Custom Brushes, Patterns and Shapes

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.
Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Custom brushes, patterns and shapes - Fig. 1
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.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Custom brushes, patterns and shapes - Fig. 2

Now go to Layer - Flatten Image.

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

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Custom brushes, patterns and shapes - Fig. 3

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.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Custom brushes, patterns and shapes - Fig. 4

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.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Custom brushes, patterns and shapes - Fig. 5

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

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Custom brushes, patterns and shapes - Fig. 6

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

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Custom brushes, patterns and shapes - Fig. 7

You can now use your brush any time you like!

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Custom brushes, patterns and shapes - Fig. 8

Now let’s make some patterns!

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Added Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 7:20 am under Tips.