Create Eye-popping Graphics with Photoshop Brushes

The Photoshop brush tool can do a whole lot more than make fuzzy-edged shapes. In this article, you'll learn how to use the Photoshop Brushes palette to create some awesome graphic effects to use on your web sites. We'll also cover how to expand your brush options even more by loading other people's brushes and even making your own!

Mimicking Nature

Let's take a look at how we can use Photoshop to create a beautiful scattering of leaves. If you have yet to experiment with Photoshop brushes, you might be thinking that we'll be creating these leaves individually -- rotating them, squishing, coloring, and otherwise transforming them, until they're perfectly and uniquely arranged.

Not so! With the power of Photoshop brushes, creating an effect similar to this can take you minutes, rather than hours!

In Photoshop, select the Brush tool (B). From the Options bar, click the little arrow next to the brush to display all of the available brushes. Look for the leaf brush, circled in red below.

If you don't see it (the leaf brush should be available in Photoshop CS2 and above), you may need to reset your brushes. The flyout box -- called the Brush Preset picker -- has another small arrow; click this to reveal the brush options and then choose Reset Brushes.

By itself, the brush draws a leaf shape when you click once on your image canvas. If you click and drag, however, you get a line of leaves, like the one shown below. How closely they are spaced depends on how quickly you move your mouse.

Open up the Brushes palette and start playing with the options. Here are some things you can try.

Under Brush Tip Shape, make sure the Spacing checkbox is checked, and move the slider to about 80%.

Next, click on Shape Dynamics. For all of the jitter-related settings (Size Jitter, Angle Jitter, and Roundness Jitter), drag the sliders to 100%. Also check the Flip X Jitter and Flip Y Jitter checkboxes. You can see how this might affect the brush in the preview box.

Now click on Scattering, and increase the Scatter amount, checking the Both Axes checkbox while you're at it. This setting determines how far away from the brush stroke the leaves might end up -- I've set mine to around 300%. If you like, you can also increase the Count, which affects how many leaves appear, and the Count Jitter, which will randomize the number of leaves.

The next set of parameters that we'll modify affect the color dynamics of our brush. Click the Color Dynamics check box; this page allows you to control the color of the leaves and provide some variation between each shape. I've increased the Hue and Saturation Jitter amounts just slightly. Unfortunately, the Photoshop preview feature doesn't show these color jitter effects, but you can always come back to this window and adjust the settings should you wish to increase or decrease the color variation.

If you want, you can also try changing the Other Dynamics settings to vary the opacity and flow. For this example, I want my leaves to be solid, so I haven't tweaked any of these settings.

Now you're ready to test out the brush! In the figure below, I've shown the rough path that I'm going to follow with the brush tool in the top window. The bottom window shows the results of following this path with our new brush:

At this point, you can go back to the Brushes palette and adjust the different settings, including the size of the brush, to try out different effects. Each time you use the brush you'll get slightly different results, but as you play with the palette, you'll find a combination that you like.

Photoshop comes with other built-in brushes that provide similar effects. Click on the arrow in the Brush Preset picker as if you were resetting the brush, and you'll see a list of the other available brush libraries. Under the Assorted Brushes option, try the snowflake or star brushes. Under the list of Special Effect brushes, you'll find some floral shapes, a butterfly shape, and even a rubber duck!