SmudgeTool

The smudge tool lets you create an effect like running your finger over a charcoal drawing. The image is both blurred and shifted in the direction in which you drag the cursor.

Once the brush parameters (described below) are set, you paint strokes on the output image by clicking and dragging. Unlike most other transformations, the paint tool works directly on the output image and not on the input image.

The smudge tool records the dimensions of its input image internally. If you try to apply the paint tool to another image whose width and height in pixels does not match the original input image, an error is reported.

Amount

The amount control lets you scale back the overall smudge transparency or you can create a mask to restrict smudging to specific parts of the image.

Brush Settings

The following settings determine the brush properties:

Radius

This slider controls the radius of the brush in pixels. Smaller brushes are good for creating fine detail. Larger brushes are good for filling big areas quickly. In addition to using the radius slider, you can also use the mouse scroll wheel to adjust the radius.

Transparency

This slider controls the transparency of the brush. The more transparent the brush, the more the background shows through.

Softness

This slider lets you control how soft the edges of the brush are. The softer the brush, the more smoothly its effects are blended with the original image.

Spacing

This slider lets you control the spacing interval at which the brush is applied as you drag. The Smudge tool works best with Spacing set to 0.0%.

Fadeout

This slider lets you make the brush effect fade out as you draw each stroke, effectively increasing its transparency the further you drag from the starting point.

Shape

 The brush shape tool bar has three options: round, square or diamond. Usually a round brush is fine, but occasionally a different brush shape helps you get into corners hard to reach with a round brush.

Stylus Pressure

Unless you are using a tablet with a pressure-sensitive stylus, this setting is ignored.

If you are using a pressure-sensitive stylus, this control lets you determine the effect, if any, that stylus pressure has on the current brush stroke.

Ignore -- stylus pressure has no effect.

Controls Opacity -- increasing stylus pressure reduces transparency, making the stroke more opaque.

Controls Radius -- increasing stylus pressure increases the brush radius, making it larger.

Controls Hardness -- increasing styles pressure reduces softness, making the edges of the brush harder.

Controls Flow -- increasing stylus pressure reduces spacing, causing the brush to be applied more often as you move the stylus.

 Undo/Redo

The undo tool bar lets you undo paint operations, one stroke at a time. A stroke is defined as everything between pressing the mouse button and releasing it.

If the undo or redo button is grayed, it means there are no operations left to undo or redo. If you undo too many operations by accident, you can click the redo button until you get back to where you wanted to be. However, once you draw a new stroke, you can no longer redo past that point.

You can use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl-Z for undo and Ctrl-Y for redo.

Brush Display

As a visual aid, a representation of the current brush is displayed at the bottom of the dialog box. This display illustrates the radius, transparency, shape and softness of the brush. If you select a very large brush radius, part of the brush may not be visible.

 Settings Menu

Saving a Smudge settings file saves all the accumulated smudge operations and not the current brush settings. Reloading a previously saved Smudge settings file re-applies all the saved smudge operations to the current input image. Since smudge operations are specific to both the size and the contents of the input image, Smudge settings files have limited utility. Creating a default Smudge settings file is likely to cause warnings about file size mismatch every time you use the Smudge tool, so this is not recommended.

In addition to the standard menu items, the settings menu lets you load or save the current brush settings (Radius, Transparency, Softness, Spacing, Fadeout and Shape). Brush settings can be shared with the Clone and Paint tools. Settings unique to these other tools are set to default values when saved from the Smudge transformation. You can also save the current brush settings as a default brush which is loaded whenever the Smudge transformation starts up.

When saving Smudge settings as default settings, no strokes are saved since it generally does not make sense to apply smudging from one image to another, especially if it has different dimensions.

Tips

For the smoothest results, keep the Spacing at 0% and work slowly

Keep your strokes short – that way if you accidentally smudge a spot you did not intend to cover you can undo it without having to redraw too much.

Try to use as few strokes as possible – overworking an area can muddy the image.