How to Make Photoshop Brushes

You can create your own brushes in Adobe Photoshop for many purposes other than simply painting colors with. For example, you may wish to have your logo, your signature or even a block of text as a brush that you can use as a virtual "stamp" to put on pictures, documents or artwork. You can use a brush to create a watermark to identify your work. The brushes can be set to work with several artistic effects by checking selection boxes.

Instructions

1. Open Photoshop and make a new document of 4 inches x 4 inches at 72 dpi. Bushes can be made in any size, but for most uses a small brush is desireable. Note that whatever size you make your image will be the default size for the brush, but you can scale the size up or down in the same way you would for a normal brush.

2. 

   Draw or place an image that you want to create a brush with. In this example, I drew a paw-print, as pictured. (The image works best if it is black and white.)

3. 

   Select "Edit" from the menu bar at top, then "Define Brush..." as pictured here.

4. 

   Type in a new descriptive name for your brush, as pictured here. Notice the number underneath your brush icon. That number represents the total area of your brush size in pixels. Click "Save" and your brush is ready to use.

5. 

   Select the Paintbrush tool. Locate your brush in the brush palette. To display the brush palette, select "Windows" from the menu bar at top, then "Brushes." (In older versions of Photoshop, select the paintbrush tool and then click on the small arrow next to the brush-size display at top to see brush selections.)

6. 

   Click once in the document to stamp your brush shape. It will be the same size as your original icon. You can re-size your brush and change the opacity in the tool settings bar at top. In newer versions of Photoshop, the brushes palette has several settings that will create artistic effects. The best way to learn them is by experimenting with individual effects and combinations of them.

7. Click and drag your brush to use it to apply colors. This can be effective if you create a brush from a texture or pattern. (The color of the brush can be changed as with a normal brush.) As in most functions within Photoshop, the complex effects and variations are best discovered through experimentation and trial-and-error.