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Lesson Info

Defining & Creating a Brush

Let's talk now about the basic concept of making a brush. We're gonna talk a whole lot about brushes and how to make brushes and let me start this conversation by saying, There's nothing to stop you, and you certainly can do this. Go into Google and type in free Photoshopped brushes, and you can entertain yourself for hours and hours, finding all the brushes that people have made and have given away. And if you're looking for a very specific brush like I wish I could find a brush of Elvis, there's 10 of them or whatever the topic is, then that might be easier than you finding a photograph of Elvis and making into a brush. But to me, the rial interesting creative part is when you make something you want and you take that and make it into a brush. So we're gonna do that in a separate segment. But for now, I want to talk about the basic concept and how to look at when you're thinking. Would this make a good brush? How do you do that? So the basic principle of making a brushes really quite...

simple. It gets more complicated depending on what it is you're looking at, but basically I have just made a new document here, and I'm just gonna take, make a new layer and let's just start off by making the most basic of all brushes. I just want a brush That, for some reason, is a big rectangle. If you make something on object, a paint as well. See text, whatever it is, and it's black and it's on a white background. That's all you have to do to make a brush. Black is your brush. White is see through period. I watch a lot of tutorials where people say Now you have to duplicate this and hide that new people think it has to be transparent layer. It doesn't white equals transparency. So as long as you know, when I made that document, that's white because it came in filled with white. It's all automatically see through. I mean, I suppose you could hide the background layer to help you visualize what your brush is gonna look like, but it's not a necessary step. When I say that because I've watched to tourist, we will say, Here's how you add Make your logo into a brush and Gosh, they make it so complicated much more than it needs to be because it really is that black is your brush. White is the background. I don't have to select anything. That's it. Now I just go the edit menu and I choose defined brush preset. It'll pop up with the dialogue box and prompt you to name your brush sampled. Brush some number. I wouldn't call it sampled Brush 11 because that would be very so. I would call example Brush 12 because that would be much better. Know you usually call it something that makes better sense. You it's not necessary to name your brush. When you have a lot of them, it definitely helps. The number you see is the size of the brush. So one of the basic principles of making a brush is how big do you think you might want it in this case? Because I'm just making I'm not actually make a rectangular brush. I just got that size is fine, but I was really gonna make a brush. I would probably make that document much bigger, so my brush might be 2500 pixels wide, just in case, because it's always easier and better to take a big brush and scale it down than the other way around. If you defined a brush and made it 200 pixels wide and later on, you realise should have been much bigger. Chances are it's gonna lose some quality. So if I'm just totally speculating, and when we start making brushes later, you'll see I'm using pretty high resolution documents because I want to make sure I air on the side of the brush being too big, that not big enough. But that's the basic concept of it now. The thing that you have to think about is remember earlier I talked about always setting the bar at, like 100% opacity, I would say, if you can. It's the same thing for a brush so black in Photoshopped brush terminology. When I define a brush made out of black, that means 100% opacity. If this layer was partially see through. So now that rectangle is gray and I said defined brush. That means that brush will never, ever paint at 100% opacity. It can't because it's been defined as being semi see through which you might want and may as well see, based on the nature of what it is you're turning into a brush. That may just be the nature of the beast. But any time where you're creating something, for example, a very common way to make a brush say I want a copyright brushes says copyright, blah, blah blah. Take your type tool and make sure you're typing in black text, because if it's dark gray, that means by nature that brush will never, ever be 100% opaque. And using that same rule of thumb, I'd rather have the option of putting on a layer using the layer opacity to make it more semi see through. But then, just in case I haven't either brush 100% capacity, I have it. Okay, so in this case, because I just started with the new document, I'm just saying, you know, make it a brush. It just says, uses that hole black and white concept. If you take a photograph and you say I only want part of this photograph to be a brush, then it's your selection that determines that not that I would necessarily make a brush out of clothing But just to show you I didn't at this point after you anything else If I made a selection before I choose defined brush preset. Now you'll see. I'm gonna have a brush that's based on that concept. If I'm in full blown making brush mode, then I probably wouldn't do it just like that because I want to visualize How will this brush actually work? Because when I'm looking at that clothing, I see brown red, orange, blue, red, purple. What I really to be seeing is gray, different gray, lighter, gray, darker grey. Is there any black in there? No. So this brush again can never be 100% opacity. And if I'm okay with that, you know, that's fine. But what I would suggest is one of things that I do. If I know I'm gonna try and take portions of a photograph and say, let me make it into a brush is I'm gonna add a black and white adjustment layer. So then right away I'm thinking Mawr in the terminology of a brush and I'm seeing is the ready pure black? Is there any pure white? And there may not be And I might be OK with that. But what I might find myself doing is deliberately temporarily dark, getting the photograph to go more towards black. So therefore, when I make the brush, it will be more opaque. So in a case like this, I would add to adjustment layers, I would give the black and white one that I use either levels or curves or something that's going to just dark and everything. So now, as I do it, I guess, Okay, now, parts of this would be much darker, so closer to will pick. I'm not suggesting you have to do that, but that's how you can make sure that when you're going down the path of making a brush, you don't get a surprise of the Ana go up. I thought that brushwood b'more opaque unless see through. Well, this is how you can help predict that, because if you think black is the brush, 100% white is see through everything else is some shade in between. Then that's how you determine where you can get her. Better predict what's gonna happen. So there been times where I look at a photo like, Oh, I bet that brick wall there would make a cool brush and I start going down this path ago. Maybe not, because now I look at it. It's too black or it's too great on that. There's something that doesn't ring true with what I want. And I don't want to in any way suggest that every single brush will be 100% opaque, cause it wont will make some that definitely aren't. But at least that's the thought process is you have to think about, should this be? Should I be dealing with pure black, pure white or shades of gray when you go to define the brush now? So I've got my levels in black and white to help me create it. Then I would still make whatever selection I'm going to make and I have to do is make sure that I click back on the bottom layer to cause that's where the pixels really live. Because if I was up here and said, defined brush like can't find a brush out of an adjustment layer, so I'm using these adjustments to temporarily help intensify the look of my brush. But I still need to be. This still needs to be the active layer before I then go to defined brush preset. A clue for you is if we ever go to use and go, Why is it great out that tells you you're in wrong place? So if you ever go to do something in you and define brush, preset is not available or as we like to say, great out, there is a reason, and usually it's because I've got multiple layers and I'm on the wrong one. That's the most common issue. So in a case like this, yes, it's very beneficial to add these adjustment layers. You can kind of see what you're going to get and help get the brush look the way you want. But you still have to technically be defining it from the background layer. Does that make sense? Okay, now this will get. It was just sort of touching the surface off. How do I make a brush? So let's let me very quickly do one and then in a later segment will go way, dig deep into the world of making brushes. But for example, here, So I want to make a brush that looks like one of these flowers Well, when I look at it, it's a photographs or right away. My brain is telling me that's not gonna be, ah, solid 100% opaque brush because if it was, it would look like the outline or silhouette of a brush. So there's certain brushes where you know by nature you don't want it to be that way. But I would still do the same thing. I would still choose black and white. And then, if you can even make adjustments here to say, I want to be a little blacker like that. And maybe let's also do levels like this. And the beauty is we'll see of doing this is then then I can start experimenting. I would normally make a much better selection. We're gonna pretend I did. So now I could make a brush out of that and say, Let's take that off and keep the black and white on but adjusted back this way. So now from the same thing, I could make two or three different variations on brushes simply by playing around with those adjustment layers. But let's go back to kind of the most basic of all of that is I want to make a brush that just says copyright blah, blah, blah. Don't steal this 2015. So the first step is make a new document, but I'm not gonna make it some arbitrary size. I'm gonna make it really big, like 4500 pixels wide. Now, depending on your version of Photoshopped, this number may change up until I want to say it was Photoshopped CS six. The maximum brush was, like 2500 pixels so used to make my new document 24 99 to make sure when I defined the brush, it would fit. Now it goes up to 5000 pixels. I think it's actually higher than that now, um, so I would make a new document size and then take my type will make sure my type is in black. And it's right now. Giant size does scale it down toe be actually were readable. I've got some other weird stuff going on here from a previous demonstration. Let's put this back to zero. Okay, so whatever you want your brush to say, actually not have spelling mistakes in a dull. So this point, I'm just doing type stuff which we'll talk about later creating. And I'm deliberately making it as big as I can within this document, because it's black type on a white background, as I mentioned before, in to Do Anything Else. Now we just do define brush preset and call it something again. You don't have to name your brushes, but once you start getting a lot of them, it definitely helps. Once you've done that, you can close and save that document, although if you're forward thinking, I suppose you could save it and then next year just come in and change the 2015 in 2016 and make a new brush. But I've already closed it, so that's OK. So now to use this copyright brush, I would add a new layer press be for brush by default. Photoshopped very nicely says, Since you just defined this brush, I'm going to guess that perhaps you might want to use it now if it's not the right one, then you go to your brush picker and pick a different one. But you can see this is a large document. I mean, it's big. It's like by 3000 pixels. So therefore my copyright brush because I made it so big works really well. Let's say for the sake of argument that I had a much smaller document now my brushes, giants I, so I'd have to scale it down the left bracket key less you very quickly scale it down to a smaller size. So this way now I just have to pick whatever color I want. Let's use white and then click once and I didn't check my capacity. So let's undo that. Get back here. I want to be 100% initially remember putting on a layer. So I've got my little copyright notice because it's on a new layer. I can move it around. And, of course, as we said before, I can also lower the opacity if I wish to. Okay, now, later on, we'll be looking at much more interesting and creative ways of making and using brushes. But that's the basic concept of a brushes. You always have to think black and white as much as possible, or shades of gray with the darker the shade of gray, the more opaque the light of the shade of gray. The more see through it is once you make a brush, you don't have to say that file declined a brush. It becomes an automat brush. Then you can close it and not save like you did so by nature. When you define a brush and get saved into the brush picker of all the brushes, we'll talk later on. How to create organizational backup system for that, And the only reason for saving the original document would be for things like I need to update it occasionally. Or maybe my phone number changes or something like that. But it worst. I mean, it takes 30 seconds to make a new document and hype it again, said it's trying to figure out where you saved it to buy. Exactly. Now there be some benefit. If you were on the fly of creating a brush out of as well, do like a puff of smoke where you might want toe. Save that smoke document to be ableto then later on, make different brushes out of it so you can. But it's definitely not necessary, which is a good point to know