Monday, March 30th, 2009...12:30 am
“Posterized” Custom Shapes from Brushes
Turning a shape into a brush is a trick that is often used by many designers. But in this tutorial I am going to show you how to do the reverse by taking a brush and turning it into a custom shape that has that cut-out poster feel to it. For this tutorial I am partnering with Landailyn Research and Restoration, as they have provided me with a small set of brushes they created by scanning some images out of some old books. But as a bonus, these wonderful ladies have also given me permission to pass this brush set on to you! So be sure to snag them and drop them some comment love!
Ok, let’s get to it!
First of all, after downloading the "Landailyn" brush set, you’ll want to load it into your brush pallet by following the three steps marked in red below. Once you do this, find the brushes located on your computer, click "Load", then click "Append".
Now that you have the brushes, start with a new document. For this tutorial I started with a 500x500px at 72 dpi.
Next, click the "Create new Layer" icon in the Layers pallet two times. The first layer will be for your brush, the second layer will be for your shape. (see below)
Next, chose the brush you wish to turn into your custom shape. I chose the brush "lilbird" (size 267) from the Landailyn pack. Then with black as your foreground color, stamp the brush twice onto your "layer 1" layer. (You will want to stamp it twice to make sure you have a good thick shape to work with.)
Then Cmd/Ctrl click on the "Layer 1" thumbnail to load the image as a selection. (seen below)
Then, we’re going to want to sharpen up the selection a bit by using the "Refine Edges" pallet found by clicking on any of the selection tools and looking in the tool bar at the top. Then, in order to define the selection so that we get a really nice clean custom shape, we need to increase the contrast quite a bit, and zero out the rest of the settings except the "Smooth" setting which we will set to the number one. (seen below)
Then, turn off your "Layer 1" and make "Layer 2" active by clicking on it. You document should look something like this:
Next, we are going to go play with the Path pallet, so click on the "Paths" tab at the top of your Layers pallet to make it active. Down at the bottom there are two buttons you will then need to click. First "Make work path from selection"
Second, making sure your foreground color is black, click "Fill path with foreground color."
Now, while still in the Paths pallet, go to Edit > Define Custom Shape
Name your shape to whatever you wish, click ok, and just like that you now have a posterized custom shape made from a brush! 
To play with your new shape you can do so on a new layer in your active document (but be sure to deactivate your Work Path by clicking in the gray space within the Paths pallet first) or create a new document and use it there.
Hope you all enjoyed this tutorial and if you have any questions be sure to post them here in the comments section and I will answer you there.
EDITORS NOTE: Please make sure to read the comments on this one! There are lots of great tips on working with Paths that evolved from a viewer’s question!
I’ve been wanting to know how you do this! Thanks to you, I will! I am now officially dangerous…
Just finished tutorial.Very cool. Thanks!!!
Just did it the first time! Oh yes, I had some ideas I want to play with in the settings and see how they come out. Now this was a very cool tut hun. Thank you so much. And it is so easy to do too! I’ve done something wrong though. Not sure what. The first time I used it. It was nice and smooth, now it is all jagged. Not sure what I’ve done.
Tell me your steps and I’ll see if I can help you out.
I promised I followed the tutorial by each step. Then I did a new layer and stamped it. It looked nice and neat. But when I open a new doc to try it on, it is rough, all jagged and stuff.
I think I figured out your “rough and jagged” look. The path is showing on your shape. Once you create your shape on a new layer, click the background layer to turn the work path off. The jagged line surrounding your shape will go away leaving you with smoother edges.
Try that and let me know if that helps any.
Yes it was the path, but why is it doing that on new documents? Will I have to do that evertime?
Every time you create a shape the path of the shape will turn on in case you want to adjust one of the points on the path – this is why it’s called a Work Path. If the box next to the color thumbnail in your shape layer is highlighted then your Work Path is active and that’s the jagged edge that you see. If you ever want to turn off your work path, you can click on it’s thumbnail, or go to the Paths pallet and click anywhere in the gray area or just click on a separate layer. Also, you can turn it on and off by hitting Ctrl/Cmd + H on your keyboard which is View > Extras in your menu at the top.
Thanks firgs. Appreciate all the help!
[...] “Posterized” Custom Shapes from Brushes. Now this one is by my twitter and NAPP buddy Firgs and I got to do it the other day. I just really love this one because it is super easy to do even though you go into the path layers (yeah, the path layers still scare me too.) and gave me new ideas for down the road. I’ve been playing with it a little bit the last couple of days and when I get some things figured out I’ll share it with you guys. http://designbyfirgs.com/blog/2009/03/posterized-custom-shapes-from-brushes/ [...]
Thank you!!! This tutorial is exactly what I needed. You are now officially my GURU!
Great site this designbyfirgs.com and I am really pleased to see you have what I am actually looking for here and this this post is exactly what I am interested in. I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor
I meant to tell you that you do a fabulous job of explaining things with labeling your images. I would have said a bunch of stuff that wouldn’t have been nearly as effective as those red notes you made.