The brush is one of your primary painting tools. The default keyboard shortcut for this tool is B. View the video below for more about the tool settings or scroll on for the written guide.
Please note that things in the video may appear differently to what you normally see in your User Interface. There have been many updates to Magma since it was recorded.
There is a range of different characteristics for your brushes which can be adjusted in the settings panel under your color wheel. To see the full range of settings, click the gear icon and set the mode to Full.
Standard Brush Settings
The different settings and characteristics included in the standard setting panel are:
Size
Adjust the size of the brush, toggle pressure sensitivity and the size ratio;Flow
Adjust the opacity per stamp of the brush tip and toggle pressure sensitivity;Opacity
Make your brush stroke more transparent or more opaque;Stabilizer
Helps make smoother lines;Tip shape
Change the shape of your brush tip by selecting from our preset range;
Hardness (for round brushes)
Adjust the hardness of the edges of your round brush;
Advanced Brush Settings
When your settings panel is in Full mode, the Advanced Brush Settings button becomes available and you can customize your brush even further.
The live preview in your brush settings panel will give you a clearer idea of your brush's behaviour as you adjust the settings.
The different setting you'll find in the Advanced window are
Brush Tip Shape
Adjust settings like the size, angle, roundness and spacing of the brush shape;
Shape Dynamics
Add jitter to the size, angle, and round, and adjust the controls for these characteristics;
Scattering
Add scatter to your brush stroke by spreading and repeating brush tip stamps along an axis;
Texture
Add a pattern to your brush stroke formore texure;
Dual Brush
Combine two brush shapes to create unique textures brush strokes;
Color Dynamics
Adjust jitter settings for the hue, saturation, and brightness of your brush strokes;
Transfer
This controls the opacity and flow of your brush, as well as stretch and paint settings for blending brushes.
Save as New Brush
Once you've customized your brush, you can also save it to use later. Either use the button in the Advanced Settings window or use the button under My Brushes in the brush list.
Our Spark/Free users are limited to three saved brushes. Our paying users will have unlimited brush saves.
Additional notes about brush settings
Jitter
You will notice jitter options for various brush settings. This will add variety and randomness to that particular setting.
For example, when you add size jitter, each stamp of the brush will vary in size. The higher the jitter setting, the higher the degree of variation.
The same applies for colour jitter. If you have a high value for hue jitter, then the hue can vary dramatically for each stamp of the brush, but a low value will create more subtle variations.
Flow versus opacity
Flow (previously Density) is the opacity setting per stamp of the brush along a single brush stroke. Paint will layer over itself without needing to lift the pen.
The opacity of the brush on the other hand is the opacity for the entire brush stroke. More paint is added only after lifting your pen and applying again.
Adding pressure sensitivity
Currently, flow and size each have a pressure toggle in the main settings panel. You will know that pressure control is active for these when there is a brush icon inside the box.
Various settings in the Brush Advanced Settings window can also be controlled by pressure. Looks for the Control setting in each section and then select pressure from the dropdown.
Size ratio
Between the pressure toggle box and the size slider is a checkbox for the size ratio of the brush. You can cycle between ratios for the slide of 10px, 100px, and 500px.
Below the size bar are two smaller bars. On the left is the minimum size percentage for your brush. At 0%, the minimum brush size will be 1px.
The default shortcut keys for decreasing and increasing your brush size are [ and ], respectively. You can increase your brush size up to 1000px using the shortcut.
Tilt
Many drawing tablets recognize tilt input from the pen. For some brush settings, you can adjust the control to be tilt. This can be a useful way to adjust the roundness of the brush or the angle of the brush tip shape.
Dual Brush
The dual brush setting turns your main selected brush shape into a mask, while the secondary brush is the one that adds colour to the canvas. As an example, the main brush is a standard circle, while the secondary shape is something more textured.
There are some of the same usual settings that apply only to the secondary shape, including size, spacing and scatter.
The dual brushes work best with a pressure-sensitive stylus.