Custom Brushes

by Claudia Watkins

Often you see a nice image that you would like to use in your layout.
It is easy to make a brush out of it and that is what we will be doing here.
Open your image. This is the one I will use.

If your image is in jpeg it will certainly be locked and you will need to change the background layer to layer. Right click on the background layer in the Layer Palette and click on Layer from Background.

Now you need to get rid of the white background. Extract the image using the Magic Wand or if your image has too many parts like mine go to Selection > Color Range and using the eye dropper select the color you want to get rid of, click OK and you will have all the whites selected

. Hit delete and it is gone.

Ctrl click on the little image in the Layer palette and the image will be selected.

Open Edit menu and click on Define Brush Preset.

A small window will appear, give a name to your brush and click OK.

And that is it…. Now you just have to look for your brush in the Brush Palette and use it….