by Chad Neuman

When you think of creating custom brushes in Adobe Photoshop, you usually think of creating basic shapes and paths with the pen tool and then creating a brush from those shapes. But we can also use photos and convert them into brushes as well for unique designs in web sites and print designs. They also can make aesthetically-pleasing backgrounds.

Step 1
Open Photoshop and open a photo to use as a brush. It should be something that would work in a pattern, where the content of the photo is obvious as various sizes. I’m using this “blue angel wing” I found on iStockPhoto. IT should be relatively large, perhaps 1000 pixels for both width and height. If you create a brush at a small size, setting the brush to a larger size than originally created will cause it to lose resolution. But making it smaller is no problem, just like resizing a photo.

© ISTOCKPHOTO/DON WILKIE
Optional: You can download this file to use at iStockPhoto or use a similar one, since it does cost some money.

Step 2
To first define a brush, we need to select the area. Click the Rectangular Marquee tool on the toolbar.

Step 3
Click-and-drag a selection around the photo. We don’t need to remove the white pixels first because they will be transparent in a brush.

Step 4
Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset.

Step 5
Name the brush something that matches the image, and click OK.

Step 6
Now that we have the brush defined, go to File>New and create a new file at 1024 x 768. Click OK.

Step 7
Click the Brush tool on the toolbar.

Step 8
Click the arrow on the Options palette which will bring down the brush styles and size options. Scroll down and click the brush we just created. You can change the size here, or change it by pressing the left and right brackets to make the size smaller or larger. Bring the size of the brush to something much smaller, such as 100.

Step 9
Go to Window>Brushes to bring up the Brushes palette. This palette has a lot of options for the Brush tool. Change the Shape Dynamics to these settings by clicking on Shape Dynamics then sliding the sliders. The brush can rotate to a certain degree as we brush. Try various settings as the preview shows how the brush will look.

Step 10
Change the Scattering to the settings shown here. Scattering does just that—scatter the brush as we brush. Try various settings as the preview shows how the brush will look.

Step 11
Change the Hue Jitter to 12%, because we want to somewhat adjust the hue as the brush is clicked-and-dragged, but within a certain range. Setting it to 100% would cause it to include the entire color range.

Step 12
Now for the fun part: click-and-drag with the Brush tool in a curve.

Step 13
Whatever color is selected in the Foreground in the toolbar is the color of the brush. You can have a jitter between the foreground and background color as well as hue jitter from the foreground color.

Step 14
If you create a second curved brush path like this, click on New Layer on the Layers palette first, so that we can adjust the layer blending mode on the Layers palette. In this example, I adjusted the top layer blending mode to Multiply.

Step 15
Try various photos and converting them to brushes using the same steps here. Brushes with added Shape Dynamics and Scattering can help create a unique background, such as this one created with a photo of Polaroids.

Step 16
This one was created with a scan of tape. Besides creating unique paths, backgrounds are often created with such brushes.

©ISTOCKPHOTO/DAVE RAU

The Transform Each command, when repeated with the Transform Again command, can create some unique designs and patterns, and even custom brushes, as we’ll see here.

Step 1
Open a new document in Adobe Illustrator. I set the art board size to Letter but yours can vary. Click-and-hold on the Rectangle tool to bring out the other options, including the Star tool. Click the Star tool.

Step 2
Holding down Shift to keep a correct proportion, click-and-drag to create a star.

Step 3
With the star still selected after drawing it, go to Object>Transform>Transform Each.

Step 4
The Scale options allow you to resize the object to a certain percentage of the original and the Move options allow you to change the position of the object on the Artboard. Rotate allows you to rotate the object to a specified angle. Keep the numbers in the Scale option the same if you want the scale to be the same. Try following these setting for this tutorial. IMPORTANT: Next, click Copy. This creates a duplicate object so the original is not deleted.

Step 5
Once you have two stars on the Artboard, press Cmd-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to repeat the same effect to the new object, therefore creating a third object off to the side, rotated a bit more and a little smaller. Press Cmd-D (PC: Ctrl-D) a few times to create a line of stars.

Step 6
Next, we’ll use this design to create a custom brush. Open the Brushes palette (Windows>Brushes). With a Selection tool, click-and-drag a selection around all of the stars. Click-and-drag the selection into the Brushes palette.

Step 7
Select New Art Brush and click OK.

Step 8
Change the Method to Hue Shift and check Proportional to keep the stars from being stretched.

Step 9
You can now apply this new art brush to any Stroke, whether it’s the Pen tool, Pencil tool, or the stroke of an object such as a rectangle or circle. Try drawing a curve with the Pen tool as seen here. Make sure you make the Fill set to None and the Stroke set to the new brush by selecting it in the Brushes palette.

Step 10
The Transform Each command, combined with the Transform Again command, can create designs for many custom brushes and add aesthetic appeal to your designs.

© ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/GUSTAVO MARTINO