Have you ever been painting or retouching with the Brush tool (B) and found it to be laggy—I mean really laggy? Some people might think that the Brush tool is broken but, believe it or not, this is a feature. No, not the Slow Brush feature, but Smoothing. For people who do illustration in Photoshop, it smooths out the lines by reducing the little jiggles and simplifying the brushstrokes. Of course, this causes lag. When you choose a brush, look up at the Options Bar and you’ll see Smoothing is set to 10% by default. Change the setting to 0% (zero) to release the Brush and experience its full speed.
This tip originally published in Colin Smith’s “Photoshop Tips” column in the August, 2020 issue of Photoshop User magazine.
