Members Tutorials

Creating and using custom brushes.

Supplies needed:	PSP
Supplies needed:	a misted tube

The misted tube Kayleen shared in Tube of the Week is perfect for this tutorial. Any tube will work, but misted tubes make excellent brushes.

Open your tube in PSP. Press Shift + D to duplicate your image. Close the original to use another day and work with the duplicate.

Make sure your layer palette is open. To open the layer palette, press F8.

Delete any background or watermark layers so that you only have the misted or tubed image layer.

Study the image and look for hard edges, excess design, etc that might detract from your brush.

This is a lovely tube, but the flowers and background would not show well as part of the brush, so I re-misted the tube.

Use the Lasso tool, set at Point to point, feather - 38, anti-alias checked

Draw a loose outline around just the lady. The red lines in the example show you about where to draw the outline in this particular image. When you doubleclick the lasso tool to close it, the feathered selection will expand almost to the edges of your image. IF they touch the edges you need to de-select it, reduce the feather # for your selection and redraw the outline so that the marching ants stay inside the edges of the picture. Luckily, your selection does not have to be exact, just click loosely around the inside edges of the lady so it only takes a moment to redo.

When satisfied with the feathered selection:
Selections > Invert
Press the delete key once.
Selections > Invert
Image > Crop to Selection

There will be alot of space around your brush.
That's OK.

At the bottom right of your screen below are a group of numbers. They tell you the size of your image.

Look at the numbers behind Image: The cropped size of my image is W 355 x H 412.

In PSP 7, 350 pixels is the maximum length allowed for any side of an image. In PSP 9, the size limit is at most 500 X 500 pixels. I prefer to keep my brushes smaller unless I am making them for a special project. Resize your image to a maximum of 350 X 350 pixels - Resample using Bicubic.

Image > Greyscale

File > Export > Custom Brush This window will open. Because the artist's name was Cynthia Hart, I named this brush cynthiahart. You can fill in the blanks below or leave them blank. Click OK.

Open a new image - 600 X 600 White background.

Add a new layer.

Select a bright foreground color and a different background color. I chose red and black.

Click on your paintbrush tool. In the toolbar, at the top of your screen, click on the drop down arrow next to the preview square and scroll through your brushes to find the brush you just made. Double click on your brush to select it.

Your cursor will change to the outline of your brush.

Position your brush in the center of your canvas, and left click once. That paints your brush with your foreground color. A right click sets your background color.

Tada!

If your brush is too light, you can carefully stamp it several times without moving the position of the mouse to darken it. Here are three examples of the brushes I just made. #1 foreground color. #2 - black background color and #3 was 1 click with the foreground and one click with the black background.

Uses for your new brush are limited only by your imagination. This brush turned out very sharp and clear. For a softer look, lower the opacity of your brush setting. You can play with patterns, gradients, colors and change the background to anything you want. The sky is the limit.

Have fun with the brushes you make. Play alot with them. They make excellent background accents, soft and lovely notecard designs, and dozens of other works of art.

vetch