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Step-by-step: Build your custom brush library
Answer
Michelle replies
There are many free Photoshop
brushes and textures online
that an artist can download,
which in many instances can
be all an artist will need in their custom
brush library. Yet creating custom brushes
from your own photo textures or hand-
painted samples can also come in handy
if you want to create a specific effect that
can help make your art unique.
1
One quick way to collect
a lot of useful Photoshop
brushes is to download free
stock ones from useful sites
such as brusheezy.com and
myphotoshopbrushes.com.
These sites provide a wide
variety of brushes and brush
libraries with many different
uses. When collecting brushes
from the web, I select which
brushes I want and create
custom libraries with them.2
To create custom brushes
I take a photo or custom-
painted shape or texture and
convert it to black-and-white.
Then I select it using the
Rectangular Marquee tool and
go to Edit>Define Brush Preset
and give it a useful name that
will enable me to find it easily.
In the Brush window I can
customise the brush’s settings
such as Shape Dynamics,
Scattering, Texture and so on.3
I also use Photoshop’s
default brushes that have
extra useful customisable tip
options. These can be changed
dynamically with a stylus and
hotkeys as I paint, such as the
Hardness, Softness, Angle and
Roundness. To customise a
pre-existing Photoshop brush,
I select it from the Brush Preset
dialog and adjust its properties
in the Brush Tip Shape section
of the Brush window.4
To organise brushes into
an easy-to-browse brush
library, I open the Brush
Presets window, click the icon
in the upper-right corner and
select Brush Preset Manager.
From there I Ctrl-click to select
each brush that I want to save
into a new customised brush
library and then click Save Set.
I also add the name and edit
the order of the brushes in the
Brush Preset Manager.CUSTOMISE BRUSH LIBRARY VIEWS
A great way to help you navigate your brush
library is to customise how each brush is
viewed in the library. For quick navigation
of your brush
library, you can
switch the brush
thumbnail view
to Small List or
Large List.You can build your own custom
Photoshop brush library by collecting stock
brushes from the web, creating your own
brushes from scratch, editing pre-existing
brushes that come with Photoshop, and
organising your brushes into an easy-to-
browse brush library. Here I’ll explain how
to create your own custom Photoshop
brush library to help you save time creating
awesome effects in your art.Question
Can you help me build up a library of custom Photoshop brushes?
Daisy Curtis, Canada
This is the final portrait I did using line art and an
airbrush to block it in, and my custom hair brush
on Overlay and Color Dodge layers to finish it off.Here, I’m setting up a
custom brush library,
made up of custom and
free stock brushes. I’m
also creating and
customising a hair brush
to add to the library.Artist’s secret