Art [T] Custom Brushes [E]

[cancer]

[COLOR=DarkRed]I am going to teach you how to make brushes in Photoshop. I will be using Photoshop 7, but it is basically the same for Photoshop CS and Photoshop CS2. Brushes are an amazing feature of Photoshop that will greatly simplify your work. Now I will begin the tutorial on how to create a custom brush and how to use brushes. [/COLOR]


1] To create a custom brush, you can use any image you want, as long as it is a reasonable size. You can draw an image and scan it in, copy a picture from the internet, or whatever you desire. Just open the image in Photoshop to begin. Crop it or whatever you need to do to it, because everything on the canvas is going to be turned into the brush. So only have on the canvas what you want your brush to be. In the picture you can see that I have cut out just my head and neck to be my brush. Yeah, I know it looks weird : p.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_1copy.jpg[/IMG]



2] The next step is to adjust the brightness and contrast of the image. If it is not already black and white, you?ll want to desaturate it by selecting Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. Once it is black and white, you need to select Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. From the brightness/contrast window, set the brightness and contrast to your desired levels for your brush. Once finished, press OK.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_2copy.jpg[/IMG]



3] My image now looks like this.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_3copy.jpg[/IMG]



4] Now to set the image as a brush select Edit > Define Brush. If you are using a different version of Photoshop it may say Define Brush Preset; that?s the same thing. If it will not let you select Define Brush it is probably because your image size is too large. In this case, simply select Image > Image Size and make it smaller. Once you select Define Brush a window will pop up for you to name it.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_4copy.jpg[/IMG]



5] Now I will show you how to use the brush you have just made, and how to adjust its properties. First, create a new 500px x 500 px document with a white background by selecting File > New and selecting the size and background.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_5copy.jpg[/IMG]



6] Now to adjust the properties of your newly made brush select Window > Brushes. In the new window that pops up, you can adjust all of the properties for each brush you have. You can play around with these adjustments to see what they do.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_6copy.jpg[/IMG]



7] Now to use your brush you simply click the brush tool on the tools window, which should be on the left side of your work area. If you don?t see it, then select Window > Tools. Once you have the brush tool selected, click the dropdown arrow for the brush preset picker near the top part of your screen to choose your newly made brush. It should be the very last brush in the list.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_7copy.jpg[/IMG]



8] Select your brush and adjust the master diameter at the top of the brush preset picker to adjust the brush?s size. Once you?re done with that, select the color you want to use for your brush by selecting the foreground color.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_8copy.jpg[/IMG]



9] Once you?ve selected a color for your brush, all that?s left to do is apply the brush to the image. This is as simple as placing the brush over the canvas wherever you want it, and clicking once. You can apply the brush as many times as you want. This is what mine looks like.

[IMG]http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m55/pravusart/Tutorials/brush_9copy.jpg[/IMG]



[COLOR=DarkRed]This is the end of the basic brush tutorial. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. If I can?t answer your question, I?m sure someone else will be able to.
Thank you, and I hope this helped you.[/COLOR]

[Dragon Warrior]

This is very good, Jeremy. You give the right amount of detail to keep any newbie informed, but not bore them to death with the extra jabber. I could completely not know Photoshop and understand this. You did a great job with the visuals--they are indepth and right there to show you what's what. This is certainly a good job and I hope it is used as much as it should be.

I especially love you using yourself as the test dummy. That's hott. Haha.