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I remember a time when using stock photography was shunned by designers (especially in the old advertising world). This is how things were when I first started design school. My dad had been in the ad business for about 15 years at that time and his art director would rant on about how stock photography and illustration were going to ruin the business. I can see where he was coming from, but I don’t think it was the demise of the traditional photography business. It has opened up the opportunity for photographers to sell their work in a way that could possibly be lucrative. It has also given small businesses who can’t afford a huge, expensive photo shoots access to nice, affordable images. Being a designer, I have found stock to be useful as well. Of course, the obvious disadvantage to using stock is that the same images can be seen all over the place. You lose originality and it is certainly difficult to find an image that suits your need. I could go on and on about the disadvantages and I constantly struggle to decide if I think the growing stock industry weighs more on the good or bad side. 

An-y-way, what got me thinking about this whole stock photo thing was one of the latest promos I received from Veer. I am on the list for many of these waste-of-a-good-tree direct mail pieces from stock companies and usually toss them directly in my trash (I mean recycle) bin. Not with Veer, though. I love these. I keep them all. I can’t say that I am waiting around for the next promo to come in the mail, but when I pick them out of my mailbox I am always very excited to see what the creatives at Veer have come up with this time. The design is great, the concepts continue to be fresh and clever. I find it quite inspiring. I think this also translates into the photography they make available. In my opinion they have some exciting stock from interesting points of view (except when you search the term “dork”. try it, it is pretty stupid and stereotypical, but some nice artsy shots also pepper the page.) If you must know why I searched the word “dork”, it is because I am totally and completely annoyed by the conversation that these people are having at the table next to me. I guess I was hoping that a photo of them would show up in my search. 

Okay, back to Veer…I guess what I am saying is that as far as stock photography goes, they have done a good job rising above the clutter. Their site also hosts great fonts that I lust over, cool merch for design dorks, interviews with people in the related industry, desktop wallpaper worth downloading and much more—all within a nicely designed, easy to navigate website.

Basics 
This tutorial will show how to create a textured Photoshop brush using Photoshop CS3. Texture and grunge brushes are great resources to have if you want to add aging effects to your work. Making your own set guarantees your design will have it’s own unique style.

This tutorial will be done using Photoshop CS3. Although all versions can make brushes, there are rules for sharing them between versions. Unfortunately no brush sets are backwards compatible.

Getting Started 
Before we begin you need to decide just what type of brush you would like to make. This tutorial was meant to provide all the information and techniques to create rough style brushes, but you will most likely learn enough by following these steps to create most types.

We will be starting out with a high resolution photo of a rough texture. We will take steps to alter the photo into a usable grunge style brush that can be used thousands of times in the future to enhance the look of your designs. In Photoshop we will have already created a separate layer for your texture, and a layer containing a white background.

Color and Contrast  
Since Photoshop brushes are made in black and white, we can immediately desaturate our image. To do this press Command+Shift+U.

Next we need to adjust the levels to gain the contrast needed for a good grunge style brush. To do so press Command+L to open the levels window and adjust them accordingly. You will want to gain a high level of contrast without loosing all of the images details.

Curves and Cutting  
Our next step is to adjust the curves to further raise the contrast without loosing the textures detail. Press Command+M to bring up the curves dialog box. From here, you simply need to adjust the curves while watching your texture to reach the best possible level of contrast.

Now we need to decide what shape, or structure the brush should have. There are a variety of options here—we could create a border, corner, or just smooth out the edges and keep it open. For this example we will create a brush that will fit perfectly in the bottom left corner when stamped. To do this, we will need to remove everything that is black from the other three corners.

In order to avoid loosing the rough feel, you can use a layer mask and default brushes to remove the black areas. To do this, start by adding a layer mask to the layer that contains your texture. To do this, go to Layer » Layer Mask » Reveal All. Make sure the foreground color is black, and then select the brush tool (hot key- B). This can work even better if you already have grunge brushes and utilize those to create rough edges on your new brush.

Now we are ready to put the final touches on our brush. We currently have a great brush for adding aging effects to photos and things of that nature, but it really doesn’t stand well on it’s own. To solve this problem, we can add elements into the brush to help spice it up. On this example I have brought in a pattern created by our very own Jason Gaylor, and roughed it up a bit. I also inserted black bars, and gave them a worn effect. This is our brush ready to set up.

Creating Your Set 
Go to the Preset Manager - Edit > Preset Manager. Before we can make our brush set, we have to have a place to put them. When you first open the Preset Manager it will have your active brushes in the box. You need to delete all of the brushes in this box (select the first one, hold shift and select the last one, then hit delete) Don’t worry, this will not permanently delete those brushes, just clear the box.

Define your brush, go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. Give your brush whatever name you would like. Repeat this step for every brush you would like to include in this set.

Open the Preset Manager again, and you will now see your new bush set. Make sure you have included all the brushes you wish to be in this set and click Save Set button.For some versions of Photoshop you may need to click the little arrow button just to the upper left of the done button, then go to save set in that list.

Name your set, and you’re done!

In Mediaslap news, we designed a free Photoshop brush set exclusively for release at Smashingmagazine.com. It features a curious cast of characters who are ready to infiltrate your creative projects. Inspired by designer vinyl toys, this high resolution set includes a collection of 15 different creatures accompanied by 10 background illustrations. Download the free Innocent Invaders high-resolution Photoshop brushes at Smashingmagazine.com.