I’ve had a few people ask me lately “Do you have any of your brush sets available in larger sizes?” Unfortunately, the answer to that is pretty much “No.” When I make these, I make the original size somewhere around 500 X 500 pixels in most cases, because most people don’t need them to be much larger than that. If I made them much bigger, the file sizes would start to get really huge.
I do have a few higher resolution sets, where the brush sizes are more like 1000 X 1000 pixels. But, once I finish a set, I don’t keep any original images that I used to make that set, so the sizes are pretty much what they are.
Keep in mind, though, that these ARE Photoshop brushes. I mean, just because the original size is 400 X 400 pixels doesn’t mean that’s the largest it can be used. You can make the brush size a decent amount larger right there in Photoshop, without getting much blurring.
So, what if you can’t? Is there a way to make a particular brush larger and still keep it very crisp and sharp? Yes! In fact, this doesn’t apply to just brushes. It applies to any “shape” that you want, really, provided that it’s not something terribly complex. It won’t work very well for your basic photograph, for example. But, it’s great for a design like I use below.
Please keep in mind that this tutorial is written with Photoshop CS2 specifically in mind. It makes use of “Smart Sharpen,” which isn’t available in any previous version of Photoshop. I don’t THINK it’s available in any versions of Photoshop Elements, but I may be wrong. (And if I am, please correct me in the comments so that I can fix this!) You can try the tutorial using any of them, but the quality of the ending image just won’t be the same. None of the other sharpen tools really come close to what Smart Sharpen is able to do.
You can follow along with the tutorial using the same image that I used. Download the image here.
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Hi Stephanie
Thanks for sharing all your bits and pieces, great for learning and for fun.My daughter loves the brushes.
Keep up the great work
Helen
Adelaide Australia
hellooo
Wow, what a great technique! I had never thought of using the smudge brush in that way before. I played and played until you would never recognize your sample! I used smaller and smaller brushes to draw out new “doodles”. Lots of fun! Thanks for sharing your knowledge as well as your brushes!
Thanks for such a useful tutorial! If you have the time, would you set up colouring tutorials? I’m lack experience and technique in colouring. Thanks for the help already and can’t wait for more. You’re tutorials are fun to use, and really help! Keep up the good work.
Thanks, everyone! Lara, what kind of coloring tutorial did you have in mind? Did you see my tutorial on using multiple colors with photoshop brushes? If you mean more towards the artistic side of things, I have a skintones tutorial available on the artwork portion of my website (www.obsidiandawn.com) under Misc and then tutorials. Or maybe you meant changing the colors on photographs? Let me know, and I’ll see what I can do!
what a great web site trying to help a textile student with paisly designsyour site is a great help though I have to now teach myself to use photoshop !!
good to see the spirt of the www still alive many thanks graham
This is an excellent tutorial. The problem of upsizing images, and trying to keep them looking good, affect many. Thanks for the great tutorial!
Gracias por tus tutoriales, aunque mi ingles no es bueno, he entendido perfectamente los tutoriales.
Thanks for tutorials, my english is very bad, but I understand correctly yours tutorials.
the pics suppose to show in the tut are down ……
Eek! I thought I fixed this. I’ll fix it again right now! Sorry about that.
very good tutorial keep up the good work
Thanks Stephanie
Your tutorials are terrific and easy to follow.
And thank you for the brushes ect.