MAKING CUSTOM BRUSHES

Paint Shop Pro Tutorials by Karen

The paint brush tool in PSP can be used for more than just "painting and drawing"... it can also be used as a digital "rubber stamp" using any picture you want !. Making and using custom brushes is surprisingly easy, here I will show you how I do it.

Before we begin, the maximum size for brushes is 255 x 255 pixels, so as long as you keep your picture or canvas below this you will be fine, also, tubes or transparent images work best !. First, open your picture or start a new image as fig 1.

If you are making a new image like I am, add your tube or paste a transparent gif to your canvas (fig 2)

Now we need to make it black & white as this works best for brushes, so go colours / grey scale (fig 3)

Next go selections / select all, click on your paint brush icon then right click it and choose tool options. On the box that comes up click on the custom brush icon (marked * on fig 4)

Another box will come up, click on "custom" (fig 5) then "create" on the next box (fig 6)

Scroll down to find your picture then click ok (fig 7)

Now you have to find your brush in psp because it won`t have been saved yet! go file / open... find your psp brushes folder and open it (fig 8)

Your brush will be listed as "UBrush"... right click on this and rename it, make sure you add the file extention .jbr after the name or your brush won`t work. Close the file... now you have made your own custom brush!!!...

USING YOUR BRUSH

To use your brush, open the image you want to add it to or start a new one, (size and transparency are not important now.) Click on the paintbrush tool, right click it and choose tool options, then click the custom brush icon and choose custom as before. Scroll down to find your brush and click ok. You can close all the dialogue boxes now. Go to your styles pallette and choose a solid colour , pattern fill or gradient for your brush then click on your image/canvas to "rubber stamp" your brush (fig 9)

That`s all there is to it... easy wasn`t it?!!!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial which was written for psp 7 but should adapt for other versions.

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