How to make a Brush in Photoshop CS3


As per request, (before the comments were wiped) is a brief tutorial on making your own brushes.

*Note, this guide is for images like the one below, which you’ve either made yourself, or you don’t wish to edit.*
For making brushes from a photo, or other image which needs altering first, then please read the tutorial on The Secret to Making Brushes from Photographs

1. Firstly, we need something which you want to turn into a Brush. Here’s a tentacle I made in Illustrator and copied into Photoshop.

When it comes to Brushes, the bigger, the better! – This gives you more flexibilty later when you come to using them.

2. Either get the image in it’s own document in Photoshop, or select it with the rectangle tool.

3. Simply hit ‘Edit’ on the menu bar, then ‘Define Brush Preset…’

4. Then enter a name for the brush (the name isn’t important really, CS3 displays all your brushes as images anyway)

Congratulations, your new brush is now ready to use!

*If you wish to save your brush to a file, say if you wanted to submit it to a site like Brusheezy then continue!*


5. Now select the brush tool

6. On the Brush toolbar, click the small downwards arrow, just to the right of the current brush. This will open the Brush menu.

*Note your brush menu may appear slightly differently, it’s been changed in the latest update to Photoshop CS3 to the one I have displayed*

7. If you click the arrow in the top right of this menu, it will open a drop-down menu, the option we’re looking for is ‘Preset Manager…’

8. Select all of the Brushes you don’t want, and hit press delete on your keyboard, then click ‘Done’

9. Now, to save your new Brush. Just like in step 6. We want to click the little arrow on the brush toolbar, just next to your new brush.

10. Then, again, click the arrow in the top right of the brush menu.

11. In the drop down menu, select ‘Save Brushes’

12. Pick a name, and where you want to save it, and you’re all set!



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16 Comments

    Great Tutorial. I’m new to Photoshop entirely (I’m used to Paint Shop pro) and I just purchased Photoshop CS3. This has helped me heaps. You couldn’t have explained it more simple. Thank you so much!

  • More than welcome!
    I tried to make it as simple as possible, so I’m glad it worked :D

  • Yey just made my first brush after reading your tutorial, very helpfull! Never realised how easy it was, and with a few clicks even a basic design becomes a really usefull brush. Thanks :)

  • Hi, I have noticed that a lot of the brushes you find on the web have a low opacity. Does this just happen when you create a new brush from an image, or do you need to set a lower opacity in Photoshop before creating the brush?
    Thanks a million :-)

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  • Thank you for this tip. It worked; several other places had it wrong. I knew how to do it several PS versions ago. It’s the copyright symbol as a brush.

  • U have made me delete all my brushes ahh I really need them

  • I’m sorry to hear that; I don’t think there’s anything in my instructions that would have done that.

  • Do you sell envelopes?
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  • Omg,, Thanks so much now i make great pics:))

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