Creating and managing brush tip presets

Most of the brushes you use in Photoshop derive from a single greyscale image. White regions of the source image become transparent, while darker shades of grey become brush marks that you can change the color of as required.

Creating a custom bird brush

Following are the steps for creating a custom bird brush:

1. Go to File → Open and browse to the 10-Brushes folder. Select Flock.jpg and then click Open. The image contains a flock of birds.
2. Right-click on the Background layer under Layers and choose Convert to Smart Object from the list of options. Rename the layer to Source.
3. Then go to Image → Adjustments Levels. Set the Shadow Input value to 14 and the Highlight Input to 230. This will turn the background into a bright white. Click OK when done.

Figure 10.1: Removing any background details to prevent them appearing in the brush tip

4. Switch to the Rectangular Marquee tool from...