A friend recently asked me to show them how to create PS brushes. Thought I’d post a quick tutorial for that as well:
If you are even somewhat familiar with Photoshop CS4, or its previous versions, you know about the brushes function it has. Photoshop comes with couple of sets of brushes and you might have used these, you might have even downloaded brush sets from elsewhere online and used them as well, but have you ever tried making your own? It is one of the more easy tasks that you can do in Photoshop, very very useful however! I will guide you through a basic tutorial on how to create a Photoshop brush from a picture as well as how to create it from scratch. My examples will be pretty plain and simple for the inexperienced users, once you get the hang of it though you will be able to make any sort of brush you can imagine.
How to create a custom brush in Photoshop from scratch:
– Start up Photoshop CS4 (you can do this in the previous versions as well, there might be slight differences but it is mainly the same thing).
– Create a new document by going to File and clicking “New”. A window will come up prompting you to enter some details such as the name and size. You can leave the name field as “untitled” and from the drop down “Preset” menu choose Web. Make sure that the background color is set to transparent. You can choose a different preset, or enter your own sizes in the future, but for now lets just stick with this for the sake of simplicity.
– Now you have an open document, on the left hand side choose the brush tool. Have your Basic brush set loaded and choose any size you feel comfortable with, I have chosen 12.
– Once your brush is set to go, draw some sort of swirl on your canvas. It doesn’t really matter what it looks like so be creative.
– When you are done with your swirl go to “Select” (this can be found all the way on the top of the application) and select “All”. Since your background has been set to transparent you do not need to spend time selecting your swirl and separating it from the rest of the canvas.
– When you have the selection set go to “Edit” and towards the bottom select “Define Brush Preset”.
– A small window should pop up asking you to name your newly created brush, along with a thumbnail of what it should look like. Enter “Swirl” or any other name you like in here.
– Your brush is now all done! Feel free to try it out, change the size and color, use random filters. Its just like one of the brushes that came with Photoshop, only better because you made it yourself!
To create a brush from a photo you follow the same process, except you will open up a photo and make a selection from it which you will in turn define as a brush preset.
What do you think? Any good???
Psihomodopop 