Button.

It might not seem faster, but I have definitely noticed a difference since I implemented this change.

Downloads:

Download my Wiggles Brush and Angle Presets.

Download my Brush Angles Action Set.

Learn More:

Become a brush ninja in my self-guided digital painting course called The Magic Box.

Get tons of free, custom Photoshop Brushes when you subscribe.

Watch my other free Digital Painting Tutorials.