Accessing Custom Brushes
Image 1.
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Image 2.
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Image 3.
Note: The other options you see below
"Normal" and "Custom" are basically presets for normal brush tips. They
simulate paintbrush, pen, pencil, etc. by setting hardness, opacity and
density to specific numbers. |
You should now have the Custom Brush dialogue box on your screen. Click on
the arrow to the right of the preview window (Image 4 below) to open the
flyout window (Image 5 below). The flyout window will show you a thumbnail
image of all the custom brushes that are currently loaded. Note that as your
mouse hovers over a thumbnail, a 'tool tip' message will pop up telling you
the path and the name of the file that contains that particular brush tip (I
guess I should point out that a brush file can have any number of brush tips
in it). Very useful, especially if you plan to redistribute your own custom
brushes or need to identify which brush file holds a specific brush tip.
Image 4. Custom Brush dialogue box
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Image 5.
Flyout window with thumbnails
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Organizing Custom Brushes
Before we create any new brushes, it's important to know how to manage
your brush files. Open Windows Explorer (Start | Programs | Windows
Explorer, or hold down the Windows button and press the letter 'e'), and
navigate to your PaintShop Pro Brushes folder (the default for PSP 7 is
C:\Program Files\Jasc Software Inc\Paint Shop Pro 7\Brushes). Create a new
sub-folder in the Brushes folder (File | New | Folder) - doesn't matter
what you call it. As you can see at right (Image 6), I also have two other
brushes folders, both with subfolders under them. If you start collecting
lots of custom brushes (be careful, they're addicting!), it helps to
organize them by category or maker or something.
PSP 7 added some excellent options for managing the files it uses -
brushes, filters, patterns, presets, textures, etc. Below you'll see the
File Locations dialogue box with the Brushes tab active (Image 7). This
can be accessed a couple of ways in PSP - either File | Preferences | File
Locations and choose the Brushes tab, or by clicking the "Edit Paths"
button on the Custom Brush dialogue box (as mentioned in the "Accessing"
section above).
Use this dialog box to set the paths and folders where Paint Shop Pro
searches for brushes, patterns, textures, etc. you have created and
saved. |
Image 6. Brush folders in Windows
Explorer
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When you installed Paint Shop Pro, the program created some default folders
for the objects included with the program. The first text box of each tab
displays this path and folder. If you want to store objects in additional
folders, you can add them using the Browse button. Under each folder path,
select the check boxes of any of the following options you want to use:
- Select Enable this path to make the path active in Paint Shop Pro.
- Select Use sub folders to have Paint Shop Pro search for files in any
folders within this folder.
- Select Save to path to make the path the default path for saving files.
You can select only one default path for each tab (file type).
Image 7. File Locations dialogue box
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As you can see in the screen shot above (Image 7), you can choose up to 3
folders for each type of file - but you can have an unlimited number of
subfolders, and choose whether or not you want PSP to load the items in the
subfolders. If you have a lot of brushes (or tubes or patterns or whatever),
you really don't want PSP to load all of them all the time - it would use up
too much cache and make PSP run slower, as well as making it harder for you to
sort through all of your brushes to find the one you want.
Pay attention to which folder you choose as the "Save to path" folder. PSP
will save your new brushes in this folder as a file called UBrush.jbr. When I
have all the brush tips created that I want in that set, I go to my "Save to
path" folder in Windows Explorer and rename the UBrush.jbr file to whatever...
something that describes those brush tips, like jenr_inkylines1.jbr. That way
when I go to make more brushes, I know they're being written to their own .jbr
file - not being added to an existing one (if you already have a UBrush.jbr
file in your "Save to path" folder, any new brushes will be added to
that file).
You can add new brush tips to an existing brush file. You just need to
rename that file "UBrush.jbr" and put it in your "Save to path" folder.
Obviously, if you already have a UBrush.jbr file there, you'll need to rename
it something else first.
If you want to reorganize your brush tips into a new .jbr file,
unfortunately the only way to do it is by actually creating the brushes again.
What I do: open a new, large image with a white or transparent background.
Grab your paintbrush tool, set opacity to 100, foreground color to black, and
stamp once each custom brush that you want to include in the new brush set.
Make sure you don't have a UBrush.jbr file in your "Save to path" folder so
you know you're starting fresh, and follow the directions below until you've
created all the brushes you want in that set. Then rename your new UBrush.jbr
file. It's also not a bad idea to save the image that has each brush tip on it
as kind of an 'index' to that brush file.
Time to get creative! Let's make a custom
brush.
The basics: a custom brush can be created from any selection up to 255 x
255 pixels on a single raster layer (this is one place where Photoshop
definitely has the advantage over PSP - to the best of my knowledge, there's
no size limit on custom brushes in Photoshop).
Open a new image, any size up to 255 x 255 pixels (I'm using 100 x 70),
white background. The custom brush I use the most is my signature brush - the
one I use to 'sign' my collages and manipulated images. So that's what we're
going to make. I want mine to say "Manipulated by xan," so I'm going to pick
out 2 fonts to use - one simple one for the "Manipulated by" and one artsy or
script one for the "xan." I could get into all sorts of stuff about
typography and how to pick 2 different fonts that will look good together, but
I won't. I don't actually have any formal training in graphic design or
typography anyway. ::grin:: Set your background color to black (background =
fill for text and vector objects), and your foreground color to null
(foreground = stroke or 'outline'). I chose ALS Script at size 26 with Leading set to -1
for the "Manipulated by," and dearJoe at size 36 for the "xan." Here's what I
ended up with:
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Once you've got your image looking the way you want it, merge the
visible layers (Layers | Merge | Merge Visible) so that you're working
with a single raster layer. Go to Selections | Select All, or if you only
want to make part of your image into a brush, use one of the selection
tools to select that particular part. Now click on your paintbrush tool
(or any of the tools that use custom brushes), click on the brush types
button (as shown in Image 2 above), then click "Custom" (as shown in Image
3 above). |
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When the Custom Brush dialogue box comes up, click "Create." (If the
"Create" button is disabled/grayed out, that means you don't have an
active selection in your image.) Your new brush tip should appear in the
preview window. Click OK, and your new brush should be active and ready to
paint with. If you check-marked "Show brush outlines" back at the
beginning of this tutorial (see image 1), you'll now see the outline of
your new brush as part of your cursor. |
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Distributing Your Custom
Brushes
So you made some really cool brushes, and now you want to share them -
great idea! This part is pretty easy - provided you've actually paid attention
to the rest of the information on this page.
The most important thing to remember is that each new brush tip you create
is going to go into the same UBrush.jbr file until you go and rename that file
and start fresh. So think about what brushes you'd like to have grouped
together in one brush file ahead of time. Now, to make sure you're starting
fresh, check and make sure there isn't a UBrush.jbr file in your "save to
path" folder. If there is one there, rename it or move it somewhere else.
Now create all the brushes you want to include in that set, and when you're
done, rename the new UBrush.jbr file to something descriptive of the brushes
and PLEASE include your name or your website's name in the file name! I can't
stress that enough. If you want people to give you credit for your brushes,
they have to be able to figure out who's brush it is they just used. So name
it something like grungytextures_xan.jbr or whatever makes sense to you. Now
all you have to do is .zip the brush file with WinZip or some other
compression program (some web hosts will only let you upload file formats they
recognize, such as .zip files, and most don't know what a .jbr file is),
upload it to your site, and tell people about it!
*1:Step controls the spacing of the discrete drops of paint, or how
frequently the brush tip touches the image during a stroke. This is the same as
Spacing in Photoshop.
*2:Leading (pronounced léding, not leeding - think of the metal lead)
refers to the amount of space between lines of text. I wanted the "by" to be a
little bit closer to the "Manipulated," so I set it to a negative number (-1, in
this case). You also have the option of changing the Kerning. This refers to the
amount of space between each letter. In very simplified terms, you can think of
leading as vertical space and kerning as horizontal space in relation to text
and letters.
Have You noticed whenever you try installing a lot of brushes
PSP starts to freeze and then errors and whenever you re-open it
You can't use the paint brush for anything!
The problem stems from trying to install a .abr file through the brush tool.
Simply go to your brush folder and sort by file and delete the .abr files.
Then reload your Paintshop Pro.
This usually takes care of any and all errors.
PsP7-Brushes
Kajira-Dreams-WebGraphics
Kajira-Dreams 
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