Photoshop Brushes

Create interesting brushes to liven up your images.

Step 1.
Open an existing photo. I have a picture of a fishing fly I made.

Step 2.
Select the magic wand tool, and set the tolerance to 20-50. You will need to play around with the setting to get a decent selection. Click the magic wand on a section of the photo until you find an interesting shape or pattern. Press ctrl+c to copy the selection.

Step 3.
Press ctrl+n to create a new image. It should default to the size of your copied image from the clipboard, so accept the default settings. Press ctrl+p to paste copied image.

Step 4.
*This step is optional*
Next we will adjust the threshhold setting. Image -> Adjustments -> Threshhold. Move the threshold so that a good portion of the image is filled in.

Step 5.
Goto image -> image size, and resize the image to a workable size. The width will determine brush size. To save the brush, select Edit -> Define Brush. Name the brush, and your done.

Step 6.
Choose the brush drop down and you should see your new brush. You can select the brushes palette to further modify your brushes. You can modify colors, scattering if the brush, tapering and many other options.

We will explore these in the advanced brush tutorial.

Step 7.


Here is my finished example with the brushes create for the tutorial.