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Last updated on Sep 12, 2024

Learn how to smudge colors.

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Use any of your projects and follow along to learn how to draw and paint. 

Smudging emulates the effect of dragging a finger through wet paint. The Smudge tool picks up the color where the stroke begins and pushes it in the direction you drag.

  1. On the Photoshop on the web homepage, under Start something new, select Upload an image and browse for a file on your device.

  2. Select Paint > Smudge  .

  3. From the Brush presets dropdown menu, choose the required option.

    Tip:

    Select the More menu icon in the Brush presets panel to Manage brushes or Reset to default brushes. You can also set the Brush size & hardness and Flow in the options bar.

  4. In the options bar, turn on Sample all layers to smudge using color data from all visible layers. If you’d like to only use colors from the active layer, turn it off.

  5. Select More options and adjust the Angle slider to specify the angle by which an elliptical or sampled brush’s long axis is rotated from the horizontal.

    Note:

    Turn these options on or off based on your requirements:

    • Finger painting: Smudges using the foreground color at the beginning of each stroke. Turn this option off to use the color under the pointer at the beginning of each stroke.
    • Use pressure for size: Varies the diameter of the selected brush based on the pressure applied while painting. 
  6. Select and drag anywhere on the image to smudge the pixels.

  7. Select Download.

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