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lyllye1
lyllye1
Participating Frequently
August 26, 2022
Question

Can you create a brush from an image?

  • August 26, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 3785 views

About a year ago I updated my photoshop elements.  I had a long hiatus before that and I lost some of the skills I had learned.  I am pretty sure that I remember using an image to create a new brush.  When it was done you could use the brush kind of like a stamp to add over other papers or images.  For the life of me I cannot find the instructions on how to do that.  Can someone help me out?

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2 replies

Greg_S.
Community Expert
Greg_S.Community Expert
Community Expert
August 27, 2022

Do you want to make a brush out of the entire photo or just a selected portion of the image?

First make sure that the foreground/background colors are the default black and white.

In the following example, I have selected the flagstick in the photo to turn into a brush.  After making the selection, choose Edit>Define Brush from Selection.  Give the brush a name and the brush will become available in the default brushes.  If you want the whole photo available as a brush, you can simply choose Edit>Define Brush.

 

 

    lyllye1
    lyllye1Author
    Participating Frequently
    August 27, 2022

    actually I would like to create a folder just for brushes that I make and being able to do them from a whole image or even a part of an image would be great to know.  Being able to do that was one of my favorite parts of Photoshop elemenes.

    Walter_H
    Walter_H
    Legend
    August 27, 2022

    You CAN create a folder for your own custom brushes. If you have a Windows PC, navigate to "C:\Users\[user-name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\20.0\Presets\Brushes" and create a subfolder there. This location is for PSE 2022. I named mine Custom Brushes. I then copied a small brush file into it and renamed it "MyBrushes.abr". I then deleted all but one of the brushes in it and use that to hold all of my custom brushes. When I want to create a new custom brush, I make sure this is the active brush set first, and then the new brush gets added to it.

     

    You could do this on a Mac but I don't know what the location would be.

    --Walter in Davie, FL
      Peru Bob
      Community Expert
      Peru BobCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 27, 2022

      Scroll down to:

      Create a custom brush shape from an image

      here:

      https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/setting-brushes.html

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