Creating Custom Brushes

Start building your own libraries of custom brushes, patterns and shapes. This tutorial will guide you through the steps to create re-usable presets from your artwork.

Brushes:
The basic steps for creating a custom brush in Photoshop are fairly simple. To begin, you want a new canvas upon which to create your artwork. I’m going to make a simple swirl brush.

Create a new layer and make a black square on that layer. Then go to Filter - Distort - Twirl and enter a value of 550.

Next, create another new layer and make a white square, slightly smaller than the black one was. Hit Ctrl+F to repeat the Twirl filter effect.

Now go to Layer - Flatten Image.

Next, go to Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur Enter a value of 1.

Now hit Ctrl+L to bring up the levels dialog and slide both end points toward the center until your shape is nice and smooth and crisp.

Great! Now let’s make the actual brush. This is the easy part.

Use your rectangular marquee tool to make a selection around the shape we just made. Then go to Edit - Define Brush Preset. Give your brush a name and click OK.

Now you can go to the Brush palette and adjust the brush options.

Don’t forget to save your brushes when you’re done by bringing up the Brush palette options menu and selecting Save Brushes

You can now use your brush any time you like!

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Creating Custom Brushes

Start building your own libraries of custom brushes, patterns and shapes. This tutorial will guide you through the steps to create re-usable presets from your artwork.

Brushes:
The basic steps for creating a custom brush in Photoshop are fairly simple. To begin, you want a new canvas upon which to create your artwork. I’m going to make a simple swirl brush.

Create a new layer and make a black square on that layer. Then go to Filter - Distort - Twirl and enter a value of 550.

Next, create another new layer and make a white square, slightly smaller than the black one was. Hit Ctrl+F to repeat the Twirl filter effect.

Now go to Layer - Flatten Image.

Next, go to Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur Enter a value of 1.

Now hit Ctrl+L to bring up the levels dialog and slide both end points toward the center until your shape is nice and smooth and crisp.

Great! Now let’s make the actual brush. This is the easy part.

Use your rectangular marquee tool to make a selection around the shape we just made. Then go to Edit - Define Brush Preset. Give your brush a name and click OK.

Now you can go to the Brush palette and adjust the brush options.

Don’t forget to save your brushes when you’re done by bringing up the Brush palette options menu and selecting Save Brushes

You can now use your brush any time you like!

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