Photoshop Brushes as Artistic Tools
Date: Jun 9, 2006
How often do you give more than a passing thought to Photoshop brushes as artistic tools? They appear simple enough on the surface, but underneath there’s a wealth of potential for creating art and editing digital photos. You can make your own brushes (for example, a signature or copyright message) and use them to paint these details onto a photograph or you can make a textured brush to use to distress an image from a photo. Once you start experimenting with brushes, you’ll find there are lots of Photoshop users who create and share brushes—and you can share them, too. In this article I’ll introduce you to the world of Photoshop brushes. I’ll show you how to use the brush settings in Photoshop, how to create your own brushes, and how to find and use brushes that others have created.
Brush Basics
Before delving into homemade brushes, let’s look at how to configure the built in Photoshop brushes. Click the Brush tool on the Tools palette to activate it or press B. The first icon on the Tool options bar is the Tool Preset picker, from which you can select from preset brushes that have been saved. To its right is the Brush Preset Picker—open it to choose a brush from the currently loaded brush collection. Next is the mode list that lets you configure how pixels in the image are affected by painting; they are similar to blend modes accessible in the Layer palette. The Opacity setting controls how opaque or transparent the paint is. The Flow value sets how quickly paint is applied. Set this to a low value and you can build up paint in layers by successively painting over the same area. To turn a brush into an airbrush, click the Airbrush icon and any brush will behave like an airbrush. Adjust the Flow value to control the speed that the paint is delivered. At the far end of the Tools palette is a toggle for the Brushes palette that contains a heap of additional brush settings.
Selecting and Configuring a Brush
To select a brush, open the Brush Preset Picker and choose a brush (see Figure 1). To add more brushes, click the palette flyout and choose a brush set from the foot of the dialog box (such as Assorted Brushes, Drop Shadow Brushes, Dry Media Brushes, and so on). When you select a collection of brushes, you can append them to the current selection or replace the current selection. After you have selected a brush, adjust its size (measured in pixels) by using the master diameter slider and vary its hardness to make it a harder or softer brush—100% is very hard; 0% is very soft. Think of hardness as being something akin to focus—a soft brush has a blurred edge, and a hard brush has a solid edge. In addition to selecting the brush diameter from this dialog box, you can enlarge or reduce its size by using the [ and ] keys on the keyboard.
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Figure 1 Choose a brush from the currently active set by clicking it in the Brush Preset Picker.
The Brushes palette has settings for everything from brush tip shape to smoothing and edges. Click Brush Tip Shape to choose a tip for your brush. Below this, set the brush diameter and its spacing. The default spacing is 25%; if you increase it to 100% you will space tips so they paint side by side instead of overlapping (see Figure 2). Increase it to around 250% and see in the preview area that the brush tips will paint at an enlarged spacing. You can use it to paint a line of evenly spaced dots or angled shapes.
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Figure 2 Setting the spacing for a brush to 100% lets you paint a repeated series of brush tip shapes side by side by dragging with the mouse.
Use this same dialog box to adjust the angle and roundness of the brush by typing values into the dialog box or by dragging on the preview image with your mouse to change the angle or roundness (see Figure 3).
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Figure 3 Altering angle and roundness lets you configure your own brush shape by entering values or by dragging on the small image with your mouse.
The Shape Dynamics setting lets you set your brush roundness, size, and angle to change as you paint. Set a Size Jitter value, and the size of the brush will randomly alter as you paint. Below this is a setting for specifying the minimum brush diameter so you can set a size below which it cannot shrink (see Figure 4).
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Figure 4 The Size Jitter value setting adjusts the size of the brush randomly as you paint. If desired, you can set a minimum size below which it cannot be reduced—here that setting is 25%.
The Control setting configures how the change is managed. Set it to Off and the brush paints continuously as shown. Set it to Pen Pressure if you use a tablet; if using a mouse, set it to Fade and specify the number of steps by which time the effect will fade to zero. Angle Jitter works similarly by randomly changing the angle of the brush and it has a similar set of Control options. The Roundness Jitter setting lets you configure the brush to randomly change roundness, and it has a minimum Roundness setting and the same Control settings as the other effects (see Figure 5).
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Figure 5 Results of randomly varying angle and roundness are shown here, the Size Jitter stops partway through as it is set to Fade, but the other Jitters continue indefinitely.
The Scattering options let you scatter the brush head so it paints over a wide area (see Figure 6). You can make the result denser by increasing the count so you paint with the equivalent of multiple brush heads at the one time. Count Jitter randomly varies the number of brushes that you’re painting with.
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Figure 6 This brush has a scattering value set so the brush heads spread out over a larger area.
The Texture option lets you create a brush that paints with a texture of your choice. Your choices include built-in Photoshop patterns and any patterns you created yourself. The Scale slider lets you adjust the scale of the texture that you’re painting. Enabling the Texture Each Tip checkbox applies the pattern over itself so that it builds up as you paint; if you disable the checkbox, the pattern is painted, but not overpainted where brush heads overlap.
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Figure 7 With the Texture Each Tip checkbox enabled, the leftmost pattern is painted; with it disabled the results are those shown on the right.
One of the most surprising tools in this palette is the Color Dynamics option, which lets you vary the color of the brush as you paint. Although each brush tip is still painted in a single color—brushes can’t paint in multiple colors at a time—you can vary the hue so each tip is a different color, and the result is a rainbow painted effect. To do this, set a foreground color other than black or white and set the Hue Jitter value to 100% to use the full span of available colors. Ensure that the Purity value is set to 0 or higher and test the brush (see Figure 8). Other values such as Brightness and Saturation can also be randomly varied here.
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Figure 8 Using the Color Dynamics settings you can set the brush so each tip as it paints is painted with a different color.
There are other options for brushes in the Brushes palette, such as adding noise to a brush that is not a solid black color and wet edges that make the brush edges look like the brush is painting with watercolor. Clicking the Airbrush option in this dialog box is the same as clicking the Airbrush option on the Tool Options palette. Smoothing is a tool used to smooth shapes drawn using a tablet.
When you configure a brush you like, make a brush preset from it by clicking the flyout menu, choosing New Brush Preset, and giving it a name. To add it to the Tool Preset button so you can use it with the current settings at any time, click the Tool Preset icon, click the flyout, choose New Tool Preset, and save your configuration.
DIY Brushes
Your own brushes are created as grayscale objects, and you can make one by making a selection on an image and choosing Edit > Define Brush Preset, typing a name for it, and clicking OK. If you make a selection on a color image, the brush will be a grayscale version of the selection. Your new brush will appear in the Brush Presets dialog box along with the other brushes (see Figure 9). When selected it is set to what is called Sample Size, which is the size you created it. You can adjust this using the Diameter slider or the keyboard [ and ] keys.
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Figure 9 It’s easy to make your own brushes by making a selection on any image and saving it as a brush.
By converting your image to grayscale and adjusting its levels, brightness, and contrast before you make your selection, you can achieve a better-looking brush because you can ensure that it displays a good tonal range.
You should save the set containing your brush so you won’t lose it when you change out brushes. It is a good habit to open the brush set that you want to add the brush to before creating the brush. Click the flyout menu and choose Preset Manager; you can rearrange brushes in the brush collection. Save the set as an .ABR file so you can load it again any time.
Handy brushes to create include a copyright brush that you can use to apply to your photos (see Figure 10). Try making brushes from photos, photo textures, typographical symbols, characters, and dingbat fonts. When you create a brush from a photo you can use it for collage effects, for blending images into each other, and for creating original art. For example, create a brush from a photo and use the brush when creating an artistic rendition of the same photo (see Figure 11).
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Figure 10 Create a copyright design in Photoshop and convert it to a brush you can use to add copyright details to your images.
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Figure 11 A brush made from the windmill has been used to create a background for a collage of the image.
Finding and Using Other Brushes
There are thousands of brushes available for downloading online. Some of my favorite sites are vbrush, Damned in black, and Jason Gaylor’s Worn Photoshop Brushes. To download a brush, download the file and unzip it (if required). In the absence of special instructions to the contrary, place the brush .ABR file in a folder created especially for your downloaded brushes. It’s a good idea to put them all in one place so you can back them up periodically. Load the brush file using the Brushes palette flyout menu. Click Load Brushes, navigate to your Brushes folder, and select your .ABR file. Click Load to load it.
Summary
Brushes are wonderful tools for creating original Photoshop art as well as for use in creating collages, making photo borders, and blending images together. You will find a lot of potential for adjusting the built-in Photoshop brushes by using the tools in the Brushes Palette. You can also create your own brushes for specific and general tasks as well as find brushes to use on the Internet. Learning to configure brushes and to vary their behavior can mean the difference between a task easily performed and one that is much more difficult to complete.