Custom Photoshop brush

Custom brush is one of the easiest things in the world. Ernst! I don't know why I read have some tutorials which make it out of this multi step process be intimidating. Create your own brush helps to customize both your artwork in the Photoshop workspace.

The hard part

"But..." "You said this would be easy!" Technically, Yes, but I've found that some people really achieve some stumbling block when trying to think what would make a good brush. The short answer is everything! I did brush from fuzzy Leopard slippers, bananas, old trash cans, fabric swatches, dirt... Hundreds of things. It helps a scanner or a digital camera... which really opens up your options. A short walk around your House could be dozens of fun yield textures can brush. But even if you don't have one it can Snurch some good textures from the Internet often. Try a Google search for marble tiles and see what's next. Sometimes you get a nice large image to work. I am not tolerate someone's off to steal art photos, a brush with rip, but if it's just a sample photo of brick, cloth, or screen or what, I think, it's fine... She will be drastically change the picture in the next steps anyway.

The next steps

Okay, so you then have some good textures? Correct, we make it a custom brush! Open your image in Photoshop. The first what you want to do that, is the image (SHIFT + CTRL + U in PS7) Desaturate. Then cut and paste what you have in a new layer. Now delete the background layer. Once just the single level, mess with the brightness/contrast until you the desired effect get (this requires that you think a bit about how you can use the brush in the future – are using want it as a 'grunge'... more technical difference... etc. etc.)

[http://www.jvmediadesign.com/blog/img/tutorials/brush_tut1.jpg] (The starting image)

[http://www.jvmediadesign.com/blog/img/tutorials/brush_tut2.jpg]
(The desaturated image)

[http://www.jvmediadesign.com/blog/img/tutorials/brush_tut2.jpg]
(After messing with brightness/contrast)

The super easy part

Now, because you find the image you want to have you've got it as Photoshop to create brushes. Select define brush, then go to 'Edit'. Name the new brush and thats it! Easy, isn't it?

Save all your hard work

There are few things worse than have hundreds of cool brushes gone in an instant. It has happened to me once where fried my hard drive out and I save all my custom Photoshop stuff. So I will help you avoid any tragedies and tell you how to save your brush.

Once you've made a lot of brushes (I personally like to create brush 'Sets' that all type of work together, or simply just randomly my mood match that day!), go to "Edit" and select preset manager. A window with all your current brush will pop up. Click each small rectangle individually. What will you want to do is shift + right click on the set of brushes to save. Once you have done that, click on 'Save set', give the group a name and save it on your computer (of course this brush files as you're going to want to back up!). There you're done!

How to get other custom brushes in your range

If you have found a cool brush set on the Web and you want to use after you download the file (usually a zip file), you want you in your Photoshop brush directory to extract. Load a set of Photoshop brushes, open the brushes palette ('Windows', 'Pallet', ' brushes' show). Load brushes on the palette brush menu and choose your file. That's it!

Sherry is the senior designer and Creative Director for Southern California Studio, JV media design.