When you think of creating custom brushes in Adobe Photoshop, you usually think of creating basic shapes and paths with the pen tool and then creating a brush from those shapes. But we can also use photos and convert them into brushes as well for unique designs in web sites and print designs. They also can make aesthetically-pleasing backgrounds.

Preview of Final Results

Create Custom Photo Brushes Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Open Photoshop and open a photo to use as a brush. It should be something that would work in a pattern, where the content of the photo is obvious as various sizes. I'm using this "blue angel wing" I found on iStockPhoto. IT should be relatively large, perhaps 1000 pixels for both width and height. If you create a brush at a small size, setting the brush to a larger size than originally created will cause it to lose resolution. But making it smaller is no problem, just like resizing a photo.

© ISTOCKPHOTO/DON WILKIE

Optional: You can download this file to use at http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=130023 or use a similar one.

Step 2

To first define a brush, we need to select the area. Click the Rectangular Marquee tool on the toolbar.

Step 3

Click-and-drag a selection around the photo. We don't need to remove the white pixels first because they will be transparent in a brush.

Step 4

Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset.