Ten Steps to Making Grunge Brushes with Adobe Photoshop

Grunge is a very popular style that many people use when creating a design; however, many use tired, over-used, pixelated grunge brushes that are available from free grunge brush download sites. These not only look unprofessional, but they do not look good on screen and even worse once printed.

This is a 10 step method to make your own high resolution grunge brushes, often a lot of better than those from the free download sites.

Step One: Find a photo with lots of texture.

The first thing you need is a high resolution photo that has lots of texture. Here I am using a photo of rust but you can use anything with texture such as burnt surfaces, sidewalk tiles, old bricks, peeling paint etc. If you need a resource for finding high resolution photos check out www.yotophoto.com.

Step Two: Greyscale (desaturate) the image.

Next you to IMAGE, ADJUSTMENTS, and then select DESATURATE. This will suck the colour out of the photo and make it “black and white”. It should look like this:

Step Three:Adjust the contrast and brightness.

Now we’re going to IMAGE, ADJUSTMENTS, and select BRIGHTNESS AND CONTRAST. It will bring up a box with two slider bars. Play with them until you get a mostly black on white image. Be careful not to contrast it too much sacrificing the nice detail in the picture. When you are done it should look something like this:
Grunge Brightness and Contrast

Step Four:Select an area to make the brush and layer it via copy.

Now we are going to choose which area of the picture we would like to make the brush out of. Using the polygonal lasso tool found on your tool bar select as big or as little as you would like, it’s totally up to you. Once you have selected your area, right click within it and select LAYER VIA COPY.

Step Five:Hide or delete the extra you don’t want as part of your brush.

This step temporarily hides the layers of Photoshop that we don’t want as part of our brush. To make layers disappear simply click the eye icon in your layers pallet of the layer you would like gone. Alternatively, you can delete the layer if you do not need it for future use.

Step Six: Select the area you would like to use for your brush.

Now we have to select the area that we would like to make the brush out of. This step is simple, just right click the later with our copied grunge section on it and select “SELECT LAYER TRANSPARENCY”. Your canvas should now look like this:

Step Seven: Define the brush.

Head up to the menu bar and select EDIT and then DEFINE BRUSH PRESET. This is basically telling Photoshop “Make a brush of the selected area”.

Step Eight: Name and Save your brush.

After the last step a pop-up will appear on your screen asking what you would like to name it. Give it a clever name and press ok, it is now saved in your current brushes.

Step Nine: Select your brush.

Select the brush tool from the tool bar at the side. Now right click anywhere on a blank canvas and you will see a list of your brushes. Select the one you just made and size it to your liking.

Step Ten: Use your brush!

You are done! Go nuts with your new brush creating whatever you like. A tip in advance: never use two different colours on one layer in case you run into trouble down the road when you want to change it. Always layer colours separately.

Thanks for reading this 10 setup guide. If you enjoyed it or found it useful please let me know by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

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