PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: 2: WATERCOLOUR BRUSHES FOR

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PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: 2:
WATERCOLOUR BRUSHES FOR PHOTOSHOP
An Adobe Photoshop Tutorial on how to create your own watercolour brushes
in a creative way by the Aqua IT Consulting Team!
DIFFICULTY:
Perfect for those with only a basic knowledge of Photoshop, to those
with more advanced Photoshop experience!
Please NOTE: Additional resources other than Adobe Photoshop are required for this tutorial.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to make your very own Watercolour Photoshop brushes
using some creative methods.
We use Adobe Photoshop CS6, but you can create this effect using any version of
Photoshop that you have available.
This tutorial is a follow-up from the previous one, where you created a Torn Paper effect –
and will enable you get the same awesome watercolour effect, using brushes that you will
have created once you have completed this tutorial.
Additional Resources are required for this tutorial, and include:
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Paper (using different textures can create some great results – but please try and
keep the COLOUR of the paper WHITE).
Watercolour paints – or diluted craft/acrylic paints (you only really need one colour).
Paintbrushes (You can use various sizes and textures)
A Scanner – You are going to NEED this as you will be scanning images to be used
to create the brushes in Photoshop.
If all this is too much, there are some great watercolour picture resources that
can be found online – but please ensure that you are not using somebody
else’s work which may be an infringement of a Copyright. (And if you plan to
use images you found to create brushes for commercial use, make sure that it
has an extended licence or that you have received permission from the original
author to do so!)
LET’S GET STARTED!
Just a word of advice, this is going to take some time, so just have fun!
Get your paper, brushes and paint ready. If you are using watercolour, all you need
to do is make sure you apply enough water to get a nice liquid consistency to start
painting. If you are using acrylic paint/ craft paint, you are going to want to mix about
half a teaspoon of paint with about a teaspoon of water in a plastic container that you
don’t mind dirtying. You then need to mix this using a toothpick or a plastic spoon
until all the paint has dissolved (you don’t want little blobs of paint in your mixture, as
this ruins the watercolour effect).
Now you should be ready to start painting! Using brushes of varying sizes, paint
strokes any way you would like your brushes to look in Photoshop. (make sure not to
saturate the brushes too much, as you will lose the “brush stroke” effect. I advise to
use dry brushes, and to wipe them on a paper towel between strokes to maintain the
integrity of the strokes. However, you can also use wet brushes and saturate the
brush completely if you want watercolour effects that don’t look too much like brush
strokes. Use your creativity and imagination – experiment and have fun!
If you want to create splatter effects (a word of warning, doing this can make a BIG
MESS) – just saturate the brush entirely and wave the brush around over your paper
to create splashes. Rather do something like this outside, so you don’t have anything
to clean up. Then you just need to wait for your paper to dry.
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Once your pages have dried, you can now scan them into your computer – in colour
to get the best results for editing in Photoshop. Once you have scanned your
images, open them in Photoshop – this is what mine looks like:
(As you can see, I used a darker colour of paint as it is going to give the best results
– using light colours like yellow won’t work really well).
Now, in the top menu bar, click Image – Mode – Grayscale, and discard the colour
information for the document. Your image should now look something like this:
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Next, we need to adjust the Levels of the image. To do this, you are going to click on
Image in the top menu bar, then Adjustments – Levels. You should see a settings
window pop up. If you click and drag the little arrows below the graph from side to
side, you will see that the image adjusts. I advise that you move the grey arrow
closer to the white arrow (to the right first) and then move the white arrow closer to
the grey arrow (to the left). The Adjustment values that I used for my image are:
Block 1 – black arrow (0); Block 2 – grey arrow (0.45); Block 3 – white arrow (223).
However – you should adjust your settings to give you the best possible result –
what we are doing here is making the brush strokes a bit darker and the background
a bit lighter.
Once you have created this adjustment layer, you need to merge the Levels layer
with your Scanned Image, select both Layers (Ctrl + Left Click on both layers [PC];
Command + Left Click [Mac]), then right click, and in the menu that pops up, click on
Merge Layers. (The Keyboard shortcut for this is Ctrl+ E [PC} or Command + E
[Mac]).
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Once you have done this, you are going to want to “clean up” the image using the
Hard Mechanical Brush (found in your Basic Brushes), by painting over any
imperfections in your brush strokes. This will give you better brush quality when we
save the Brush Presets you have created.
When you have cleaned up the image to your satisfaction, select the Polygonal
Lasso Tool (in the left-side menu) – ensure that it is NOT the Magnetic Lasso Tool,
this will not work for what we are going to do.
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Draw a selection around one of your strokes using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, and
make a Copy of it (Ctrl + J [PC]; Command + J [Mac]). Then draw a selection around
the next brush stroke, click on the Scanned Image (Background) layer in the Layers
palette, and make of Copy of this selection. You are going to have to repeat this
process for each and every brush stroke, remembering to click on the Background
layer in the Layers Palette each time you want to copy a brush stroke.
After you have made copies of all of your brush strokes, hide the original image layer
by clicking on the ‘Eye’ icon next to the layer in the Layers Palette. And you should
see something like this:
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Now we are at the part where we are going to make Photoshop brushes out of your
creation! You are going to need to hide all layers in the palette except the Brush
Stroke that you are saving:
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Once you only have one brush stroke visible, in the top menu bar, click Edit – Define
Brush Preset, and a small menu should pop up that looks like this:
Then give your brush stroke a name, and click OK – you have now saved your first
Photoshop Brush! Continue to do this for all of the brush strokes that you have until
you have saved them all.
Now we are going to save the brushes that you have created as a set, which will
create an ABR file saved to your computer. Click on the Brush icon in the left-side
menu, and then at the top (just below the menu) where you select your brushes, click
on the small gear icon. A pop-up menu will appear, then click on Preset Manager.
A window will appear in which you will be able to see your brushes that looks like the
image below:
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Now you will want to select all of the brushes from this menu that you have just
created, and then click on Save.
Select a File Location on your computer to save this ABR file.
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Now you can select your brushes, change the paint colours and create your own
watercolour paint effects in Photoshop!
I used the brushes I created to do this:
If you want your paint strokes to look like they overlap, in the bar at the top where
you change the brush you are using, you will see that next to it, it has Mode: and a
button that shows Normal - change this to Multiply, and you will achieve the effect
you can see below.
…and VOILA!
You have just created and used your very own Watercolour Brushes in
Photoshop!
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And remember…
“Creativity is contagious, pass it on” – Albert Einstein
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