Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this video, I'm going to show you how you can create Brush Presets by using elements
from photographs.
We'll start with this image of clouds in the sky, and we'll select this cloud here to create
a brush.
That brush will help us simulate the effect of fog or smoke.
Okay, let's get started.
We're going to use this image here that contains clouds.
If you want to follow along, you can download this image from my website.
There is a link to it right below in the description.
So, the first thing that we need to do is look at the element that we're going to use
to create our brush.
And I'm really liking this cloud right here, so I'm going to go ahead and select that by
clicking on the Lasso Tool, and just make a selection around that cloud, like so.
Then, I'm going to press Ctrl C, that's Command C on the Mac, to Copy, and I'm going to put
this in a new document.
So I'm going to File, New, then press OK.
Then, press Ctrl V, Command V on the Mac, to Paste.
Now we're going to use the Channels panel to extract the cloud from the background.
So I already know that I want the cloud, of course, so that's going to be in white and
the cloud is already white, and everything else needs to be black.
So what I'm going to do to help me out a little bit is I'm just going to create a new black
solid, click and drag that to the bottom, then go into the Channels panel, and now we
can work with the channels.
Look for the channel that's got the most contrast between the clouds and the sky.
In this case, it's going to be the red channel.
I'm going to click and drag that channel over to the New Channel icon to duplicate it and
in the red copy, we're going to make some adjustments.
I'm going to go into Image, Adjustments, Levels, and I'm going to use these sliders to remove
anything that is part of the sky and just keep the clouds.
Then I'm going to press OK.
I'm going to press Ctrl, Command, and click on the Channel thumbnail, which is going to
load the bright pixels, in this case, the clouds.
Then, I'm going to go back to the Layers panel.
I'm going to create a new layer and I'm going to fill the new layer with black.
Black is our foreground color, so I'm going to hold Alt and Backspace, that's Option and
Backspace on the Mac.
With the selection still active, I'm just going to go into Image and Crop, then, I'm
going to go into Edit, Define Brush Preset and I can call this brush whatever I like,
so I'm just going to call it clouds, and press OK.
Now, I'm going to press B on the keyboard to go into my Brush Tool, and notice that,
automatically, Photoshop selects that brush that we've just created.
I'm going to go and work on this document that I had created just before we started
this; simply, a document with a black background and an empty layer.
If I paint in with white using the brush tool and the Brush Preset we just created, we get
this result.
Obviously, that doesn't look like clouds, but we can work with the Brush panel by clicking
on this icon here and making some adjustments.
First, we're going to create on Shape Dynamics and we're going to adjust the Size Jitter.
This randomizes the size of the brush as we paint.
We're also going to adjust the Angle Jitter, so the angle is different as we paint, like
so.
Then we're going to add a little bit of scattering.
So just separate it just a little bit.
And I'm going to undo those paint strokes just so we can have a little more room to
continue painting.
Then I'm going to click on Transfer and adjust the Opacity Jitter and use pen pressure to
control the jitter.
Now, if you don't have a Wacom Tablet, that's okay, just set it to Normal, but you won't
have the advantage of painting lightly and just getting very faint clouds, or if you
push hard on the tablet and paint, you'll get those brighter clouds.
This is looking pretty good.
It's already looking a lot like clouds and smoke, or smog, which is what we're going
for.
So that's how you would create the brush.
Now you can, obviously, make more changes if you wanted to adjust the brush by adjusting
the Size Jitter or any of the other controls, but I think these are the ones you're going
to find most useful.
I'm also going to increase the Flow Jitter just a little bit as well, and I think that
will give us a much nicer result.
Yeah, and I think it does.
Notice how it looks more 3-dimensional now than the one we did here earlier, and I think
this is looking pretty good.
Now I'm going to show you how to apply it to an image.
In this case it's a composite.
This is something that I did just for fun.
You probably saw it in my Behance account.
Behance.net/JRfromPTC.
I actually have an animated gif that shows how this was created.
But anyway, you can sort of see some mist and fog here on the beach and in the water
here next to the boat.
So that was created using a similar brush to what I just showed you how to create.
So, again, just to show you, I can start painting lightly here and add just a little more fog
into this scene.
And if I push harder, the opacity increases, but I don't think I need to do that in this
case.
I can sort of build on it and that looks a little more realistic.
So this is what we had before and this is after.
Now here's one little trick.
If you're painting with a brush like this using white, but you want the fog to take
a specific color so it fits better within the scene, you can create a new Hue and Saturation
Adjustment Layer.
Clip it by clicking on this icon here or pressing Ctrl Alt G, Command Option G on the Mac, and
clicking on Colorize and selecting the color that you want to use, in this case, maybe
a blue color.
Increase the Saturation and Decrease the Brightness.
Notice how, now, that fog has color.
So, I'll choose a different color just so you can see an orange color.
And a color like this will be very useful if you're trying to simulate a dusk cloud
or something like that.
And as you can see, it's very easy to create these brushes.
All you need to do is find the right element from your photograph, select it, mask it out,
and define it as a Brush Preset.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
If you have any comments or questions, leave them down below.
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Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.