How to Work with Stroke Smoothing in Adobe Photoshop

See Adobe Photoshop: Tips and Tricks for similar articles.

Photoshop CC 2018 has added a new smoothing feature for use with the Brush, Pencil, Mixer Brush and Eraser tools that allows more control over the jagged effect when painting or drawing.

This feature is new to Photoshop CC 2018

  1. The example here shows a brush stroke created using a mouse with no smoothing. You can see it's a little rough. Brush Stroke
  2. If you look at the Options Bar, you'll see there's now a Smoothing control. Options Bar
  3. Smoothing needs to set before the stroke is created. Here's a stroke that's been painted with Smoothing set to 100%.
  4. When smoothing is increased, the stroke becomes tethered to the cursor, showing where you're dragging while the stroke catches up with the cursor. There is also a Brush Leash feature that displays a thin magenta line between the lagging stroke and the cursor. This feature can be turned on or off by going to Edit > Preferences > Cursors. Cursor Preferences