Using and Making Custom Brushes in Paint Shop Pro 7
Please note that I am no longer answering
questions about Paint Shop Pro or custom brushes in general. Only questions regarding my brushes - that aren't already
answered in the FAQ and this tutorial - will be answered. You can email me
here.
This tutorial is written specifically for Paint Shop Pro version 7. You can make custom brushes in
PSP versions 5 and 6 also, and most of the instructions below will work in those versions too, but not all. If you're using
version 5 or 6 and need some help, feel free to drop me a note.
I'll do my best to answer your questions, or I can direct you to other tutorials based on those versions.
For those of you who are new to Paint Shop Pro, I thought it might be helpful to explain how to
access your custom brushes for use. Click on any tool that accesses the brush types button on the Tool Options palette - see list at right -->
Custom brushes can be used with several tools - not just the paintbrush!
Now go to your Tool Options palette, and click on the second tab at the top - the Cursor & Tablet Options tab (Image 1 below).
Make sure you have "Show brush outlines" checked. I like to have "Use precise cursors" active too, but that's more of a personal preference.
Go back to your main Tool Options tab and click on the brush types button (Image 2 below), and then click "Custom" (Image 3 below).
The tools that can access and use custom brushes are: paintbrush tool clone tool color replacer tool retouch tool eraser air brush
Image 1.
Image 2.
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.
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
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
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.
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).
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).
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.
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. ::grin:: I'd seriously recommend reading the
"Organizing" part again - especially the last three paragraphs.
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_jenr.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!
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. See Vered's site for a
good explanation and demonstration of this (click on Brush Tutorials, and then on Tip Batch #2). ^ back to Accessing ^
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. ^ back to Making ^
paintbrush tool
clone tool
color replacer tool
retouch tool
eraser
air brush
