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Photoshop: How Can I Make a Fast Star-Shaped Brush?
Easy! And you don't have to know how to draw.
1. Open your brush Master Diameter control (Select the
Brush Tool then click on down arrow in the upper control bar.)
2. Go to the far right to access the Brushes Palette.
Note the "Roundness" control.
3. You can grab the circle in the proxy and squish it
or type in a new width. Here 12% worked great with a change of the angle
to 90 degrees.
4. A new brush is now available while this file is active.
Click on a white background using standard black.
5. Go back to the Brush Palette and change the angle from
90 back to 0 degrees. Click over the horizontal stroke to make a vertical
one.
6. Go back to the Brush Palette and change the angle from 0 to 45 degrees.
Change the diameter from 200 to 450 (or so). Click over the cross shape
to add an angled stroke.
7. Back to the Brush Palette one more time and change
the angle from 45 to 135 degrees. Click to add the last angled stroke.
8. Select the layer and do a Transform to change the angle
45 degrees.
9. Select All. Copy. Go to >Edit>Define Brushes.
Name the new brush.
Hit Okay.
10. Now you can use this singular brush to draw each star
one at a time to create the sample shown at the top of this page. But why?
Photoshop can add some nice special effects.
11. Go to the Brush Palette and experiment with the various
brush dynamics listed along the left side. You have to chose one for the
full effects and controls for each to be active.
12. Chose "Scattering" to change the preview
window from a single line of stars into a splattering of them.
13. Change the scatter percentage to cause the stars to
jump more out of line. (Note I also added a check to the "Shape Dynamics"
so the brush would vary in size as you drag the brush across the page.)
14. Now remember, all the brushes are black on white in
the preview--your foreground color will determine the color you actually
paint with.
Here I used straight white, then blue, then teal.
15. Add "Dual Brush" "Color Dynamics"
and "Other Dynamics" to have some fun with the brush.
First Pass
Changed the foreground/background colors for a Second Pass.
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