The Brush Control palettes in Corel Painter IX offer you a great way to fine-tune brushes without disrupting your workflow. This article provides some basic information about the Brush Control palettes and how to use them.

What are the Brush Control palettes?
The Brush Control palettes are a group of palettes that let you customize a brush (see Figure 1). The palettes are named and organized by the types of settings they contain. For example, there are Size, Spacing, and Angle palettes. Some of these palettes, such as Air Brush, Water, and Liquid Ink, contain settings that apply to specific brush types.

Figure 1
The Brush Control palettes contain all the settings you need to make changes to a brush.

What is the difference between the Brush Control palettes and the Brush Creator?
The controls on the Brush Control palettes are identical to those on the Stroke Designer page of the Brush Creator. Your workflow determines whether you choose the Brush Control palettes or the Brush Creator to customize your brushes.

The Brush Control palettes are designed to let you fine-tune a brush "on the fly." The palettes are available while you work on the canvas or layers.

The Brush Creator is a powerful tool for creating brushes (see Figure 2). It gives you access to all brush settings, and you can generate custom brushes on its Randomizer and Transposer pages. The built-in Scratch Pad lets you test new brushes. The Brush Creator even has its own menu bar, with commands that let you save custom brushes and create new brush categories. It is best to create custom brushes in the Brush Creator before you start working on a project, because you cannot access the canvas or layers while you are working in it.

Figure 2
The Brush Creator lets you create and save custom brushes.

How do I access the Brush Control palettes?
You can open the Brush Control palettes by choosing Window menu > Brush Controls and selecting any of the brush controls listed (see Figure 3).

Figure 3
You can access the Brush Control palettes from the Window menu.

By default, the palettes are grouped together, so if you choose Show General, all the Brush Control palettes open, but only the General palette is expanded. You can close individual palettes by clicking the close box on each title bar, and you can ungroup palettes by dragging their title bar away from the group. You may prefer, however, to keep them together and simply close the entire group of palettes when you don't need them (see Figure 4).

Figure 4
The Brush Control palettes are grouped to optimize access to the settings. You can close the entire group by clicking the close button (1). For individual palettes, you can expand or collapse the palette by clicking the palette arrow (2), or close the palette by clicking the palette's close box (3).

If you ungroup or rearrange the Brush Control palettes, you can reset them to the default arrangement by choosing Window > Arrange Palettes, and choosing Default.

Tip: Another way to maximize your workspace is to press the Tab key to hide (or show) all the palettes that are open in the workspace.

I hope the information above encourages you to try out the Brush Control palettes. For a complete description of the settings available in the Brush Control palettes in Corel Painter IX, see "Managing settings and Controls" in the Help, available from the Help menu in the application window.