Maglot

LEARNING THE PHOTOSHOP WORKSPACE

Brushes

This is the Brushes palette. You can use this to tinker around with the way your brushes work, OR you can make your very own brushes, which I'll show you how to do here. There isn't really that much to the brushes palette, you can pretty much move the sliders around and see their effects instantly in the preview window at the bottom. You can't really mess anything up by changing stuff, so feel free to experement and try new things.

The only thing I should make note of is that some sections have the option "Control", which if you click on the drop down menu, you'll see other options for Fade, Pen Pressure, Pen Tilt, and Stylus Wheel. These options are used ONLY if you have a Graphire Tablet. Check out www.wacom.com to learn more.

On a side note, you'll notice I don't actually cover the File Browser, as it is basically just Windows Explorer built into Photoshop.

Making Your Own Brushes

Making your own custom brushes is easy! First off, start a new document and then paint what you want the brush to look like. I've made a sample one here. I painted a few dots here and there and then used the Motion Blur filter on it to make it streaked.

Next, select the Marquee tool (or press M on your keyboard) and then drag a selection around your brush. Make sure to get very close to the edges.

Now go to Edit - Define Brush. You will then be asked to name your brush, as seen in the picture. Name your brush whatever you like and then press OK. It will seem like nothing happened, but your brush HAS been created. Let's test it out!

First things first, you'll want to deselect your selection. You can either press CTRL + D or go to Select - Deselect. Now press B to select the Brush tool, or just go click it on the Toolbox. Now you can right-click anywhere on your picture and the Brush menu will appear. Scroll all the way to the bottom of that menu and your brush is there after all! Try painting with it and see how it turned out.