Recently I was sent a gift bag that had a fascinating texture. I quickly determined that this was one piece of junk mail that was going to turn into treasure.
I scanned a portion of the gift bag into my computer setting the resolution on the scanner at 600 dpi Your scanner will send an ugly message saying this is a high resolution and do you really, really want to save a file that will be this large. You just have to be firm and insist. If space is an issue on your hard drive you can later go back and delete the original scan after you get what you want out of it.
The graphic ended up looking something like the green square on the right, keeping in mind that this one here is not a 600 dpi graphic, but one altered for the web. I opened it up in Photoshop and started messing wish it to make the texture really pop. First, I desaturated it using the Hue/Saturation feature under the Image menu. Then using the Brightness/Contrast tool, I increased the contrast and raised the brightness to make it look more like texture. An example of it is on the right under the green square. Then I saved it as a photoshop file. It is important to make sure it is saved as a .psd file or it will not work as a texture. When I saved the file, I saved it where I knew I could find it when looking for textures in a folder named textures. I named the file "leatherlike" since this is what it looks like to me.
Now, to see what kind of texture this will make, I created a new document and poured some color into it. Now, I opened the texturizer tool by looking under Filters and going down to Texture and clicking on Texturizer . . . The Texture Screen comes up and now I can upload my new texture I have created. If you look to the panel on the left here, you can see where the texture named "Brick" shows up in the drop down menu.(This panel shows up on the right of the Texturizer tool.) By clicking on the triangle in the circle to the left of the drop down window you will be given the option to load textures. Click on the load texture and a browse window comes up where I navigate to where the texture was saved. I upload it and now my new texture is ready to use in the new document I created. If you look at the burgundy box below, you can see how the solid color was changed with the new texture I created.
But, I am not through with my junk mail treasure. I think it will make an awesome brush as well. So, going back to the image I created for the texture, I work some more with the Brightness/Contrast tool under Image to make the image look like black and white. I was looking for a brush that would do a little bit of smudges on my paper and did not need a real stark black and white image. This is the one I decided to go with.
It doesn't look like much, but once you have made a few brushes, you learn to visualize what it will do. I like what it looks like so its on to making a brush with it. Making brushes is real easy. First, select the graphic - this is important. You have to tell Adobe what you want to be made into a brush. Then, scroll under the Edit Menu and click on Define Brush Pre set.. A little narrow box comes up with a thumbnail of your new brush and asks you to name it. If you name your brush it makes it easier to find it later. Now it will be there with all your other brushes to use. If you want to use it on other projects you need to save it. It is not saved automatically.
To save your new brush, scroll under Edit to Preset Manager and click on it. In the drop down menu at the top of the box that comes up choose brushes. Thumbnails of all the brushes you have open is shown. To save the new brush by itself, click and delete all the other brush thumbnails. Don't worry, you are not trashing them, you are just removing them from the menu, they can be reloaded later. You can select multiple brushes to delete by holding down the shift key. When your new brush is by itself in the thumbnail window, click on its thumbnail and then click the Save Set button. You will be given a browser window to navigate to where you want to save this brush - usually with the other brushes in the Program Files for Adobe. It will be saved as an .abr file.
So how did the new brush from my junk mail work - lovely. It will be a great grunge tool, or something to use for making chalky lines. By manipulating the opacity and the flow, I can make it do a lot of things.