Have you ever used a brush and thought how pretty it would look, if only you could make it show up in more than one color? Being able to change the color of Photoshop brushes upon application is a beautiful thing, but sometimes the colors on image-based brushes and the like can look rather… flat in color. This tutorial will show you how to add multiple colors to the same brush.
1. First off, start by creating a new layer on top of the Background layer. On the layers palette, click the “Create a New Layer” button on the bottom right (just next to the trash can). Now, on that layer… using black, make a single brush stroke on the canvas using the brush of your choice. I’m using a flower brush, and it looks like this:
2. Now, in the layers palette, right click on that layer, and choose “Layer Properties,” then rename the layer to “Black” so that you know that the color on that layer is…well, black! You should now have a background layer, and this new layer with the black brushstroke on it named “Black.” Now, to add some color! So that you don’t have to paint in everything and hope to “stay in the lines” of where the boundaries of the brush is, we’re going to just duplicate the layer and then you can work with that. Here goes! Right click on the “Black” layer in the layers palette and choose “Duplicate Layer.”
3.Name that layer whatever color you would like to use first. The primary color of my phlox flower is a blue-violet, so I named mine “Blues.” You can rename it either as you duplicate it (it will ask you what to name it) or afterward, if you forget, you can right click on the layer in the layer palette and choose “Layer Properties” just like we did in the first step. Now, on the layers palette, make sure you have the “Blues” layer selected and click on the “f” at the bottom left corner of the layers palette.
4.Choose “Color Overlay” from the dropdown menu, and then pick out a color.
5.You should have an image exactly the same as the original black, but now in whatever color you chose. We’re going to change the way that this layer blends into the entire image, but first we need to get rid of the “color overlay” on this layer (but keep the color, of course!). In the layers palette,click on the layer just beneath the colored layer – in my case, the layer just below my “Blues” layer. Click on the “Create a New Layer” button at the bottom of the layers palette (highlighted in red on the image to the right). It should look like this:
6.Click on the “Blues” layer to select it. In the top menu, choose “Layer” and then “Merge Down” (or hotkey CTRL-E on a PC, CMD-E on a Mac).
7.You’ll probably have to rename your “Blues” layer. Whenever you merge a layer down, it takes on the name of the layer below it. So, do that now using the same way we did it earlier.
Now we want to change the way that the blues layer blends in with the whole image. Select the “Blues” layer by clicking on it in the layer palette. Now click on the “f” at the lower left of the layer palette again. Choose the first option, “Blending Options”:
8.In the menu that pops up, at the top, you’ll want to change that from “Normal” to “Color.”
9.What this is doing is changing it so that this layer now merely changes the color of anything on the layers below it. It does NOT change the luminosity of it, so if you had this over white, it wouldn’t do anything. It would make it a blue white, but a blue white is still white – white doesn’t have any color to it at all. However, when you have gray tones in the layer below, as we do, it adds color to those gray tones to make them blue-grays. I played around with my blues layer and added different tones of blue simply by painting it in. If you didn’t want to actually paint them in, you could add a gradient – with this flower, I added a radial gradient so that the tips were darker and the inner portions had more purples in them:
10.I followed steps 2-8 again, beginning with the duplication of the black layer, and created a layer with yellows and oranges in it. You can do this as many times as you want, with as many layers as you want.. or just with the one beginning layer that you created, if you’d rather put all the colors on one layer. I tend to use separate layers so that if I want to, I can change the hue/saturation of each individual layer.
11.You can do a lot of “playing around” with it afterward by changing the hue/saturation like that, or by changing the lightness/darkness or opacities of each layer (including the black one!). Here’s another image of a pansy where I did just that. The first one is the original, where I have the black layer’s opacity set at only about 60%. The second one is different hues AND the black layer’s opacity is set much higher, at 100%. The third one is different hues again, with the blues on the edges much more saturated and the black layer at a lower opacity, around 30%.
12.If you’re not familiar with where to change the hue and saturation, brightness, etc, it’s under the top menu. Click on “Image” then “Adjustments” then “Hue/Saturation..” A window will pop up that has three bars where you can play around with the colors (hue), how strong or weak that color is (saturation), and the lightness/darkness of that color. As you change them, you’ll see the changes to the image itself, so you can see exactly how it will turn out.
13.That’s it! Now you can do all sorts of things with colors and brushes!
An alternative method that I use sometimes is to make a single black brush stroke on its own layer, then make another layer just beneath it where I “paint” in the colors that I want that brush to have. Just like I’d paint one of my paintings. This method isn’t for everyone, though, and can be difficult to do with just a mouse. So I spent much more time outlining the method above. However, if you’re an artist or would like to do these colors much more intricately, try painting the colors in on a layer below yourself.
Enjoy!
Awesome tutorial. I admit I had to read it several times before getting it all. I’m still confused at some point tho, do you need to ‘merge down’ other layers as well? Other than the first color layer, with the black one. What is the difference between merging two layers, or just leaving them one on top of the other, un-merged?
Sorry if my questions sound stupid. I’m just so close to understanding 100%
:)
@Alexa: What I’m doing whenever I make a new layer beneath a layer and then merge that layer down on top of it, I’m removing all layer effects on that layer, while still keeping them applied. For example, say I was to add a color overlay to a layer. By making a new layer beneath it and merging that layer down on top of it, it removes that “Color Overlay” layer style, but still keeps the blue color. Sometimes layers won’t react properly with the rest of the image when they have layer styles applied to them, or I want to be able to apply a NEW layer style to it that doesn’t merge well with the first one. It’s for that reason that I’ll remove them like this.
Hope this helps!
OMG!!!!!! this tutorial are really helpfull!!!! thanks alot!!!!!!!!!
to stephanie, thaNks a lot for helpiNg me…Godbless!
Ur advice is great thanx for explaining it in a way thats easy ti understand for even the most newest photoshoppers :-)…i have been photoshopping daily for 2 years now and still dont know alot of what can b done…any tutorial u offer will be much appreciated.
Stephanie~
You are amazing! Self taugh gimper here and I am so excited to test out all these wonderful brushes and ideas. You are a fantastic teacher and have a very generous heart. I’m so glad I found your site!!! Thank you so much.
Could anyone help me do this in Gimp?
It seems like a really great tutorial, however I use Gimp.
Thanks for this tutorial,this is going to make some difference when I start using it.
Before I forget,I have been paying very close attention to your stuff,fantastic is an understatement.Your must devote most of your life to this,your brushes,your images are just superb,keep up the great work,and thankyou for sharing.
Okay but I’ve got GIMP.. ;/ Can You tell me how to put colors on brush by GMIP (I’ve got got version 2.6.6) :]] thx ^^
@Sylwia: Sorry, I’ve NO idea how to use GIMP. I know you can do it in GIMP, because it also has layers. You could look up equivalents to steps by googling things like “new layer gimp” to see how to make a new layer, that kind of thing. I doubt you’ll find a tutorial equivalent to this for GIMP, though… it’s fairly unique. So you may have to translate it to GIMP yourself if you want to be able to do this.
Sorry I couldn’t help, but I’d just rather work on new Photoshop resources than devote my time to learning bits and pieces of yet another program. Good luck!
I have photoshop elements and I can’t get the ‘f ‘ for style on my layer. Do you know what’s wrong?
I got it! but now i can’t find the color overlay. Using elements is very confusing. :(
@Confused: Yeah, this tutorial is for regular photoshop… I know you CAN do all the stuff this mentions in Elements, but it’s done differently. I’m afraid I don’t have a version of Elements to help you figure it out, but you SHOULD be able to do a search for some step that you can’t figure out. Like, when it comes to something like the color overlay, just do a Google search for “color overlay photoshop elements” or somesuch, and you should be able to find out how to do each step that way. I’m quite sure you won’t find a tutorial like this anywhere else, though, so you’ll probably have to do that translating if you want to get it to work.
Good luck, and sorry I couldn’t help more!
Thanks a lot though! IT’s ok. I know most people have regular photoshop anyways. Your tutorials are great, though! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for replying!!
Whoops! wrong place
Wait… what? forget it.
damn i should have known this site before!!
I have adobe photoshop 2.0 and its not the same as yours,Stephanie,Please help me do this with the tree’s
@terry: Oh, if it’s not Adobe ELEMENTS 2.0, then you can’t use them. Adobe Photoshop 2.0 is NOT compatible with these, as it came out… LONG, LONG ago. Sorry! You can still download the image pack and make them into brushes that are compatible, but I have no idea how to make brushes in a Photoshop that old, sorry!
SO helpful! Thanks!
How can i make some brushes look real (not transparent and smooth and single-coloured), like brushes with clothes for example?
@ildiko: Check out my other tutorial on “Removing Transparency from Brushes” – that’s what you want. Truthfully, though, those kinds of things are better off with actual images used, rather than brushes.. unless you’ve gotten pretty decent at hand painting stuff in, brushes just aren’t usually the way to go when you want a “realistic” look to something that’s transparent like that (like real images). Somethings brushes work GREAT for, but others they just don’t. However, that tutorial is the best way I’ve found to work around it, if that’s all you have to work with. Enjoy. :)
In order to save it as an actual brush, do you save it by clicking “edit” and then “define brush preset”? Because I keep doing that, and then when i try to use it, the brush is back to being black and white…=/ Am I doing something wrong?
@Frosty: You CANNOT save brushes in color. They are made to be usable so that whichever color the user has selected is what they’re painting with. That’s the beauty of Photoshop brushes, really. Otherwise, you may as well just save it as a transparent PNG (which I also have some of available, for this very purpose – to have things in color!) This tutorial is not to help you save a brush in multiple colors, it’s to help you make the brushes (since they can’t be saved as colors) look more realistic.
Hope this helps. :)