Jacob Cass started his blog, Just Creative Design, in January of 2008 and it has grown at an incredible rate thanks to his quality articles on design and creativity. Currently he is hosting a $5000 prize giveaway graphic design group writing project that is sure to be worth bookmarking when all the contributions are compiled! You can enter to win one of the fabulous prizes yourself by writing an article on graphic design related advice, tips, resources list or tutorial. Hurry because the deadline to write the article is Tuesday, March 4th. I invited Jacob to expand on an idea he mentioned in the comments on Creative Curio recently about creating your own Photoshop brushes. He turned it into an informative, easy to follow tutorial (below). Enjoy!
by Jacob Cass
Ever wondered how people create those lovely Photoshop brushes you always download? This tutorial will teach you how to create those unique Photoshop brushes without a computer (well nearly).
For this example, I am going to use a ‘paint splatter’ as they seem all the rage at the moment, but you can practically use anything; creativity is the limit! You can use a tire wheel, things lying around the house, sticks, stones, twigs—just about anything from nature—well, anything at all to be honest, to make a Photoshop brush. Check out some free Photoshop brushes for inspiration.
But anyway, let’s say you want to create your own unique paint splatter that no one else has ever seen…
Step 1: Get The Materials Needed
Now we actually need to make a real paint splatter. To create a paint splatter, of course, you are going to need paint and a largish piece of paper. You are also going to need a lot of newspaper to protect the floor and possibly a ladder to drop the paint onto the paper. You might need clothing protection, too, to be safe. 
You will need a scanner AND/OR a camera but I’ll get to that.
Step 2: Create Your Masterpiece
This is the fun part, where creativity comes into play and you can go crazy! Although different coloured paints can work, in the end Photoshop brushes can only be greyscale, so the best colour to choose is black paint on white paper.
Lay out your newspaper on the ground for protection, get your large piece of paper and place it in the middle of the newspapers. Then climb up the ladder (that you placed next to the newspaper area already, right?) with your paint and drop splats of the paint on the piece of paper. Of course you don’t have to get a ladder you could just flick paint at the paper, as this also works but for bigger, natural splats a taller drop is perfect. Experimentation is the key
If you were not doing a paint splatter this is where you would get whatever brush you were wishing to make and layout it out in front of a white background (a large piece of white cardboard works best). For example, if you wanted to create a leaf brush, you would place a leaf on a piece of large white paper. Or you could paint watercolours onto a piece of paper and scan that into Photoshop.
Step 3: Scan (or Photograph) and Import into Photoshop
After you have created your masterpiece it is time to scan or photograph it. If you have a large enough scanner (and ample time to allow the paint to dry) you could scan in your artwork, but for the rest of us the best way to import our creation is by using a digital camera.
Take a photo from straight above the splatter (or leaf, or whatever your “brush” is). You may need a ladder to do this, depending on your height and the strength of your flash.
After taking the photo, download it onto the computer and take it into Photoshop.
Step 4: Create your Photoshop Brush
There have been numerous tutorials regarding actually making a Photoshop brush and this is the easiest one I could find. For a more advanced step by step, check out BittBox’s tutorial on how to create Photoshop brushes.
Tip: Once you have created some Photoshop brushes or if you have some old ones, a great way to get your name out there and get free traffic to your site is to upload them to various ‘free Photoshop brush’ sites such as Brusheezy or DeviantArt.
Thanks Lauren for the opportunity to write on Creative Curio.
P.S. From Lauren: Chris from Blog.SpoonGraphics just posted a new spray paint brush set he made, if you’d like to see more examples of images turned into brushes. Veerle also had a tutorial a while ago. Using this technique that Jacob has shown us will allow you to make these kinds of hi-res brush sets, which work very well for print. Thanks, Jacob!
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Now, Im not a PS guy, but how easy would it be to live trace it in Illustrator (perhaps at the same time make a vector brush) and then export it into Photoshop for making a bitmap brush?
Esben,
And see, I’m not an Illustrator gal! But I think it would be pretty simple trace the splat to make a vector brush, though for the life of me I can’t figure it out myself. Time to go look at those good ol’ help files!
Oh that should be simple, but the live tracing is the tricky part.
Choose your given artwork, go to brushes panel, click on the drop down box and choose “new brush”.
You gotta try all four brushes, so you have a feeling what those are. When you have chosen your kind of brush, remember to save it (also in the brush panel).
Hope it helps..
An alternative to livetrace is http://vectormagic.com/ which I find works exceptionally well at turning bitmap images into vectors.
I’d love to see a case study of a brush being created, with pictures. (I’m a sucker for pictures.)
Im SO annoyed with vectormagic! It does it too well… the last couple of hours I have been tracing a small logo (which for some reason was made in PS) and I couldn’t trace it properly.
vectormagic did it perfectly in 5 min!!
@Alec
For Illustrator or Photoshop?
Maybe we should change the name to how to design photoshop and illustrator brushes and add a bit about tracing for illustrator. I didn’t even realise that! Thanks again Lauren, and for the VERY generous plug! Cheers! Do you know how to track outgoing clicks in Google Analytics so you know how many clicks went out to me? I read an article on it last week but I can’t find it again to show you.
@E — Both!
Oho, great discussion…
Jacob, you should update this tutorial and adding tracing section for illustrator. Or just post another new tutorial about it :p
@Alec
I will
Vectormagic.com is such a brilliant resource, use it all the time, simply one because my pen tablet isnt good enough, perfectly traces images
Esben,
Maybe that can be next in your Illustrator tuts!
Thanks for the little mini brush tutorial
I did a review on Vector Magic back in November. Kristarella did a great comparison b/n VM and Inkscape’s Bitmap Trace.
Jacob,
You should be able to track that from your own analytics. Just go to Traffic Sources, click on Creative Curio, the first info that comes up will be which pages traffic was transfered from on my site (example would be this page), then if you click the Segment drop down menu (the default will be reading Referral Path) and select Landing Page, it’ll tell you which page the referring site is sending visitors to.
Alec,
Meanwhile, check out some of the links in this article!
Awesome idea! Maybe Esben can do the Illy brushes (ah, I see he’s already said he will! Thanks Esben!!) and I’ll tackle the PS ones
Mel,
Indeed VM is an awesome resource! Have you heard there’s a new one out for 3D objects?! Darn it… I can’t find the link and I don’t remember where I saw it! If I find/remember, I will definitely share here. Anyone know what I’m talking about and have the link?
Oh yes I knew that but thanks, I was just seeing if you knew how to see how it went… I will have to have a look tonight, its off to uni for me now! Still awaiting your entry too
Jacob,
)
Yes, of course I will be entering the contest! I’ll be posting my article here on Wednesday (Esben is hogging my Monday slot with his Illustrator articles
Im all over your monday
just wrote two more and I still have some other holes to fill..
Interesting post, Jacob. I’ve not created any of my own brushes, but I like the idea of getting big pots of coloured paint out and making a mess.
very creative. It inspired me to try and experiment with some brush strokes that my daughter is applying to a big roll of paper.
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