Hardness of square brushes

Hey everybody,

I'm trying to draw some dashed lines in Photoshop, and to this end I've been playing around with the brush settings (Spacing etc). I'm using a square brush, and I managed to draw the dashed line as I want it, with one exception: I can't get the brush to be feathered.

Is it a general thing in Photoshop that you can't change (i.e. soften) the hardness of a square brush, as you can with that of a round brush? I doubt that Photoshop would impose such a limitation - there must be something I'm getting wrong.

I'd really appreciate some help on this. Once again, I'd like to have a soft (i.e. feathered) *square* brush, which I can use for various purposes, including the drawing of dashed lines.

Thanks for any help!

I'm pretty sure Photoshop has shipped with a set of "Drop Shadow" brushes for many years now. Look for them in your Presets folder and load them if you have them.

Now, you can't adjust the harness value on these brushes, but have a look at them to see if they'll work for you.

Solution # 2: Create your own brushes. It's easy, and you can make them with any amount of "blur/feathering you want.

Solution # 3: Use your hard brushes, then give them a Gaussian Blur afterwards.

Better method all the way round: Do your dashed lines in Illustrator and import them for use in Photoshop.

Thanks a lot - the Drop Shadow brushes worked just fine for now!