The two major sources of traffic to my blog are my free chain brush and my free rope brush, both of which are created in much the same way, and are surprisingly simple to make. This tutorial is a very quick guide to creating a pen-pressure sensitive brush that flows in the direction of the pen movement.

If you’re not familiar with how to create a brush within Photoshop, then please read my tutorial on creating your own Photoshop brushes which will outline and explain the process (you may notice that since that tutorial was written I’ve since switched to a Mac!).

For this tutorial I’m using Photoshop version CS5, but the steps should be the same or very similar to previous versions. If you’re unsure about anything you can leave a comment below or email me and I’ll try my best to clarify.

Enough already, get on with it!

First, create a new 2500px x 2500px canvas and ensure the background colour is set to white (#FFFFFF).

Select the rounded rectangle tool from your tool palette and set the corner radius to be 200px. You may need to play around with this setting depending on the size you draw your own rectangle at.

With your foreground colour set to black (#000000) create the shape.

Now with this layer selected, press Ctrl + J (Cmd + J  on Mac) to duplicate the shape. Select the new shape, change it’s colour to white and scale it down so that it fit within the first rectangle, like below. This will create one of the chain links.

Holding Shift + Alt when scaling will lock the ratio and scale it from the centre. You will probably need to scale the new shape horizontally slightly to keep an even thickness to the link.

Move the link over and again select the rounded rectangle tool. This time create a thinner rectangle roughly the same width as the first shape you created. This will represent the next link in the chain.

Move this new shape so that it overlaps the first link slightly, as though the links were actually linked.

With all the shapes selected, align them vertically along their centres.

We’re now ready to create our brush and change the preset settings to create our actual chain.

From the menu, select Menu > Define Brush Preset… and save the preset as whatever you want. It should now be visible in the brush presets tab at the bottom of the list (press F5 to open the brush palette if it’s not open already and B to select the brush tool if the presets appear greyed out).

With our preset selected, go to the Brush tab from the top of the palette and select the Shape Dynamics option from the list on the left of the palette. From the options in the right-hand panel set the Size Jitter to 0% and the control option to Pen Pressure. This basically sets the size of the brush to be dependant on how hard you press your pen on the tablet.

Next set the Angle Jitter to 0% and the control this time to Direction. This ensures that the links within the chain are angled in such a way that they ‘flow’ smoothly from one to the next in a continuous line.

Our brush with it’s current settings is previewed in the panel at the bottom.  The links are so close together that they appear almost as a solid line. To sort this simply select the Brush Tip Shape option from the panel on the left and adjust the Spacing bar at the bottom until the individual links are visible but still appear connected to each other.

I set my spacing to 200% which looked about right in the preview, but your spacing may be different. Just play around until you find an amount that looks right and go with it.

Go back to the Brush Presets tab and click anywhere in the white space to create a new preset with your current settings.

Save the brush and you’re done!

If you enjoyed this tutorial, or if you hated it, or if you think it needs work, please let me know with a comment below. Alternatively you can leave feedback via my twitter account or my Facebook page.

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Making your own custom Photoshop brushes is really quite quick and simple. This is a short guide on creating your own basic brush from an image found on the web. I’ll be writing more Photoshop tutorials in the near future, so be sure to subscribe to my feedburner feed. I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop CS3 for this tutorial.
You can make Photoshop brushes from practically any image, but you first need to think about a few things.

To create a brush, you simply select an image, part of an image, or shape and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. Photoshop will then create a new brush by taking the shape, image or area you have selected, converting it to black and white, and then using the black areas for solid pixels, white areas for transparent pixels, and grey areas for different levels of opacity depending on the grey tone.

This means you can create brushes that feature fades, transparent areas, or whole solid blocks of colour. Here’s an example of an image that has simply been turned into a brush and then used with the black colour selected.

Original Image (courtesy of Sias van Schalkwyk);

Output from sampled image;

Looks like a simple grey scale image, right? Let’s add a background behind it and see how it looks.

Background image;

Output when brush is used over background;

As you can see, the blue background form the original image has been converted to a mid-grey colour, which darkens the bright background because it’s not completely transparent. Notice also how the highlights on the ducks have also been converted to a slightly lighter shade of grey, which has a lower opacity level and so doesn’t darken the background as much.

On the other hand the shadows of the ducks are completely black and so have an opacity level of 100%, which means they are not see-through at all, resulting in a solid area of colour.

Let’s assume  that you don’t want a semi-transparent brush, you want a brush of just the ducks in flight. This means we need to isolate the ducks, which is easy enough thanks to the solid blue background of the original image. You could use the Quick Selection Tool or the Magic Wand to select the blue and then invert it but that’s fiddly, and over complicated for this particular image. It’s easier to simply convert the image to black and white and then adjust the levels so that we have solid black ducks contrasted against a pure white background.

With the image selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Black and White (alternatively you use the shortcut Alt + Shift + Ctrl +B). Move the Cyans slider right the way to the end, then move the Blues slider up until the background is pure white.

Here’s how the image should now look;

Now that we have effectively removed the background, we can adjust the levels on the ducks to make them a solid black.

From the menu bar, again go to Image > Adjustments and this time select Levels. Click on  the small black arrow beneath the Input Levels graph and slide it to the right. Ensure that Preview is ticked so that you can view the levels changing on the image in real-time as you adjust them. When you’re happy that the ducks are completely black click ‘OK’ to save the level adjustments.

If you’ve adjusted the sliders quite far, chances are you may notice a few specks of grey within the white area here and there. This is easily rectified by upping the brightness on the white area. Got to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and slide the Brightness slider up until the specks are gone (again, you may need to tick ‘Preview’).

Here’s how my image looks after these adjustments.

Perfect. Now all me need to do is ensure the image is selected (if it’s a layer) and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. Give it a name and click ‘OK’

We can now select the brush from the brushes pallet.  Press F5 to open it and ensure you have the brush tool selected, otherwise the pallet will be greyed out.

Great, the brush is there added to the end of the brush set that you currently have selected. From here you can adjust the settings for individual presets, such as spacing, scale and rotation, and save them as a new preset. This allows you to create a number of different brushes from the same original preset. I’ll be going into a bit more detail about the preset settings in a later post.

Now we need to save it to ensure that we don’t lose it. Beneath the minus sign in the top right corner of the brush pallet is a tiny arrow. Click that and you should be presented with a list of all the brush sets you have installed, as well as some other menu options at the start of the list. From this list, select Preset Manager.

You will probably see many brush presets here, with your brush placed at the very end. Press Ctrl + A to select all the brushes here, then Ctrl + Left Mouse Click on your brush preset to deselect it. Click the Delete button on the right and your brush should be the only one left.

Now simply select your brush, click Save Set, give it a name to save it to your system and you’re done! You can now go back and play around with the preset settings if you like. Here I adjusted various colour jitters, as well as some shape jitters and just drew away.

Hmm, it could almost be a Jackson Pollack!

Hopefully you found this tutorial of use. If not, please let me know why via the comments below, and I will refine it or clarify with a reply. I’ll be writing more tutorials and guides on future so make sure to subscribe to my feedburner feed or follow me on twitter.

I’m also open to brush and tutorial requests via comments, emails or tweets!

© Copyright Paul Murray 2010

This brush is a simple tyre track pattern that allows you to easily  draw a tyre track effect that will follow your mouse or pen direction of movement.

It’s vaguely similar to my rope brush and my chain brush, though they are pen-pressure sensitive and so allow you to adjust the size of the segments on the fly, where as this brush does not.

I’ll be refining this and creating similar tyre patterns which will eventually be released as a brush set, absolutely free, so be sure to subscribe through feedburner, follow me on twitter or like my Facebook page to keep up to date.

Free for personal and commercial use. Credit isn’t needed but a link back to this page and a comment are massively appreciated.

Not sure how to install it?

Simply extract the brush_name.abr file to your Photoshop brushes folder, for example;
Windows: /Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Brushes

Mac OS: /Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Brushes

In Photoshop, from your brushes panel (F5), click the little arrow and choose ‘Load Brushes…’. Simply select the brush file and it should load into your palette.

Enjoy!

I was recently asked to create a rope brush similar to my chain brush and this is the result. Like the chain it’s pen-pressure sensitive, meaning you can adjust the size by how hard you press with a pen/tablet combination.

I’ll admit, this brush is quite troublesome to use and requires being used at a small scale to help keep the segments looking uniform. I also found it best to move the pen quickly and avoid sharp turns of the brush.

I’d really appreciate feedback for this via the comments below so I can attempt to tweak it and smooth out the problems.

Free for all uses, including commercial use. Credit as always is optional but linking to this page and leaving a comment is encouraged and hugely appreciated.

Not sure how to install it?

Simply extract the brush_name.abr file to your Photoshop brushes folder, for example;

Windows: /Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Brushes

Mac OS: /Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Brushes

In Photoshop, from your brushes panel, click the little arrow and choose ‘Load Brushes…’. Simply select the brush file and it should load into your palette.

Enjoy!

This brush was created to speed up and simplify the process of drawing a chain. Using a pen and tablet you are able to adjust the chain’s size on the fly simply by altering the pressure with which you’re drawing it.

Of course you can also use it with just a mouse but the thickness of the chain will have to be defined by you before you start drawing with it. Try and avoid sharp turns to prevent the chain ‘breaking’.

If you like this, you may also be interested in my rope brush, which works in exactly the same way, but allows you to draw a rope instead! Or if you fancy creating your own version of this brush but aren’t sure how to go about it, take a look at my tutorial on how to create your own chain in Photoshop.

Free for all uses, including commercial use. Credit isn’t required but a link back to this page and a comment are appreciated on a grand scale.

Not sure how to install it?

Simply extract the brush_name.abr file to your Photoshop brushes folder, for example;

Windows: /Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Brushes

Mac OS: /Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Presets/Brushes

In Photoshop, from your brushes panel, click the little arrow and choose ‘Load Brushes…’. Simply select the brush file and it should load into your palette.

Enjoy!