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Someone asked about a brush of scissors on one of the communities, and it seemed so strange considering objects are the easiest to make. So, I decided to show you how to create an object stamp from a picture, ready to be turned into a brush.
The longest parts of this will be reading the tutorial and finding your object pictures. The brushes take seconds to make. Seriously.
First, you need a stock photo of the object you want. I say stock because usually you can find an object on a whitegound or blackground, which makes the building of your brush tremendously easier. The stock image I found was an illustration, but I was able to make the header for the podslash community from a photo of some headphones.
Second, the stock photo that you need must be big. If you're going to use google images to look for your object, use the advanced search function to only bring up pictures that are 'large.' The reason is that it's easier to work big and then bring down to the size you need, then do all the work and realize the resulting brush is too small and cannot be made bigger without quality loss.
So your first two lessons are to use a large stock photo/illustration with a lot of negative space like an all white or all black background. Got that? Great. Go find yourself a picture.
This is mine.
It's just stupid big. But I like the dramatic show here. You don't need to choose a picture so enormous, but chose something big.
Open your image in your graphics program. I'm using Paint Shop Pro to do this, so your mileage may vary with the steps.
Create a new raster layer above the image, and flood fill it (with the paint bucket tool) with pure back (if you have a whiteground. Fill with pure white if you have an object on a blackground). Once the layer is filled, use the little eye to make the black layer invisible.
Switch your active layer to the stock image, and select your magic wand tool. Click somewhere in the white surrounding the object.
Now switch your active layer back to the black layer, and you'll notice the 'marching ants' outline of your object is still there.
Then under Edit, go to clear and clear out the selected portion. You should immediately see the outline of your eventual brush.
Keep returning to the original image and using the magic wand to select all the negative space. Eventually you will finish with the object you want to make a stamp of, in this case, scissors.
At this point you can merge down, or you can delete the original image, make a new raster layer, fill that raster with the opposite color of the stamp, and then drag it down below the object. But why make your life so much harder, right? Just merge visible or merge down.
You should have one layer with just your object stamp. Still with me, right? Great.
Now PSP has a size limit on brushes that Photoshop doesn't. So if you use PSP, we have to bring the size down now. Crop out as much of the negative space as you can. We do this so the brush is as big as you can make it. You can make the brush smaller when you use it, but making a 100x100 brush into something wallpaper size will create a pixelation.
(Yes, we all love the icon brushes. Yay! But eventually you may want to move to bigger projects like headers, wallpapers, and web sites. Those little icon brushes aren't going to be helpful to you then, hmm? This is why I try to provide 'wallpaper-sized' brushes in my packs. It gives your results a wider appeal.)
When you have the stamp cut down to where you want, go to IMAGE>RESIZE and switch the greater value to 255. That will immediately put your stamp at the size acceptable to PSP's brush creation.
But you aren't done. If you have to use the magnifying glass to force the stamp up to the right size, go ahead. You need to inspect it. Is the brush too blurry or too sharp? Fixable. Ready?
Too blurry: Open up your layers palette and duplicate the layer. Go to EFFECTS>SHARPEN, then sharpen that layer one or two times. It may look over sharp. That's okay. You're going to slide down the opacity on that over sharpened layer until the stamp smoothes out to the perfect edge.
Too sharp: Open up your layers palette and duplicate the layer. Go to EFFECTS>BLUR, then use the AVERAGE BLUR set to filter aperture 3. It may look over blurred. That's okay. You're going to slide down the opacity on that over blurred layer until the stamp smoothes out to the perfect edge.
Once your brush looks right to you. Merge all the layers. This is the stamp you will then turn into a brush.
To turn a stamp into a brush I suggest looking through the memories here, and finding one to help you.
Now, can we stop making brushes out of dingbats and start making brushes out of actual useful objects? There are only so many dingbats available, and there are now duplicate sets being made. Also, fonts are easier used as actual fonts, because they can be resized endlessly without pixelation.
Happy brush making.