Creating Custom Brushes
basixvideos

Creating Custom Brushes

on Aug 3rd 2011 with 32 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Adobe Photoshop CS5
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 24 Minutes

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 3 of 25 in the Digital Art for Beginners Session
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Photoshop is an excellent tool for manipulating photographs but it can also be used as a means to create stunning digital art. This tutorial is part of a 25-part video tutorial series demonstrating everything you will need to know to start producing digital art in Photoshop. Digital Art for Beginners, by Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor, Martin Perhiniak will begin by teaching you how to draw in Photoshop. At the conclusion of this series you will know all you need to produce your own concept art and matte paintings in Photoshop.

Today’s tutorial Part 3: Creating Custom Brushes will explore the true potential of the Brush Panel. We will demonstrate how to draw our own brush tip shapes and save them as custom brushes. We will also learn how to use tool presets to store and quickly select specific options for Photoshop tools, like the brush. Let’s get started!

 
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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Martin is a Hungarian graphic designer, digital artist and an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor (Design Master). He is currently teaching and working in London but usually travels around the UK and share his love for Adobe products and graphic design. You can follow him on his blog or on Twitter.  

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  • http://www.photoshopies.com Fan

    Martin, you are awesome..thank you…

  • trevor

    As usual great Tut. keep them coming please

  • mrdnk

    Another great tutorial. Love it. Wacom tablet ordered and on it’s way. Wanted one for a while, but now I’ve seen these tutorials I can justify buying one, because I’ll actually learn to use it properly – look forward to the next tutorial.

    Also want to note, that the keyboard shortcuts are really useful, please keep reminding us of them.

    Ps. I wanted the basix one, and now I move masking.

  • mrdnk

    ^ Ps. I watched the basix tutorials, and now I move masking.

  • http://www.givegraphics.com Give Graphics

    nice post! it is great pleasure to visit your site. thanks!!

  • http://importanttipstricks.blogspot.com/ nrurmi

    Just awesome …. hope we will see this kind of work more in near future.
    keep it up buddy

  • Ross

    I’ve followed all your tutorials, They are a great help.. Thank you

  • siros

    Thank you so much , I love your tutorials !

  • http://www.gfxcasa.com john

    thank you for this tutorial!!!!I made my 1st set of brushes today and thanks to you

  • http://www.photoshopwarrior.com/ PhotoshopWarrior

    This one is very useful, a lo of people ask me to share brushes with them..I think creating bush set isn’t that hard, this post is worth sharing though.

  • moizuddin ansari,

    sir, it very nece tutorial for poor people. like me i am very much interested in photo shop learning
    and i want to make it my profession as job ,
    i much happy about this ” psd tuts+ “, please carry on this website for those people who are want to become a
    profession,
    thanking you,
    moizuddin ansari,
    hyderabad,
    INDIA.

  • R.B.

    Very nice tutorials so far, everything is explained in great detail. I love it, but I wonder if I’ll be able to follow the upcoming tutorials without any drawing skills…

  • 21stcn

    Link to set-up-photoshop-documents-composition is broken. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

  • http://faridasadi.ir/ Farid

    you are awesome..thank you very much.

  • Walter

    Please !!! I have a doubt, if anyone could reply I’d appreciate. When I’m using brushes and I decide to change the size or the opacity of the brush using shortcuts my PS doesnt shows the “red preview” of it. I went in the view option and I cant select this either.

    I watched all of urs videos and they are great ! Keep it up.

    Thx in advance.

  • Walter

    I forgot to ask….

    How I could do to activate this feature ????? This was working before, but I had to reinstall the PS again.

    Thx

  • Walter

    I found out that I need to turn on the GPU option to make that works.

    Cya

  • http://www.adrianflorescu.info/ Florescu Adrian

    Cool! Thank you for these tutorials, really helped me understand painting!

  • Alex

    Nice! I really like the colour dynamics and now creating brushes is one of my favourite things to do in photoshop!Thanks a lot!!!

  • Paul Coyer

    Thanx for the tutorials. so helpful. Really wanted to learn how to use a tablet properly and your lessons are invaluable. So many times I see great stuff produced and wonder will I ever be able to do the same?
    Every time I do one of your tutorials, I feel I am getting a little closer to my goal!!

  • vmyselfandi

    Hi. Great tuts – all of them for this series.

    I think I am missing something, but I can’t figure out that shortcut for the color picker. I thought you had said ctrl+alt+command, but that doesn’t do anything.

    Thank you

  • tinopycl

    @ vmyselfandi

    I’m assuming you’re referring to the Heads Up Display (HUD) color picker, in which case that would be SHIFT + ALT + RIGHT CLICK on the pc and Control + Opt + Command on the mac.

  • Kaya

    The video’s dont work for me, what am I doing wrong?

  • Mj_graphiste

    Thank you very much for this !

    I will be able to make my own christmas stripe !

    Greetings from france

  • http://johnjaredwaite.com john

    This one is very useful, a lo of people ask me to share brushes with them..I think creating bush set isn’t that hard, this post is worth sharing though……

  • JD

    I’ve never seen such fascinating tutorial before. You are doing a splendid job. And a sweet dessert to this delicious meal – they are free (I haven’t checked the others episodes, but I hope they are free).

    I’m like a new born baby to the digital art. I’m sure after the completion of this mere useful tutorial I’ll be ‘like’ a mature man. Though I don’t have the tablet nor I can afford it but I’ll do it with the mouse. I can’t afford to , leave my appetite unfulfilled.

    Thank you, indeed.

  • Aleksey

    Like! Like! Like!

  • http://wintersblatherings.wordpress.com/ wintersblatherings

    I can’t seem to get my star brush the same as yours. Yours looks like it would fit in a space theme, mine looks kind of harsh – I can’t really describe it. would you be able to upload yours?

  • jwjb

    Like the first two tutorials, this one is great.

    Thanks also for pointing out that we can Load different brushes (for Ps 12.0.4 x64 on Windows 7: Brush tool > Brush Preset picker > Brush Preset > Load Brushes) where I went to deviantART.com and downloaded a few brushes which I copied to this folder for easier loading from within Ps: C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Presets\Brushes.

    It was also nice to see how to “delete” these preset brushes to keep the Brush Preset panel clean while the brushes remain in the above folder for easy loading as needed.

    By the way, when I did the stripe preset brush I was in a 50 px X 50 px file and did not see what was seen on the tutorial (circa 16:00 minutes into the tutorial) until I created a new 500 px x 500 px file and then used the stripe brush.

    Again, another great tutorial!

  • Aditya

    Hello,
    I have a general query regarding custom brushes. When I m creating a custom brush, instead of creating it in solid black, I also use greys. That gives partial opacity to the brush tip and freedom to choose the hue for it from the foreground colour. I usually find it helpful and dynamic for creating pattern of scatter brushes. But I am working on a job, where I want variation in the basic hue in the same brush tip but I want it to remain fully opaque (100%). In other words, I want the final brush tip to create a proportional tint or a shade of the foreground colour in the grey areas of the brush tip and keep everything fully opaque.
    Can that be done? Please suggest.

    Although I m new to tuts+, I have become a great fan of it. Thanks a lot for all the great effort for the in depth knowledge of the application.

  • Serene

    Awesome stuff! Very cool!
    I have never usually played with my photoshop brush options but after this, seems like lots of exploring I’m going to do! Kudos!

  • Ramon Blanquer

    Thank you very much. I am learning a lot and enjoying at the same time. Nice to see people sharing their knowledge!