Brushes and How to Make them and Novel Uses of them

By Sheila and Peter Read

The normal brush tool is found from the Tool Box as shown here in the Photoshop Elements 2.

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Here is the Options Bar for the Brush and you can see that there are 8 possible options.

1	Click here and you can Reset this tool OR all the tools. Very useful to do this occasionally.
2	Here you could select the Impressionist Brush. This is also available from the Fly Out menu above.
3	Here there is a picture of how the brush is currently working, in this case a low opacity continuous flow. Notice particularly the Triangle at the right. Click on this to get heaps more choices. More below.
4	The Brush size can be altered here.
5	The Blending Mode of the brush is changed here.
6	And here the Opacity or density of paint is controlled.
7	This is the Airbrush option. The difference is not immediately appar ent. But try holding the mouse button down on one point and you can see the paint getting denser the longer you leave it just as an airbrush might. Low opacity settings are a good thing here.
8	Under here are another range of choices that will enhance the way the brush works. For instance you can alter the Scatter and this means the brush will paint in the shape of the brush in a random fashion (but controlled by you). Try changing these and note first the effect in the box at 3 and / or then on a blank page. Spacing is specially useful for the Brushes that you will make.

Here is the Brush Selection box. This is revealed by clicking the triangle ringed in red. On the right there is another triangle. Clicking this reveals another drop down menu. This you will want to look at and experiment with the possibilities. The one we like is the one that allows us to change the way the brushes are displayed on the left. We like the Large or Small list. This gives you a text description as well as the shape.

Here too is the place to Save your new brushes when you have made them. See below.

In addition the chevron by the Default Brushes will also reveal a drop down menu from which you can select a range of sets of brushes.
These can be seen here on the right.

Making Your Own Brushes

Having explored these options for Brushes we want you to make your own brushes. It is quite easy to do. Just follow these ideas below.

1	Open an image. Duplicate it from Image > Duplicate Image. Then close the original.
2	Crop if necessary and size it to 500 pixels or more. As shown here:-
3	Select the area you want to make into a brush by any of the ways Photoshop offers you. This can be the whole image and this works very well for graphic results. Ideal or Digital Audio Visuals.
4	One of our favourite ways is to increase the Saturation or Contrast to aid easy selection.
5	You can do this with an Adjustment Layer and this can be discarded once the selection has been made.
6	Now go to Edit on the main menu bar. Click on Define Brush.
7	A Brush Name box appears. Alter the name or use the name offered or even no name at all.
8	Click OK. That's it! Note the brush will always be monochrome.
9	Now try using it on a new page. At first just click once to place one version of your shape. If you have the default colours set then you will get a black print.
10	Try changing the colour using the Picker or the Swatch Palette.
11	If you have used a whole image then you have a rectangular brush. Individual dabs will naturally fit one to another and since the brush is near to 500 pixels across it does not take long to make a whole page full. By varying the content and combining with text you can make frames for an Audio Visual.

Now is the time to experiment with the More Options especially the Spacing. The setting can be checked in the small box on the Options Bar.

You can change the brush size just as for any other brush i.e. use the square brackets.

Why not try using the Pattern Stamp tool using your new brush. The brush can now be combined with Patterns as well. There are options here such as Aligned and impressionist to play with too. Do not forget that the Opacity can be reduced to suit.

If you want to paint a straight row of your shapes do not forget that you dab the first spot. Move to where you want to end the row. Press the Shift key and dab or click the brush. A row will be painted providing the spacing is suitable. You can fade the brush to nothing by setting the Fade to 4 to 6 or so.

Here is an example of using a brush with the original photo in the centre and single dabs of the brush with dif ferent colours around this.

In addition in various area a pattern has been pasted using the Bucket Tool with the Tolerance suitably set.

We hope this information will enable you to produce some interesting images from your own photographs. We had fun researching this project.