Beginning Photoshop - Creating a Custom Brush

Photoshop comes with a lot of brush presets, and there are a ton you can download on the internet, but what if you want something that is totally your own?  This instructable will show you how.

You will need:

• Photoshop (of course)

Step 1: Five Simple Steps

First, you must create a blank layer in the layers palette.  You can do this by either clicking on the new layer icon, or hitting cmd + shift + N, (ctrl + shift + N for PC).

Step 2:

With the brush tool, create how the brush will look.  In this particular example, I did a simple spiral, but you can really turn anything into a brush, even a signature or a full drawing!

Step 3:

Now we need to make the brush into a selection.  This can be done by cmd clicking, (ctrl clicking on a PC), on the brush layer icon.  Once you have done this, you will see "marching ants" showing you your selection.

Step 4:

With the selection active, go to the Edit menu in your toolbar and choose edit > define brush preset.  Name and save your new brush.  Easy right?

Comments

[amandaghassaei]

can you click and drag with this brush too? what does that look like?

[KathyTackettPhoto]

Yes you can! Depending on what you made, it can look a little crowded.