Creating Brushes

This lesson we learnt how to make our own brushes in photoshop.

First, we had to choose an image to work with, in my case I chose the butterfly you see above.  Then I had to use the selection tool to select the area around the butterfly. Because my image was too big, I had to size it down. But, once I'd done that I could go to Edit and Define Brush Preset and name it Butterfly Brush. Then, I went to the brush tool and selected my new brush from the pull down menu. Once that was done I could adjust the spacing, shape dynamics, size jitter and angle jitter for my brush, plus alter the hue jitter. Here is my finished result:

I also created a brush from Building Blocks:

And one final brush using an image of my favourite Fate/Stay Night character:

Wood Grain Pattern

This week we learnt how to create a Wood Grain Patterned image in Photoshop.

The first step was to draw an image with duel lines, so it was almost in a stencil fashion. We could go over the lines with a fine liner to darken them if we wanted. Then, we scanned the image in and opened it in Photoshop. If need be, we could use the Levels and Curves tools to adjust the light and dark within the image. Then, we used the bucket tool to fill in where colour was needed.
The next step was to find an image of wood grain and save it. Then we had to desaturate the image by going to Image, Adjustments and then finally Desaturate. Next, I changed the background on Photoshop to a new layer and placed the wood grain layer beneath this layer.
Then I changed the layer's properties to Linear Burn and this was the final result.