This may be old news to some, but when I figured out this technique I was blown away by how much time I had been wasting. This quick tutorial will show you how to easily rotate your Photoshop brushes to any angle you need. It may sound silly, but it’s a huge time saver!

We’re all fans of Photoshop brushes. Easily adding textures, patterns, images etc. to my designs is great although I always felt like they had their limitations based on their “out-of-the-box” layout. I can’t tell you how many times I have used the brush I needed on a separate layer, then rotated or flipped it to where I wanted it to end up. A huge waste of time.

With a couple mouse clicks, you can make the brushes do whatever you want. Here’s how.

STEP 1

Open up a blank document and grab your brush tool. Pick a pattern (anything but round) from your brushes pallet. I’ll choose this cloud brush that’s alway annoyed me because I thought it could only be used in the lower right corner of the page, without transforming or erasing part of it.

STEP 2, here’s where it gets good…
Now, in the brushes pallet (Window > Brushes) select “Brush Tip Shape.” I never noticed this as an option because of the check boxes next to all the other choices. Check out your options, flip X, flip Y, angle, even a dragging option. Too easy! You can just click and drag to the exact angle you need.

Here is a sample with the clouds rotated to all 4 corners. How celestial.

Quick and easy, but a huge time saver. I hope you found this to be helpful!