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Although Photoshop comes with up to 49 brushes, you might want to edit and add some special effects to your real estate photos that the featured brushes can't add. Knowing how to make a brush in Photoshop from an image can help solve this problem.
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The best way to make your real estate photos stand out is to create unique patterns that other photographers can't replicate. Knowing how to make a brush in Photoshop from an image can help you add watermarks, logos, and unique effects that will make your photos outstanding.
The idea behind making a brush in Photoshop from an image is to create a black and white version of the photo. The white and black in the brush are not colors but opacities. The opacity is zero wherever there is white, and the opacity is 100% wherever there is black.
These opacities will be the corresponding opacities of the colors you choose in the foreground and the background of your brush. Let us exploit how you can convert a photo into a Photoshop brush that can respond to the foreground and background colors without having color information of its own.
Although you can use any image to make a brush, a photo with an object that is puffy, circular, and not too long makes the best brush. Open the photo in Photoshop and isolate the object you want to use.
That means you will need to cut out trees, buildings, power lines, and other things in your photo that you don't want to include in the brush. Fortunately, the isolation is straightforward as you don't need to be precise.
Pick the lasso tool from the left panel, left-click and drag it around the object you want to use for the brush. Click on the layer mask icon with the object selected to create a layer mask and then click on the layer visibility icon to hide everything else.
Brushes in Photoshop work using luminance values and so you need to desaturate the image to eliminate the colors. Typically, black helps to register what part of the image is brush, and so the image should be black with a white background.
However, if you want to create outstanding photorealistic brushes, you can include shades of gray. Click on the layer thumbnail, and the white focus should now be on the layer thumbnail and not the layer mask.
You can then desaturate the color by hitting the Ctrl + Shift + U on the keyboard if you are using a Windows PC or Command + Shift + U if you are using a Mac. You can also navigate to the image, adjustments and then select desaturate.
Keeping in mind that the brush needs to be black and the background transparent, you need to change the background to white and the object to black.
For instance, if the object is white and the background is gray, you need to change the white object to black and the gray background to white. That means you'll be having an opposite of a layer mask where you keep white and hide black.
However, you will be keeping black and hiding white in this case. You can invert these colors by hitting Ctrl + I on a Windows PC or Command + I on a Mac or navigating to Image, Adjustments, and then choose Invert.
Typically, the inversion will make the white object black and the black background white. That means you can skip this step if your background is already white and the object is already black.
If the background is grayish, you still need to make it as close to white as possible before creating a brush.
Yes, it is possible to transfer the custom brushes you make in Photoshop to another computer. Simply open the brushes panel, choose the brush you want to transfer, go to the menu, and choose Export Selected Brushes. Launch Photoshop on the other computer and import the ABR files saved.
The 49 brushes that come with Photoshop are copyrighted together with the Photoshop application. On the other hand, the copyright for custom brushes depends on the party that created them. Therefore, it is not advisable to use externally sourced brushes unless you understand the licensing terms and conditions.
The maximum size of a custom brush in Photoshop is 2500 x 2500 pixels. That means when you are creating a brush from an image in photoshop, you may need to resize the image to a maximum size of 2500 x 2500 pixels.
If you are struggling to apply special effects to your real estate photos using the original Photoshop brushes, you should consider making a custom brush. Knowing how to make a brush in Photoshop from an image can help make your photo edits unique, fast, and outstanding.