Create your own custom brushes in Photoshop

Define a set of custom brushes to add creativity to your Photoshop designs with this simple six-step tutorial.

Photoshop brushes are a fun way to add more creativity to your designs. They are simple to create, and every designer should have their own collection. With the popularity of brushes growing, you can find a vast number of them online for free. But half the fun of using brushes in your design work comes from making them from scratch yourself – so here’s how!

01 Remove the colour
Open ‘splat01_before.jpg’ and go to Image>Adjustments>Black & White to remove the colour information. To boost the contrast, darken Reds by dragging the slider to -30, and lighten Yellows by dragging the slider up to 90.

02 Boost contrast
We want a white background, so go to Image>Adjustment>Levels and hold Alt, then drag the white point slider inwards to 219. This will give a view of any pixels being clipped to pure white. Repeat with the black point slider to reveal areas clipped to pure black and drag to 8.

03 Create a brush
Grab the Polygonal Lasso tool and draw a rough selection around a splat. Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset and name ‘Splat01’. Grab brush tool and click on Brush Preset Picker, then scroll down to see the new brush. Repeat step to define more brushes.

04 Save brush set
Grab Brush tool and click on Brush Picker, then click on the fly out menu and select Preset Manager. To create a brush set, hold Cmd/Ctrl and select all three new brushes. Click Save Set, then name ‘Splat Brushes’ and click save.

05 Create a design
Go to File>New and select the International Paper preset at size A4. Go to Image>Image Rotation>90 degrees CW. Grab Type tool, select desired font and type ‘Splat’. Grab move tool, check Show transform controls, and drag the bounding box to resize the word.

06 Paint with brushes
Highlight the Background Layer and click the New layer icon in the Layers panel. Select a brush, resize using square bracket keys and adjust angle by moving the circular icon in Brush Tip settings panel. Repeat with other brushes and change the colour using the colour picker.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2012 at 9:18 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.