Creating a New Brush

[Diana]

Creating a New Brush

You can create your own brushes within Photoshop Elements.

Besides containing "paint," brushes can contain drawings, text (including dingbats), photographs, or parts of photographs.

Your brush will be Black and White, even if it’s made from a color photograph.

Therefore, before making the brush, convert the color photograph to grayscale, as follows:

With the image active in the workspace, from the Menu, go to Image > Mode > Grayscale. Use Levels to optimize the photograph as a B&W photograph [shortcut to the Levels adjustment is Ctrl-L].

Version 5.0 alternate method: From the Menu – Enhance > Convert to Black and White, make any adjustments if needed, click OK.

You can then make a brush from this black and white image by first making a selection of the part of a photograph, drawing, etc., you wish to make into a brush.

You may want to have a transparent background in your image if you want a brush made just from the subject.

To make a selection, you may use one of the selection tools in the toolbar. If you want the whole image to be selected, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-A.

To create the brush from the selection, go to Edit > Define Brush from Selection and give it a name, then click OK. You may then close the image you made the brush from, no need to save it.

The new brush will be appended to the end of the current set of brushes in the Brush dropdown list.

Saving Your New Brush to Its Own Brush Set

When you create a new brush or brushes, it's wise to save immediately, before using them.

To save your new brush(es) to a new set, you must use the Preset Manager.

From the Menu, go to Edit > Preset Manager

At Preset Type, select Brushes

In the grid of thumbnails of brushes in the active brush set, your new brush(es) will be at the bottom of the set. Scroll down, if you need to, to see them.

Select each new brush you created by holding the Control key and clicking on each new brush. Each brush you select will have a bold border around it to indicate it is selected.

After finished selecting all your new brushes, click the Save Set button in the Preset Manager box.

From the Save box, navigate to the folder where you wish to save your new brush set, give your new set a Name, then click the Save button.

If you have saved your new brush set in the Elements Presets/Brushes folder, you will need to restart Elements to see your new brush set in the Brush Picker dropdown menu.

Or you can always load the brush set each time you want to use it, using the Load Brush option on the Brush Picker menu.

Tip: Should you later decide to add more brushes to your custom set, make sure your custom set is the active brush set before creating the new brushes. That will make sure your new brushes are appended at the end of the custom set.

When finished creating and appending these brushes, in the Brushes Preset Manager box showing the thumbnail view of all the brushes in that set, use Ctrl-A to select all the brushes, including your old custom brushes and your new custom brushes, before clicking the Save Set button.

If you do not select all of the brushes, only the ones selected will be included in the set when you click the Save button and save by the same name, overwriting any previously created custom brushes in that set.

Diana