Custom Brushes, part 1: Making 'em
First an admission: I still feel a little shaky with custom brushes, even though it's been a year since I got my start with them (thanks Val!). But I thought maybe if I tried to write a tutorial, that would help me. Lucky guinea pigs, you! And so here it is, part 1 of what I hope will eventually be a 2 part tutorial, this one dealing with making your own brushes. 'cause let's face it, fun as it is to download other peoples' sets, sooner or later, you're going to want the freedom that making your own gives you. This tutorial will attempt to go a few steps beyond the "how to define a brush using PS", which can be covered in one sentence: make a rectangular selection and invoke the define brush command from the brush palette menu.
This tutorial was written for PS5, but should work equally well for newer versions. It'll probably be just fine for PSP (Paint Shop Pro) too, you just might have to use slightly different commands. And there's a whole long section of discussion/examples that will definetly cross over to any graphic program that allows custom brushes.
A custom brush is essentially a black and white image. You select the one you want to use from the brush menu, and then use the paint brush or air brush tool to "stamp" one or more copies of it wherever you want on the photoshop canvas, like using an address stamper on an envelope. If you have a color other than black selected for the painting tool, then you'll stamp in that color -- think of it as inking a real-world stamp from a different color ink pad. Everything that was black in the original image will show up the color you've selected, everything that was white will be transparent and everything that was gray will be some semi-transparent version of the color you've chosen. Most brushes are intended to be stamped (ie, single click) though you can also hold the mouse down and drag them about to create some interesting results.
Defining your own custom brush can come in handy when you have some simple little element (a line, some decorative squares or dots, etc) that you want to use in several places on one piece of art, or in several different pieces. Or, let's say you always put your name in a certain font somewhere on everything you create. You could define your signature as a custom brush, and then you wouldn't have to pull up the type tool and enter the text every time, you would just stamp once with that brush, and be done with it. Finally, brushes are frequently used to add texture, esp. grungy texture.
If you've never defined a brush before, don't worry, the process is simple as pie. But first we need something to define. Begin by opening up a blank canvas (control-N), any size, and use your text tool (click "T" on the toolbox) to create some interesting lines (using ascii art), words, or symbols (using a symbol font). Here's what mine looked like:
You can use mine (right click on the image above, save to local, and open it up in PS) or your own. Just use the rectangular marquee tool (M on the keyboard to activate) to draw a box around the element you want to define as a brush, and then from the brushes palette menu, under the fly-away box in the top right corner, select "define brush". The diagram below shows some suggestions for how you could define the brushes based on my example above: Each red rectangle represents where the marquee would be drawn:
If you have a scanner or digital camera, this part's easy. Just look around, and find something with scratches on it and make it into a digital image file. For this example, I'm using the back of a soft-cover book I have. Part of it is black, and covered with interesting scratches from being shoved around on tables and what not.
If you don't have a camera or scanner to get some real-world texture with, you just need to find a digital image someone else has taken with some sort of texture. Try stock image sites like gettyone.com, or google's image search. Or just use this image to practice on:
First, choose a good spot, and make a slightly feathered selection. I'm using the circular marquee here, but you can use the lasso or rectangular marquee.
Copy/paste this feathered selection to a new file. (control-C/control-N/control-V) If the edges aren't soft like in this picture, you forgot to feather your selection using the select tool settings or the selection->feather command or the quick-mask->blur technique
Now, if you're working with a dark background with light-colored scratches, invert the colors (control-I or look on the image->adjust menu). If you're working on a light colored background with dark grunge, don't invert. Then, in both cases, flatten/merge the layers into one using the layers palette command from the fly-out menu in the top right corner. You should get something like this:
You could go ahead and define that as a brush and use it as is (any color that remains in your image will be automatically converted to black and white when you define the brush), but I like to go one step further and play with the levels. Some people use threshold for this, but I find the results to jagged for my taste. So call up the levels dialogue from the color adjust menu or with control-L.
Click on the white eye-dropper tool, and then click somewhere on one of the lightest of the light green areas on the brush. Should result in something like this:
Take that and/or play with the other controls until you get the contrast you want between the scratches and the background. Shoot to have some true white within the circular area, as those areas will be completely transparent in the custom brush you define from it, which will help it blend in to the background when you're actually using it.
Accept the changes, use the marquee tool or control-A to select the image, and then on the brush palette select the "define brush" option from the pop-up menu in the top right corner. You now have a brush. Stamp it somewhere using the airbrush or paintbrush and see how it works.
For this brush, I'm starting with a scan of a page in an old book, showing a drawing made by Titian, Portrait of a Woman. I chose it because it had large "background" areas around the edges, and some interesting textures. Like the book cover in the last example, I scanned it in at 400dpi. What res you scan is depends how close in you need to zoom to get interesting texture, and really requires some experimentation on your part...
Then I just repeated the same process as in the last example, except that since the texture I wanted was already dark-on-light, I didn't need to invert the colors. I used the lasso to make a selection of the corner. To make the non-corner edge of the selection a little more ragged, I added a mask to the layer and used another custom brush to scuff bits of it out. I desaturated and got:
After flattening, that image's ready to be defined as a brush and stamped in the corner of any collage or artwork you're working on...
If your source image only has little bits and pieces of the background you want, it may be worth your time to build a larger brush. So, for example, let's say I like the texture in this little bit of the image:
But it's not really as large an area as I want... so instead of pasting one copy of my feathered lassoed selection into a new file, I paste *multiple* copies. I erase different bits of some, rotate/flip others and generally piece together a solid chunk of texture from different parts of the original image, giving me something like:
Then I merge it all together and desaturate and play with levels and define as a brush, same as above.
You can also use the "patterns" feature to build a larger chunk of image for your brush. For example, here I find a nice little bit of texture in a corner without too much by way of standout shapes that are going to be really obvious when repeated.
Then I paste this into a new file 4 times, using the horizontal and vertical flip controls and the move tool to alter 3 of the copies until I have it arranged as shown below:
In the diagram, the bottom right corner one is the original one, and the other 3 are reflected/flipped copies. The words are just there to show you how it's been reflected, your version wouldn't have that. This should create an image that will tile seamlessly (you can also use my other tiling method). Flatten everything, select all and define as pattern. Now open a new document the size of the brush you want to create, and fill with pattern. Now select all of *that* and define it as a brush.
So that's the basics. Don't forget that you can also use different custom brushes on whatever image you are working on to create a new custom brush. For example, I can define a smallish, circular custom brush from a textury part of an image, and then use that brush to soften the edges of a selection I've made from another part of the same image.
You can also combine multiple brushes into one. Just stamp away until you've made something you like, and then define *that* as a brush. For example, you could define a small square brush, and then stamp that to create some sort of pattern made up of individual squares, and then you could make that pattern into a new brush.
You can also run various filters on your source image (be it scanned object, digital pic or stock photo) before defining it as a brush to create all sorts of interesting textures.
I don't know if creating good custom brushes is a jealously guarded trade secret, or just something that those who are truly skilled have trouble putting into words or that seems so obvious that they just don't -- but there's a definite dearth of sources on the web explaining how to join the ranks of the advanced custom brush artisan. What's a girl to do? Well, if you're me, you'll write a tutorial and take a look at a few good brushes of different general types and try to learn from example. If you're *you* (which I think it's safe to say you are) than you'll try to wade through what I've written. And that's what this section's all about. So let's get started on our little trip through brush heaven (and be sure to visit the sites I've linked here if you haven't been before!)
Large-Area Texture Brushes
I picked up this brush a long time ago from a tutorial on how to age photos which I have sadly lost the URL to.
It's a large brush that covers a lot of area, which is good because it's got some rather distinctive elements that you wouldn't want to see repeated in whatever you were working on because that would destroy the element of "randomness" that you'd be going for if you were using a brush like this. All the white means that when stamped, it will be largely transparent, which is good for blending in with underlying layers. This is the sort of brush that could be created from a scan of a real-world object, perhaps multiple scans combined in a random-looking way and then defined as a brush.
An example of a piece I used this brush on.
And because we really can't talk about great custom brushes without mentioning Vered, here's another example of the all-over texture brush from her wonderful grid set:
This could have been just a ho-hum bit of grid, but she's most helpfully pre-grunged it for you. Again, the randomness of the overall shape and the large chunks of white makes it easy to work this into your composition.
An example of a piece I used this brush on.
Border Brushes
This is an example from the justly famous Nocturna, from set 67.
Border brushes typically have one straight edge (black) and then the other edge fades to white, usually in some grungy sort of way. The typically have some sort of obvious corner on either end, though I tend to think it's better that they not, so that it's easier to piece them together to fit a longer edge if necessary. In fact, I like them to get a bit narrower at either end -- like the one below (also from Nocturna set 67) does on the right -- because again, that makes it easier to adjust it to fit longer edges by combining it with others.
Ideally, a set being made for PS5 & PS5.5 would have a matching set with one brush each to fit top, bottom, left and right, since rotation is a bit of a pain. Super-ideally, each of these would be slightly different, rather than just a direct rotation of the original. I hear brush rotation/sizing tools are vastly improved in newer versions of PS, so that's probably not as a big a deal if you're making brushes for those versions, but it would still be nice to have slightly different versions if you're going for that random chaos look since nothing kills that faster than obviously repeating shapes.
As to how Nocturna made these particular examples, I really couldn't hazard a guess. But if I was trying to do something similar, I think I'd try the "apply-threshold-to-stock-photos" technique. And probably fail miserably, but that's what I'd try... If anyone knows how to replicate this, please feel free to share, I'm all ears!
An example of a border brush (from misprintedtype.com) in action
Corner/Edge Texture
This variety is a cross between the border brush and the texture brush in that it's intended to be used around the edges of your image (like a border brush), but unlike a typical border brush, it doesn't create a sharp demarkation between the "background" (solid color, typically black or white) and the central "foreground" area (ie, your picture). It just adds texture around the edges, like you might find around the edges of an aged drawing, such as the Titian example above. My example of this type is from one of the many stunning sets available at Roshiweb.
This looks like it was created from a scan or photo of a very interesting object. I'd love to know what! A painting maybe? Old piece of paper? Note the soft way it fades off around the inner edges. This is key in getting it to blend in with whatever you're stamping it over. The outer edges are quite firm, though not 100% straight edge; this is useful because you can either position so that they are completely off the canvas if you want to use the brush exclusively for texture, or so that they are well within the canvas border, creating that same sharp (if less grungy) demarkation that you would get using the Nocturna border brushes above.
An example of a piece I used this brush set on
Here's a lovely dark example from misprintedtype where I've placed the edges off the canvas edge to show you what I mean.
Design Elements
This class of brush includes lines and shapes meant to be stamped on to provide design value (as opposed to texture). Typically they're pretty small, and have sharp edges (rather than feathered ones). Here's an example of multiple brushes from Damn Apple stamped onto a blank canvas.
Some of these must be scans, and some look like they were just drawn in PS with various drawing tools and then defined as brushes. Like the set above, most of the ones worth using seem to favor a techy sort of look. Or maybe that's just me. Anyhoo, you can usually use the same brush multiple times in the same image without it looking funny. For example, you could use the negative frame above to frame a few different thumbnails and float them somewhere off to the side, or the little ruler guides to underline different phrases.
An example of a piece I used some brush from this example on
Little design elements tend to go a long way towards adding personality to a piece, so this is a good type of brush to look into making yourself if you don't want to end up with pieces that look like someone else's.
Do-It-Yourself Grunge
By DYI grunge, I'm referring to small grunge blip brushes that you use to build up a larger area of grunge like you might find under my "large-area texture brushes" heading. Typically, these blips will be distinctive enough that you have to be very careful repeating an individual one more than once if you want to retain the chaotic random look. Here's a canvas dotted with brushes from (sadly, currently off-line) Aircrash:
This represents about 20 brushes from the "grunge" set, dotted more or less randomly about for that more or less random look. Some are very light and some are darker, adding to the depth of the grungy area you can build up using them. Using small individual grunge brushes like this gives you a lot of freedom to add more or less grunge just where you want it. On the other hand, it's a lot slower than having just one big brush with a large area of grunge that you can just stamp on. On the *other*, other hand, you can achieve different unique looks with the same set depending on which ones of the overall set you end up using...
An example of a piece I used some brushes from a diy grunge set on
Typically, I think grunge of this sort is made by scanning in a grungy object (or a messy xerox) and messing with the levels/threshhold until blips and blotches stand out to the degree you want them to. Then you cut out parts and define them as brushes. The tricky part is getting a good isolation on the individual pieces so that when stamped, it's not obvious that it was cut out of a larger image.
Scanned Text
Another kind of brush you see a lot of is random scanned pages from books, newspapers, magazines and any other sort of printed material. Here's a simple example from 1womanmob; I've stamped 3 separate brushes here:
The last bit of text at the bottom was probably just typed in using the text-editor and then defined as a brush, but a similar effect could be achieved from scanning, so I'll just lump it under this heading. Nocturna pulls a similar effect with her "old text" and "code" sets, brushes from each of which I've stamped here:
Typically, these kinds of brushes are best used with a light touch; just stamping in a solid color on top of your image is usually going to look clumsy; you're far better off stamping on a mask or stamping on a new layer and setting the blend to something exotic. And erasing parts here and there is probably a good idea too.
An example of a piece I used a text brushes on, one made by Val
These kind of brushes are easy to make from a technical standpoint (scan in your image and follow the instructions above for beginner brushes), and what's more fun, if you make them yourself, you can work it so that the text actually bears some relation to your subject matter. Most people won't notice either way, but there's a lot of fun from the artist's point of view of introducing that sort of "easter egg" into you work, just to see if anyone catches on...
PS5's brush management tools suck. I hear newer versions are vastly improved. If however, like me, you're still using 5 or 5.5, here are a few tips to bear in mind.
If you want to make your own set, you should first use the "reset" option from the brush palette fly-away menu, and when asked, *don't* append, replace. Then start right clicking on each of the default brushes and chosing to delete them. You won't be able to delete the last one, as there must be one available brush at all times. Now chose "save brushes" from brush palette menu and give this set a name like "STARTER". From now on, when you want to start a new set, "replace" all existing open sets with this one, so that you won't have to spend all that time deleting. Go ahead and create/define your first brush, after which you can delete the last default brush. When you've added all your custom brushes, save again, and this time give a name appropriate for your set.
If you're using ps5, another thing you might want to do is create an "index brush". This is a brush not intended to be used, but that's just there to mark the beginning of a set when multiple sets have been loaded. If you're distributing your set, this is also a good way to help people remember whose set they're using and hopefully get them to give you credit. If you make a little dark square the size of the brushes shown in the brush palette, and put some white text in there to remind yourself which set this is, and then define that as the first brush in the set, then you'll always be able to see what sets you currently have loaded. This is especially helpful with large brushes, since PS5 only shows you the top/left few pixels of each, which is usually not enough to tell one from the other. If you want to get fancy, you can add more text to your index brush to describe who made it and when and what materials where used. Just remember that nothing should be further up or further leftward than the little square you have your text in.
For example, in the image above, the three sets from this tutorial are loaded, each beginning with the black square with my name and the set number in it. I've stamped the index brush once on the left so you can see the whole thing, and then stamped another copy in close-up so that you can clearly see the black square part that shows up over in the brush palette.
So that's what I've got to say about that. Hopefully, someday I'll find some tutorials written by someone who really knows what they're doing as far as creating useful and beautiful brushes goes... there's definitely a certain finesse required that's not super easy to acquire. Meanwhile, I hope my enthusiastic amateur's take will be a helpful start!
8.1 - Very Basics
8.2 - Beginner Brushes
Here's the set I made using the image above which you can use to verify you're doing it right, or just to mess around with.
8.3 - Simple Grunge Brush
Here's the set I made using scans from the book from the example above.
Click on the thumbnail to see an example of an image I created using this set.
8.4 - Another Simple Grunge Brush
8.5 - Building a larger area
8.6 - Repeating Pattern
Here's the set I made using scans from the Titian drawing used in the last few examples above.
Click on the thumbnail to see an example of an image I created using this set.
8.7 - Random Notes
8.8 - Brushes I've loved
8.9 - Managing Brushes in ps5
8.10 - Conclusion
