Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Useful for customizing Photoshop to your own uses, particularly for repetitive tasks and developing unique uses.
Exercise files
There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.
Quick reference
Topic
This tutorial will walk you through selecting and creating a custom brush from an image of flames. Great for beginners who want to create custom brushes for repetitive tasks, like adding signatures.
When to use
Useful for customizing Photoshop to your own uses, particularly for repetitive tasks and developing unique uses.
Instructions
Using Blend If to make the background transparent for a black background
- Double click on the layer to bring up the Layer Styles
- In the Blend If section, drag left slider of the ‘This Layer’ to the right a little. Then hold ALT and separate slider to soften the blend layer style settings
Selecting individual objects from a group
- Use the Rectangular Marquee tool and draw around object
- To adjust the selection, press the space bar
- Alternatively, use the Polygonal Lasso tool and draw around object.
To save selection as a new brush
- Go to dropdown Edit menu/Define Brush Pre-Set
- Name the new brush style and press OK
To use the new brush
- Choose Brush tool (shortcut ‘B’)
- Right click to bring up pre-set menu
- The last saved brush can be found in the pre-sets panel (last)
Tip
- To create a brush pre-set for a signature, use a Wacom Tablet and sign with a small hard brush.
- Go to drop-down Edit menu/Define Brush Pre-Set
- Name the new brush style and press OK
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- 00:04 Some of you guys wanna know how to create a custom brush, based on a texture like fire.
- 00:07 So I going to show you exactly how to do that,
- 00:12 plus another thing can you do with custom brushes a little later on the video.
- 00:16 So this image here I found over at Shutterstock dot com, where I get most
- 00:21 my images because they're incredibly high quality.
- 00:23 But of course you guys can find them pretty much anywhere.
- 00:26 The reason I choose Shutterstock is because if you take a look at the image
- 00:29 size,
- 00:30 8,000 by 8,000 at 300 DPI and if I zoom in to a hundred percent these images are massive.
- 00:35 So let me show you exactly how to extract these flames
- 00:41 and create a brush.
- 00:42 The first thing that we need to do, is to get rid of the black background.
- 00:46 And to do that we're going you something I told you guys about,
- 00:49 the Blend If feature.
- 00:52 Now if I go over to my Layers panel hold down my alt or option key and double-click on
- 00:57 the background layer, that will then be converted into a layer.
- 00:59 Now if I double click on that, its gonna bring up my layer styles dialog box,
- 01:03 Where at the bottom we have the blend if feature.
- 01:07 Now this feature allows you to work with this layer, or the underlying layer, but
- 01:11 as we only have one layer we're gonna be focusing on this layer.
- 01:15 And we want to get rid of the black areas where the shadows are.
- 01:18 So I'm gonna drag
- 01:19 this slider right here to the right, which you'll notice definitely does get
- 01:23 rid of the blacks.
- 01:24 But we have a problem: if you zoom in
- 01:27 you'll see it's very harsh and jagged. We don't want that, we want it
- 01:31 nice and smooth.
- 01:32 So i'm ganna drag this back a little bit somewhere around there:
- 01:36 and now with my option key held down on the Mac, Alt key
- 01:39 on Windows, I'm gonna drag the right part of the slider to the right.
- 01:42 You will notice we now have much
- 01:46 smoother extraction. Perfect!
- 01:49 I'm gonna press OK to accept the changes and now we're ready to create
- 01:53 a brush so how do we do this? Well the first step is very simple: we're gonna
- 01:57 grab our Rectangular Marquee tool from the Tools bar on the left
- 02:01 in a few zoom into one of these flames would say this one at the bottom right
- 02:05 hand corner
- 02:05 I can simply drag out a box around it
- 02:08 Now any point you wanna move that selection, hold on your space bar and
- 02:12 drag away.
- 02:13 I'll place it right there: perfect! My selection is complete.
- 02:18 Now how do I make this into a brush. Well it simple: under the Edit menu at the top
- 02:23 we go over here,
- 02:24 and down to Define Brush Preset we can go ahead and a name our brush
- 02:28 'long flame' and press ok.
- 02:31 Now that was the easy part. But what if you wanted a
- 02:34 flame like this over here where there are things obstructing it from using the
- 02:38 Rectangular Marquee Tool? You know despite
- 02:40 make a selection we have part of this flame in the way. Well it not that Simple:
- 02:44 we have to use a different selection method.
- 02:47 But luckily any selection method will work, so I can go back to my tools bar.
- 02:52 I'm gonna grab my Polygonal Lasso tool and very simply
- 02:56 create a selection. And its really nice, you don't have to have
- 03:04 a rectangular or a circular selection tool. It can be as obscure as you want it.
- 03:08 So now that we have another selection once again: Edit/
- 03:11 Define Brush Preset: I'm gonna name this one short flame and press OK.
- 03:15 Now we have two brush's defined, let me go ahead make a
- 03:20 new document,
- 03:21 and make it 1000 by 1000; 72 DPI and press OK.
- 03:27 I'm gonna fill the layer with black. Now, I don't wanna paint on this layers, I'm going to
- 03:31 make one new layer down here my layers panel.
- 03:34 And I'm gonna grab my brush to apply pressure in the B key on my keyboard
- 03:38 and right click to bring on my brush picker. It can also be accessed at the
- 03:41 top left corner of your options bar.
- 03:43 Now any new brushy defined will be placed at the bottom of your brush
- 03:47 picker so scroll down
- 03:49 and there we go: we have our first long flame brush,
- 03:53 and we have a second short flame brush. Let me go ahead and grab this one
- 03:56 I'm gonna set my color to
- 04:00 blue and press OK.
- 04:04 You'll notice because I used a massive image to make the brushes, the brush is big.
- 04:08 Now the adventure of this if you started with a very small image
- 04:12 scaling your brush upwards will result in pixelation: you don't want that.
- 04:17 So start with an image as large as possible which is why I recommend stock image sites
- 04:21 like Shutter stock.
- 04:22 This wa,y if I use the left square bracket here my keyboard I can
- 04:26 decrease the size of this brush and lose very little quality because I'm
- 04:31 decreasing and I'm not stretching out those pixels.
- 04:34 So all you have to do is click and you have a brush
- 04:38 click again to make a little bit stronger and there's your flame.
- 04:41 I can right click again select this flame
- 04:44 make this one smaller because its massive,
- 04:48 and let me go ahead and change the color. Let's go for red.
- 04:51 press OK and click again and duplicate as many times as you like to
- 04:55 increase the opacity of that brush: because as you extract things from a
- 04:59 background,
- 05:00 even if you use the blend if, features chances are it won't be a hundred
- 05:04 percent opacity.
- 05:05 but it'll be pretty close. So that's how to quickly create
- 05:09 brushes using textures in Photoshop. You can make as many brushes as you want
- 05:14 You take a look, this image has a lot of different flames we can extract and
- 05:17 create custom brushes with; it's fantastic.
- 05:20 But let me show you one more thing you can do with custom brushes. Let me create
- 05:23 another new document
- 05:25 600 by 200, and let's say 200 DPI press OK.
- 05:30 This time we're going to create a signature. so what I'm going to do is change
- 05:34 my brush because
- 05:34 I don't like this brush. I guess like a nice hard brush,
- 05:38 it definitely doesn't have to be this big so decrease that: nice and small.
- 05:41 I'm gonna make my brush black
- 05:45 press OK and use my Waco tablet to very quickly sign my name.
- 05:49 tTis isn't my actual signature but it'll do.
- 05:53 So I've signed my name and now I want to create a custom brush
- 05:57 out of my signature. So, once again, under the Edit Menu,
- 06:00 go down to Define Brush Preset
- 06:04 name it 'signature' and press OK. So now if I have any
- 06:08 photographs that i want to sign, as like a copyright, I can simply go into my brush
- 06:13 picker
- 06:13 select my signature brush; make a size that I want and click.
- 06:17 And I now have my signature
- 06:21 on my photos.
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