Keith Lord - Online Portfolio

This tutorial will explain how to create a simple brush in Photoshop for use in artwork. Just a note this tutorial we be updated with how to group the brushes your created into a single pack for convenience.

Step 1

First we will need the image we want to use for a brush, in this case I used the picture of the Cleft found on CyanWorlds website. I copied the image to a new canvas in Photoshop and cropped the image so it wasn’t to big.

Step 2

Next we grey-scale the image, to do this we hold ctrl+u on the layer the image is on and when the Hue/Saturation box comes up, we shift the Saturation slider to the far left.

Step 3

Now that we have done that, it is now time to define the brush, to do this we go to Edit -> Define Brush.

Step 4

Name the brush to what you want it to be (in this case we named the brush cleft-brush) and click ok.

Step 5

Congratulations the brush has now been created, click the brush tool and then go to the brush selection box and scroll down, there you will find your brush.

Step 6

Well there isn’t really a step 6, the brush is completed and is ready for use.

It is always an idea to keep a back up of your brushes, whether it is in the brush back format (.abr files for Photoshop) or in .jpg format just in case Photoshop resets the brushes. I keep a folder with them in .jpg format myself.

This leads to the last few steps, or sub steps. As you can see in the above image some of the brushes have a grey background to them, this can cause issues when you are using the brush, as the grey background will show up like so;

This easy to fix.

Step 7

Starting with the original image used for the brush (if you no longer have the original image, you can select the brush to fix, set the colour to black and paint it onto a simple white background).

Step 8

Now we alter the contrast to make the grey background white, to do this we go to Image -> Adjustments -> Brightness/Contrast. We up the brightness a little so the background becomes white, we then edit the contrast to make the black parts of the brush black (as they may turn grey when increasing the brightness), being mindful not to increase the contrast to much otherwise the edges of the brush become jagged.

Click ok, save the brush again, delete the old one (if there is an old one) and you will be good to go.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 12:36 am and is filed under Art, Design, Digital, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.