Photoshop Elements: Create Dotted Brushes

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Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 6

March 28, 2008

Go a bit dotty with this three-part lesson. In Part 3, we will create some dotted brushes to use as embellishments for your photos. We'll create a round brush, an irregular-shaped brush, and a brush using a custom shape. To create the brushes, we will use one layer with a white background that contains the brush shapes in shades of black and gray.

Part 1: Dotted Frame

Part 2: Dotted Halo Effect

Part 3: Dotted Brushes

Free Dotty Brushes set

 

 

Getting Started

Create a new image and fill the background with white:

  1. From the File menu, select New, and then select Blank File.

  2. In the New dialog box, enter the following dimensions:

  3. Fill the background layer with white.
  4. Click OK.

Create a Round Dotted Brush

To create a round brush:

  1. Using the Elliptical Marquee tool, make a large circular selection.
  2. Fill the selection with black.
  3. From the Selection menu, select Deselect or press Ctrl+D to deactivate the selection. This is important because you must apply the filter to all pixels in the layer.

  4. Apply the Gaussian Blur filter:

    1. From the Filter menu, select Blur, then Gaussian Blur.

    2. In the Gaussian Blur window, enter a radius of 20-50px:

    3. Press OK to apply the filter.

  5. Apply the Color Halftone filter:

    1. From the Filters menu, select Pixelate, then Color Halftone.

    2. In the Color Halftone window, enter a radius of 8px and set all the Channel values to 0. (For different effects, you can change the size of the radius and change the values of the channels. However, to keep the dots a uniform black, all the channel settings should be the same value; for example, 20 for each channel.):

      Color Halftone dialog

    3. Press OK to apply the filter. The image will now look like the following:

  6. From the Edit menu, select Define Brush.
  7. In the Brush Name dialogue, enter a name for the brush and click OK. Your brush will now be available for you to use from the Brush menu.

Create an Irregular-Shaped Brush

To create an irregular-shaped brush, do any of the following:

  • Using the Lasso tool, make a large irregular selection. Then, follow steps 2-7 above (for round brushes).

  • After you have made a selection, filled it with black, and then deselected the area, use filters to distort the black shape. Some of the filters that provide interesting results include:

    • Liquify (Filter -> Distort ->Liquify)
    • Twirl (Filter -> Distort ->Twirl)
    • Wave (Filter -> Distort ->Wave)

    Then, follow steps 4-7 above (for round brushes).

The following example shows an irregular-shaped brush made with the Lasso tool and the Twirl filter:

Swirl halftone brush

Create a Brush from a Custom Shape

To create a brush from a custom shape:

  1. Make sure your foreground color is set to black.
  2. Using the Custom Shape tool, create a large custom shape and fill it with black. The vector shape is created on its own layer above the background layer.
  3. In the Custom Shapes toolbar, click Simplify to rasterize the layer.
  4. Press Ctrl+E to merge with the white layer below.
  5. Then, follow steps 4-7 above (for round brushes).

The following example shows a custom shape brush made with a hand shape:

Hand halftone brush

Related

Part 1: Dotted Frame
Part 2: Dotted Halo Effect
Free Dotty Brushes set

Updated on May 24, 2008