Using Photoshop Brushes

So you’ve downloaded some brushes and you want to use them! Well let’s get you started! We’ll use some brushes to add a frame on top of your photo. First you need to get the brushes at this website to do the same thing: http://missm.paperlilies.com/01_brushes.html

We are going to use the dusty corners set. So download it and load it up. (If you need help with that, check out the article “Loading Photoshop Brushes”)

First I’ll tell you a bit about brushes and how they work.

1. All brushes have a pre setting of size. They can range from tiny little ones (like 2 or 3) all the way to 1000+. (That is how many pixels big they are.) You can change the size all you want. That is one of the beauties of using brushes!
2. You can adjust the opacity of your brush. The picture below shows the difference between the opacities. The lower the number the more faded the image is.
3. The longer you hold down the mouse the stronger the image will be.

With all that in mind, let’s add a “dusty corner!”

Open any picture you want. I am using one of the mountains and water.

Select the brush tool from the tools menu. (It looks like a paint brush.)

After you have that selected, along the top you will see your brush options. (see above). Beside the word brush is a picture with a number. That is the brush currently selected. Click on the little arrow and a drop down box will appear. It will show you all your brushes. Scroll down and pick one of the dust corners. (It will be at the bottom since you just installed it.)

Add a new layer. (Under layer along the top menu choose new and then layer.) You don’t have to do it on a new layer, but be are doing this in case you don’t like what it looks like.

On the side of the tool menu, at the bottom, are two boxes of color. The top color will be the color of your brush. (To change it, double click on the top colored box and pick a new color.) On my example, I used a brown color that I picked out of my picture.

Use your mouse to click anywhere on your picture. Since this is a dusty corner brush, try the corner.

I used different opacity levels on each corner to show the difference inthe picture above. Top left corner was 80% opacity. Top Right corner was 45% opacity.

Bottom left corner was 100% opacity. Bottom right corner was 10% opacity.

You can layer them, add them on top of each other with different colors. And if you don’t like what you did, you can just delete that layer and try again.

There is lots of variation in the brushes available. You could add butterflies or words or whatever you wanted. The picture above shows my picture with various brushes applied to the top. I used various brushes to make the picture look older. Kinda fun eh? I’d love to see what you can create with some brushes.