Brushes: How to Make a Brush in PS

Making your brushes in Photoshop is an essential skill. It will allow you to become more efficient and personalized with your art, and is invaluable to create certain graphic design elements.

Step 1: Create a new brush tip shape

Open up a new canvas (ctrl+n)

-          Recommended around 300 x 300px and 300dpi. Anything larger may cause your computer to lag.

On a new layer, begin drawing out the shape or texture you wish.

-          Note: the brush tip shape only registers black and white. Draw in black.

Save your brush tip shape. Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset

-          Name the brush tip shape whatever you wish and hit ‘Ok’

Step 2: Adjusting your brush settings

Open the ‘Brush’ window by going to Window > Brush

In the new pop up window, navigate around the settings to change attributes of your brush.

Most commonly used attributes to play with are:

-          Brush Tip Shape > Spacing: adjusts how far apart your shapes are

-          Shape Dynamics > Size Jitter: as you paint, the size of the shapes varies

-          Shape Dynamics > Angle Jitter: as you paint, the angle of the shape varies

-          Scattering > Scatter: as you paint, the shapes scatter

-          Color Dynamics > The jitters here will transition the colors as you paint in various ways

Step 3: Saving your brush settings

In the Brush window you were just working in to adjust settings, click on the menu at the top right.

Select New Brush Preset

Name this new brush and hit ‘Ok’

You will now be able to see and use your brush from the drop down menu in Brush Mode!