Making Custom Photoshop Brushes

A Beginning of Sorts

In this short lesson I will teach you how to make your own unique Photoshop brushes enabling you to add personalized strokes to your paintings and drawings. The basics are quite easy to grasp, but making brushes that deliver exactly the strokes you desire requires a little more work and experimentation. This tutorial is aimed at beginner Photoshoppers but everyone else is welcome to join in as well. So with that in place, lets move on!


Making Your First Basic Brush

First create a new 500 x 500 pixel document with a white background. The DPI setting is irrelevant for the purpose of this lesson so just leave it where it is. Next create a new layer from the layers palette and select it. Name the layer "My First Brush", or whatever you wish. Now select the brush tool from the tools palette and set the foreground color to black. Selecting the brush tool should reveal a palette with all sorts of different brushes. If you can't see it go to the top menu and select: Window -> Brushes making sure that Brushes ticked. Now you should be rolling.

Next select the Hard Round 5 from the brush palette and start making single dots various places as shown in step 1 in the picture below. Next make the brushsize smaller and make similar dots as shown in step 2. Then finally make the brush larger again and start making dots in the same way, so you end up with something like that shown in step 3.

Now for the fun part. Select the Magic Wand and click to select all the dots you have made. Now you need to inverse your selection. Go to Select -> Inverse in the top menu or use hotkeys. With your dots selected go to Edit -> Define Brush Preset in the menu and pick a name for your new brush. Click Ok, and presto you now have your brush amongst the other brushes in the brush palette.




With your new brush made you can now choose any size and color for it you wish, just like any of the other brushes already there. Easy huh?


Endless Possibilities

Don't worry if your newly made brush doesn't look the greatest (mine for this tutorial certainly did not). Once you really get started and go more into details you can create pretty much any brushtype you wish. Sharp ones, flat ones, round and triangular ones and so on. And your bristles do not have to be made of small dots, it can be any shape you desire. You can also make pen brushes, brushes to resemble charcoal, water colors, acrylics etcetera. As I mentioned the possibilities are indeed endless.


All Things Good Must...

Before I end this brushmaking tutorial I strongly recommend that (once you get some really cool brushes made) you remember to save your hard work. Save both the document from which you made your brush, and the particular brushes you make. The document is saved just like any other document made in Photoshop. To save the brushes themselves click the small dropdown icon in the top-right of the brushes palette and choose Save Brushes.


That's basically how to make custom Photoshop brushes. All there is left now is for you to get creative and do some experimenting. So without any further a-do good luck with your brush making.

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