D.I.Y. Digital Processing Pt 3 – Making your own brushes in Photoshop

Over the last few weeks I have been doing some posts on Digital Scrap Booking and creating the Watermark Effect with Brushes, I thought I might continue on with that with some Portraits. A Blogging Pal sent me a link for a great tutorial and Photoshop Masterclass, I am still considering the Masterclass, but I loved the freebie Photo Artistry Tutorial, by Light Stalking. Lensaddiction has been creating some wonderful stuff from her time doing this same course. Anyway I have been working on a portrait I took a little while ago.

And I came to the realization that even though I did a Post on creating your own watermark, I have not really made a post on how to make brushes, past that point. It is very simple really, take an image say this butterfly and we can make a butterfly brush, which can be saved and used again, and again. In the above image there are several brushes; The sheet music in the background is one brush, the flowers and flourishes are two more different brushes and the butterfly is another……….I’m going to run through making the butterfly brush, but you basically use the same technique for any brush.

Technique

Open the image up in Photoshop, using the lasso tool draw roughly around the image, press ctrl + J and create a new layer from the selection. You can then deselect the bottom layer, as we are only working on the top layer.

Image > adjustment > desaturated to remove all color. Using the eraser tool, remove any parts you do not want or like, remember to keep the brush very soft, until you are left with just the butterfly.

Edit > Define Brush Presets………..this will then turn your image into a brush. Save it into your favs or start a new set.

You can now go into your brush panel and select your new butterfly brush, change color, opacity, size, add gradients, just like a normal brush.

Don’t forget you can go into your brush adjustment panel and change direction, hardness, sharpness etc from there as well

So have fun and remember you can turn just about anything into a brush, flowers, text, clouds, ink blots, water splashes, feathers etc; Be Creative and let your imagination run free.

– Julz

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