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An airbrush works by passing a stream of fast moving (compressed) air through a venturi, which creates a local reduction in air pressure (suction) that allows paint to be pushed up from an interconnected reservoir at normal atmospheric pressure. The high velocity of the air atomizes the paint into very tiny droplets as it blows past a very fine paint-metering component. The paint is carried onto paper or other surface. The operator controls the amount of paint using a variable trigger which opens more or less a very fine tapered needle that is the control element of the paint-metering component. An extremely fine degree of atomization is what allows an artist to create such smooth blending effects using the airbrush.

The technique allows for the blending of two or more colors in a seamless way, with one color slowly becoming another color. Freehand airbrushed images, without the aid of stencils or friskets, have a floating quality, with softly defined edges between colors, and between foreground and background colors. A well skilled airbrush artist can produce paintings of photographic realism or can simulate almost any painting medium. Painting at this skill level involves supplementary tools, such as masks and friskets, and very careful planning.

Airbrushing has long been used to alter photographs in the pre-digital era. In skilled hands it can be used to help hide signs that an image has been extensively retouched or "doctored".

Many photographs of officials from the Stalinist regime show extensive airbrushing, often entire people have been removed. The term "airbrushed out" has come to mean rewriting history to pretend that something was never there.

The term "airbrushed" or "airbrushed photo" has also been used to describe glamour photos in which a model's imperfections have been removed, or in which their attributes have been enhanced. The term has often been applied in a pejorative manner to describe images of unealistic female perfection and has been particularly common in reference to pictures in Playboy magazine.

Using today's digital imaging technology, this kind of picture editing is now usually done with a bitmap graphics editor, which is capable of even more subtle work in the hands of a skilled touch-up artist. This technique is called photoshopping. (Also see photo manipulation.)

The airbrush led to the development of the spray gun, a larger, more industrial type of paint applicator used for larger areas. Airbrushing itself started being used on cars in the 1940s to make hot rods, specialty cars and then spread to the general car repainting industry.

See also:

• spray paint

Many street artists use airbrushing to create names and pictures for tourists, such as around Jackson Square in New Orleans. In the mid-seventies, Panama City Beach, Florida, was the airbrush capital of the world, with hundreds of artists painting custom Tshirts.