Brushes are the best digital scrapbooking tool you can have.

Brushes are perfect for digital scrappers. Nothing else offers you as much creative control, or can be used in as many different ways as brushes can when digital scrapbooking. Brushes can be papers, mattes, frames, embellishments, accents and even text. They are extremely versatile.

If you are new to digital scrapbooking and/or graphic work, the easiest way to understand brushes is to think of them as a combination of rubber stamps and punches.

When you use a rubber stamp, you pick a stamp design, you decide what color ink to use on it and where to place it on the paper. You get these same options with brushes... and more.

First off, lets discuss the terminology. When we say "brushes," what we really mean is "Custom Brush Shapes." But that's too long to say, so everyone just says "brushes." But by saying "brushes" rather than "custom brush shapes," it gives the impression they can only be used by the Paint Brush Tool, and nothing could be further from the truth. Custom Brush Shapes, or brushes, can be used with many different tools in Paint Shop Pro. You use them with the Paint Brush Tool, the Airbrush Tool, the Clone Tool, Lighten/Darken, Dodge, Burn, Smudge, Push, Soften, Sharpen, Emboss, Saturation Up/Down, Hue Up/Down, Change to Target, Color Replacer, Eraser and Background Eraser Tools.

Installing, Locating and Enabling Brushes

There are exact directions for downloading, unzipping and installing brushes included with each brush purchase, so I'm only going to briefly go over it again here. When you get new brushes, place them in your My PSP Files> Brushes folder. There are two files for each brush. One of these files is the actual image while the other is the settings. It is best to keep them together. If you are missing the image file, your brush will not work and you'll get nothing but a big black circle.

If you want to organize your brushes, you can make sub-folders and organize your brushes by folder. There is no limit to the amount of brushes or sub-folders you can have. I have 53 at the moment.

 

Once you have your brushes in the brush folder, open PSP. Make sure you have told PSP to look for brushes in that folder by going to File> Preferences> File Locations.

 

In the File Location Window, select Brushes from the list on the left. Make sure the path to the brush folder is listed on the right and that it's Enabled. If you've made sub-folders, make sure the box telling PSP to look at them is also checked. You do not need to list each sub-folder separately, PSP will find them if you check that box.

Picking a Brush

Anytime you pick a tool that can use a custom brush shape, you will see a small thumbnail box in your tool options window. Depending on which tool you select to use, you will see other items and options there as well. Click on the drop down arrow next to it and a larger window will open that displays a thumbnail of all your brushes in all the folders you have enabled.

 

You may look at thumbnails of all your brushes in alphabetical order by selecting "All" in the category box. Or you may look at just one folder by selecting the down arrow and picking a folder. You pick a brush shape from the thumbnail window by double-clicking it.

Brush Options

Once you've selected what brush shape you want, you can then decide its size, rotation and opacity by adjusting the settings on the Tool Options Bar. You adjust the size, rotation, density and opacity with the sliders in this box. When you place your cursor over your image, you will see an outline of the brush you selected in the size and rotation that you picked, so it's very easy to get the right size and angle.

 

(If you want to do four corners, these are the numbers you need.)

 

The color of the brush is selected via the Materials Palette. Any combination of colors, gradients, patterns, textures or fills you can come up with in the Materials Palette, you can use with brushes.

Here's something that only PSPers can do... if you click with your left mouse button, you can put the brush shape down in the foreground color and if you use your right mouse button you can put it down in the background color. Two colors without leaving your image!

 

You can even use other images... simply open them up, then choose the pattern option and scroll up to the very top where you'll see all your open images. Select one and your brush will use it just like a color.

Brushes in Straight Lines/Step Option

Want a row of brushes perfectly straight as a border or frame? Simply put down your first brush where you want it. Hold down the Shift key and click where you want the last brush. Voila... a perfectly straight line of brushes. Turn on PSP's grid (View> Grid) to make sure your clicks are lined up straight.

If you want to change the spacing of the brush line, you use the Step option on the Tool Option Bar. The Steps are the spacing between the brushes.

Making Embellishments with Brushes

You can apply filters and effects to your brushes. This first brush was put down with orange color. Then an Inner Bevel and Drop Shadow were added. The second uses PSP's Effects> Texture> Sculpture> Gold preset and a Drop Shadow. Think of all the embellishments, in the right size and color for your layout, that you can make with brushes!

Brushes as Punches

Now let me show you how to make digital "punches." When you use a brush with the Eraser Tool, it "erases" from your layer.

In this example, I flood filled a layer with a dark purple. I made a second layer and flood filled it with a lighter shade. I selected the Eraser Tool and picked this cat brush. With the top layer active, I clicked. As you can see, it erased the top layer allowing the bottom layer to show through. I then added a Drop Shadow to the top layer to make it show better.

Brushes as Edges

Brushes can be used to edge anything: paper, photos, mattes, etc. And the edges can be "put on" or "taken off."

Here are two examples. I "took off" the edge of the photo of the cat by using a brush with the Eraser Tool. I "put on" the edge of pink hearts by using a brush with the Paint Brush Tool.

Brushes as Frames

By using brushes in straight lines, you can frame anything... a photo, a journaling box, your papers, etc. And remember, a single corner brush can be rotated to make a frame. Remember, 0, 90, 180 and 270 are the four corner rotation angles. This frame is made from one brush rotated in four directions (0, 90, 180, 270).

Brush Variance Palette

Now let's get artistic! There's a palette called the Brush Variance Palette that offers some incredible things for brush artists. If you don't see this palette, hit the F11 key or go View> Palettes> Brush Variance. It has some really fun stuff in here.

There are way too many options to go over here, so I'm just going to give you the highlights and let you discover the full extent of this palette on your own. If you want specifics, your PSP manual, the Help files and online tutorials can give you more information on each option.

What these options do is vary the way your brushes are applied with each click... automatically! They vary the color or the size or the rotation or even how many brush images get applied with each click. It's amazing.

First you pick the Option of what you want to have PSP vary automatically, then you pick how you want to vary the settings from the drop-down menu. Then you pick how much variation you want with the Jitter %.

Here's an example... I flood filled a layer with brown. I had beige and orange in my Materials Palette. With a leaf brush selected and beige as my color, one click should have given me one beige leaf on this image. But I used the Brush Variance Palette to tell PSP to vary the hue, the size, and the rotation by 50%. And then I told it to put down 12 images with each click and vary where they go by 464%. So when I clicked on the image, PSP put down many images, in many colors and sizes and rotations.

By varying the settings and the percent jitter, you can make wonderful papers with a single click. There are tons of options here, so play with them all, you'll be amazed at what you get. If you want to reset all the controls to 0, simply click on that black arrow in the bottom right corner.

I hope this helps get you started with Brushes. They truly do give you unlimited artistic and design capabilities. Enjoy!

Tutorial written by Lori Cook

See all of her marvelous brushes in the Scrap Girls Boutique.