The Secret to Making Brushes from Photographs.

I’m going to be using this picture of an elephant to make a brush, but you can use pretty much anything you like!

1. So, start with the image you want.

*It’s important to have as big an image as possible, the bigger the image, the bigger the brush!*

2. Make sure you get the image on to an editable layer, the easiest way to do this is to go to the layer box (usually on the bottom right of your screen, depending on if you’ve moved it)
Click and hold on the ‘Background’ Layer and drag it onto this icon. This will create a new, editable layer, called ‘Background Copy’

3. To get best results, you should cut out the image using the pen tool. However, you could also use the magic wand or lasso for a slightly rougher finish. If you don’t know how to use the ‘pen’ tool, then try out this tutorial: What is the pen tool anyway? (coming soon)
Here’s my elephant after cutting it out with the pen tool.

4. Now, here comes the secret part. You could just save that as a brush, but the trouble is, it still looks just like a photo. That’s fine if that’s what you want. But I’m going to show you what I do to convert it to a more simple image that I think works better as a brush.

5. Firstly I like to desaturate the image, just hit Ctrl+Shift+U

6. Then click on the Fill/Adjustment layer icon, this will open up a menu, and we want to select ‘Threshold…’

7. In the threshold box, we can move the slider left and right to gain the effect we want.

Now it’s just a case of saving the brush!

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

9. 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!

10. Select the brush tool

11. 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*

12. 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…’

13. 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’

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