This tutorial will walk you through how to create brushes in Photoshop.
It details how to create the brushes themselves and save them into a set.
1. Creating your own custom Photoshop brushes is easier than you might think. First, let’s create a simple signature brush. Open a new file within Photoshop (File > New..), and make it approx 500 X 500 pixels. The resolution doesn’t matter. Make it 72 pixels/inch, or whatever it starts on. Make sure that the mode is RGB. For “Background Contents,” choose white.
When you’re making a signature brush, make sure you make it large enough to accommodate your needs. A lot of us are working on pretty large scales, now-a-days, and you want it large enough to be able to work on anything. 2500X2500 pixels is the largest brush that you can possibly make. So make it that large if you’d like. Remember, you can always scale the size of the brush DOWN much better than you can scale it UP.
When you make a brush, ALWAYS make sure it has a white background. Everything that is white will remain an “empty” area when it comes to the brush – a gap or a hole, if you will. You’ll see what I mean as we go along. Now, using black or a dark color, make your signature.
2. Mine is fairly sloppy and simple, but you get the idea. You can make it as ornate as you wish. In fact, that’s one of the wonderful things about using a signature brush – you don’t have to reproduce it each time! Now, under the top menu, under “Edit” click on “Define Brush Preset.”
3. Photoshop will show you a preview of how your brush will look, as well as give you an opportunity to name it. Name it “signature brush” or whatever you like. Notice also that the size of the brush (in pixels) is listed below the preview. That will be the default size that this particular brush opens to. Remember, you can change it to whatever size you like later – up to 2000 pixels. The larger it is here, the less fuzzy it will be at those large sizes.
4.That’s it! Really! Open a new file and play around with your new brush. It will be listed in with all the others that you had currently active. Be careful, however, as it is not yet saved as a part of a brush file. So, if you go load a different set of brushes, it will be lost. We’ll show you how to save it in just a moment. Let’s make a second, more complex brush, first – then we can save them as a brush set!
5. Open a picture of whatever it is you want to make a brush out of. I’ve chosen to use one of my speedpaintings, a penguin. Crop the piece around the part of it that you would like to make into a brush file. You don’t want any extra room on the edges that you need to worry about.
I generally do this in one of two ways. I make a white layer beneath the photo layer, then just use the lasso tool or eraser to “erase” around it. OR, if it’s more intricate… I make a NEW layer on top of the photo layer. I then paint white around the area that I want to make a brush out of. By doing it this second way, if you make a mistake, you can fix it much more easily! (Multiple layers are fine when it comes to making brushes – it will act as though it was all one flat image when it creates it.)
6. You’re going to want to have all white surrounding that penguin so that when you make the brush, it doesn’t end up with the background being a part of it, too. This is the most time consuming part of the brush process, especially if you’re making intricate brushes!
7. Again, go in to Edit>Define Brush Preset and create your brush. See how all those blues are created to grayscale? All brushes are created that way – Photoshop will do it for you. That is so that when you choose a brush to paint with, you can use whatever color you want! Name your brush and click “OK”. Again, feel free to play around with it in a new file. This is what my new brush looks like:
8. What good is all of that if you can’t save them, though, right? So, here’s the last part of the tutorial. Saving your new brushes as a set.
This next step is assuming that you have not made any of your own brushes before now (if you did, then they were added onto the end of whatever brush set(s) you have open, and when you do this step, you will lose them unless you save them first.) If you’ve not ever made your own brushes before, (which this tutorial assumes, since you’re following it) then you’re fine.
Go back into your brushes and delete any of the ones that had been previously in there – ones that you do NOT want as a part of your new set. Don’t worry, this doesn’t delete them as a file, it just removes them from your list of “active” brushes. (This is assuming, of course, that you haven’t made any other brushes on your own and not saved them!) To do that, right click on the brush you want to delete, and click on “delete” – as simple as that!
9.When you are left with ONLY the brushes that you want as a part of this new set, click on the same arrow that you would click on to load up new brushes (highlighted in red on the picture to the right), then choose “Save as..”. Now, you’re going to want to put this in the right directory, so that it will automatically load up in your list of brushes whenever you start Photoshop. Within your Photoshop directory, place it in the Presets>Brushes folder. For example, if you installed Photoshop CS onto your C drive in the path that the installation program defaults to, you would find this folder in: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Presets\Brushes\. Choose an appropriate name for it, and you’re done!
Note: You will have to close and re-open Photoshop before that brushes set will be visible among those that you can choose from the menu on the right. Alternatively, you can choose “Replace Brushes..” and load them that way.
10. Congratulations! You just made your first brush set!
23 Responses to “Creating Photoshop Brushes Tutorial”
thank you!!
Hugs!
Hello i love this website and i used so many brushes (personal use)….. these are GREAT stuffs. am very pleased to tell that i like this tutorials. Actually you guys are not only give brush samples but also giving knowledge about how to create THEM!!!
i like these articles very much and I LOVE SO MUCH!!
regards,
Harisankar (India)
I love this site too I have been wanting to learn out
to make my own brushes and this site makes it so easy to learn
is there a Tutorials that teaches how to make the fairy Brushes
and other kinds of brushes
Thanks this site is great
Cindy: I don’t have a tutorial that explains how to create specific brushes, nope. I paint most of those types by hand, though – I’m a digital artist as well. So, there’s not much to explain other than finding some references for ideas and going to town. :)
Glad you all are enjoying it!
i love it…thnk you verymuch
Thank you so much! I have learnt a huge deal from this website and appreciate your generosity and talent.
I own several huge tutorial books on photoshop and have learnt more from this site than all the books combined!
I’ve been wondering how to do this…you make it sound easy thank you kindly……
You tutorials are very clear and concise. I just did a moon brush, the edges aren’t very neat, but I assume that the same technique as with seamless patterns will work.
Excellent
Tank you
oops! I guess I am the only one who had trouble with this. When I got to step 8, I selected the Thick Heavy Brush set that was pre-existing. And seem to have removed the bruses in this set. How do I get them back?
Step 9-My version of elements did not have the “save as” in the load brush area.
@Keysia: This tutorial was made for regular Photoshop. I’m afraid I don’t know the intricacies of Photoshop Elements, and haven’t owned a copy in years. So I can’t really tell you, I’m sorry! But unless you specifically told it to save over the old version, erasing them, they should still be there.
I know there’s places online that you can go to replentish “lost” brushes like this, too, though. Google it if you need to, and I’m sure you can find them. :)
This tutorial probably won’t be quite right for you in Elements, but it should be ABLE to be done.. and it should be very similar. I’m just not sure how to explain how, sorry. Good luck!
Thank you for the tutorial! I have PSE and was able to kinda tweak the tutorial a bit and figure out how to make my own brush :) I love your brushes, by the way!!
Thank you this is wonderfull, I’m relatively new to using photo shop and the more I learn the more I enjoy..Im off to play with with brushes….Thanks again…
awesome..!!
it really helps..!
thanks. =)
Hello,
Thank you for all these wonderful creations. I have discovered for this tutorial, it is best to Save the Brushes for a new Brush set name, then delete the extras out of your new Brush Set, to save your new brush when first creating them. I tried doing it as your Tutorial says in Photoshop Elements 7 and lost brushes. I got them back but it required reinstall of program!
@Mandy: Thanks, Mandy. I’ve got it mentioning that you need to make sure you don’t have unsaved brushes currently loaded, but perhaps I should clarify that even further by adding it in as an actual step to save them or whatever first.
how do you create a brush with a shadow? like when you paint with it, it will contain a backdrop or shadow if you will.
thanks..:) great tutorial..:)
I don’t know about anyone else but after many “define brush preset” coming grayed out, I went ahead and tried to lower the resolution of the image and after a few attempts beginning with resolution as high as 3264 pixels it finally came up and I saved my personal initials as a logo to 2500 pixels
Thanks. Stephanie you’re the best.
wow….it’s took me 4 years to learn this…..got so tired of the presets.
surfing the web does pay off
Thank you so much for the tutorial and all your fabulous brushes. Bless you for sharing so much of your knowledge and talent.
I have CS4 but when I click on EDIT, the “Define Brush Preset” is grayed out (not selectable). Only Define Pattern is black and selectable. Do you have any ideas as to how I can save my signature. I just did a quick monogram like the “SS” you made, nothing complicated and nothing else on the sheet. Help please?
@sasha: There’s only one thing I’ve ever seen that has made it gray out like that. Make sure your image size is 2500 pixels (in height or width) or less… you can’t make brushes any larger than 2500 pixels. If that doesn’t fix the problem, let me know!
Cute penguine and nice tutorial! Thanks for the work
Thank you so much for your awesome work! ^^
[...] 14. Creating Photoshop Brushes Tutorial [...]
Leave a Reply
Other Links
Member Center
Getting Started
Affiliates
Helpful Links
Follow Us
By Program
Latest Downloads
Popular Now
Web Design and All Content
© 2004-2009 Obsidian Dawn