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Pagesoftheheart.net Paint Shop Pro by JASC It is very easy and rewarding to create a brush from a special photo! PSP 9 is very similar to PSP8, and the instructions can be used for both. Brushes can be created from most any image in many shapes and with many Variances. We are going to use flowers as an example here. Starting with a photo, the background must be removed. Promote the image to a Raster Layer. Remove the background either with the Lasso tool to choose the areas to be deleted, the Eraser Tool to erase the background, or the Background Eraser tool, which if used on the edge of the image, will remove the background around it. Erase the background completely. The edges can be left a little bit variable as it will all be one colour when you are finished. If the image to be used is left as a color image as we see here, the brush will be monochromatic but will have a lot of greys, as the photo image has many hues and shades. It can be made to black and white, which will give the same result. I save this image as a .png file so that if I need to I can get back to this point easily. Once the background has been completely erased, the image can be resized to 500 pixels, and made into a brush. Brushes can only be created at 500 pixels or less. Under the Image Menu we choose Resize, and change to 500 pixels. Choose the Brush Tool from the Tools Toolbar. There is a symbol at the bottom of the Brush menu for Create Brush Tip from Selection. Click on this button and an area will open to ask you to name your brush and set variances. Do this. I am generally not too fussy with my variances as they can be easily changed once you choose this image as a brush. Ok this step and check to see that your brush has been placed in the Brush menu. The brush can be used now. There are different ways to use this image, using the different Variances for each. Variances are the characteristics placed on the brush when you are going to use it. These include colours, rotation, opacity, size, density, jitter, and number of impressions. Other characteristics you can change are steps, hardness, and size. If you want to use the Brush as an image in one spot, you set the variances all at 0, the jitter(amount of scatter) at 0, and set number of impressions per step at 10. Open a new image with a pleasing background, choose a colour for your image, and “stamp” it on the background. This brush can be used with some rotation, jitter, and more impressions to create a background. As well, using some colour variation on layers, size variation, blending and opacity variations, some amazing brushed backgrounds can be created! If a different look is desired, some effects can be used to define the image differently. To make a line image that resembles a stamp, we use different preparation techniques. Again starting with an image, the background must be deleted as above. Once the background is gone, I enhance the edges using the effect under the Effects Menu/Edge Effects. I then coloured the edges using the effect under Effects/Artistic Effects/Colour Edges. I just want the edges to really stand out. There are lots of ways to do this; this is just one way. Next I changed the image to a Black Pencil using the Effects/Art Media Effects/Black Pencil effect. This could be used as the brush, but I went a step further, and choose to delete the white in an attempt to make it more stamp-like and less dimensional. I used the magic Wand to select the White areas, and deleted them. This leaves a very clean .png file to save and make into a brush as previously described. This image can be used as the first, but has a very different look. A background can nicely be created with this Brush but also as it has a stamped look, it really looks nice used as a stamp on a layout, in many colours or sizes. This is a small set of examples but the basic principles of creating a custom brush in PSP have been covered, and experimentation will teach one what works well!
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