Here’s a quick tutorial on how to create a custom brush in Photoshop. I’m using PS CS3, but the information should work for all versions of Photoshop back to CS. Let’s get started…

Step 1: Choose an image you’d like to use as a brush. You can use any image really, I chose one of layers of wallpaper and paint that I took. I liked the texture in the photo, and thought it might be a worthwhile brush. You could also draw an image in Photoshop or type out a word - anything will work really.

Step 2: I used Filter>Unsharp Mask to sharpen the photo. This step isn’t really necessary, I just noticed the photo was a little blurry, so I decided to sharpen it. You can see my settings here, but when using the Unsharp Mask, I just move the sliders to the right until the image seems oversharpened and then back them off a little.

Step 3: Convert the image to greyscale. I used Image>Mode>Greyscale, but you could also use Image>Adjustments>Desaturate (Keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+U). This step helps you see how your brush will render color once you turn it into a brush. The darker the part of the image, the more opaque the color will be. More on this later…

Step 4: Create an adjustment layer. Again this step is not necessary, but can be helpful if you want to push the levels of black, gray, or white in your image. I chose the levels adjustment layer to increase the contrast of the image, but you could just as easily use channels, brightness and contrast, etc. Adjustment layers are located at the bottom of the layers panel with the two half circle icons.

Step 5: Flatten the image. If you’ve created an adjustment layer, or are just using an image with multiple layers, you’ll need to flatten it before you can turn it into a brush.

Step 6: Select All. Select>Select all or Cmd/Ctrl+A. Then choose Edit>Define Brush Preset. It will ask you to give it a name, so do that and click Ok. Brush created.

So again here is the final. If you notice on the image, there are areas of color that are completely opaque and some that are translucent. The more black the area of the image the more opaque the color. I put some of these brushes on different layers and played with some layer blending modes. Have fun with your new brushes.

One last word of warning… your new brushes, like images, will scale down in size just fine (you can adjust your brush size with the bracket keys ([ and], left bracket makes your brush smaller; the right makes it larger)) but if you make the size of your brush much larger you will begin to lose quality like in an image.