How to Create a Custom Brush in Photoshop

How to Create a Custom Brush in Photoshop

This tutorial builds a custom snow brush in Photoshop completely from scratch, using nothing but a couple of painted shapes and a handful of brush settings, so it can be dropped into any photo afterward to add falling snow. The finished brush and a sample image are both available as a free download on PHLEARN.com.

About This Custom Snow Brush

Rather than relying on a pre-made brush pack, this tutorial shows exactly how a usable snow brush gets built from two simple painted shapes and a set of randomizing brush settings. Once it’s built, the same brush can be reused on any photo that needs snow added in post rather than shot on location.

Creating the Snow Shape

Start by going to Layer, then New Fill Layer, then Solid Color, and make that fill layer plain white as a background. Add a new layer above it and, using the Brush tool with a soft round edge, paint a loosely blurred, irregular shape that reads roughly as a puff of snow.

Adding a Small Dot for Variation

On the same layer, paint a second, much smaller mark somewhere off to the side at around 50 percent opacity so there are two distinct shapes at different sizes, a larger blurred shape and one small dot, ready to become the basis of the brush.

Defining the Brush Preset

Grab the Rectangular Marquee tool and draw a selection that includes both the large shape and the small dot together. With that selection active, go to Edit, then Define Brush Preset, and name it something like “snow template.” That captures the raw shape of the brush, though it doesn’t yet have the settings that will actually make it behave like falling snow, so both of the shape layers can be turned off at this point since they’re no longer needed.

Adjusting Brush Settings for a Snow Effect

Create a new layer, press B to select the brush tool, right-click on the canvas, and scroll down to select the newly saved snow template brush. Painting with it at this point still just repeats the same large and small dot in a fixed pattern, so open Window, then Brush Settings, to add randomization. Under Shape Dynamics, turn Size Jitter all the way up, turn Angle Jitter all the way up, and add some Roundness Jitter as well. Then under Scattering, enable scattering on both axes so the individual particles land in random positions rather than following a straight line, which is what starts making the brush actually look like scattered snow.

Fine-Tuning Spacing

If the particles paint too close together, go back into Brush Settings and increase the Spacing value so each stamp of the brush lands further apart, giving the snow more natural breathing room instead of clumping into a dense line.

Painting Snow onto Your Image

With scattering and jitter dialed in, paint directly onto the photo with the brush and the particles land with genuine randomization, some larger and some smaller, scattered unevenly the way real falling snow would look. There’s no need to manually control where every individual flake lands, since the randomized settings are doing that automatically.

Controlling Size for Depth

Right-click the brush at any time to change its overall size, or use the bracket keys on the keyboard to size it up or down on the fly. Painting with a larger brush size creates bigger flakes that read as closer to the camera, while a smaller brush size creates smaller flakes that read as farther away, and mixing both sizes across a few passes builds a sense of depth in the falling snow.

Adding Motion Blur for a Dynamic Feel

Once enough snow is painted onto the layer, go to Filter, then Blur, then Motion Blur, and apply just a small amount. A little motion gives the flakes a sense of movement and makes all of the snow appear to be falling in the same direction, while cranking the amount higher creates a more extreme, fast-moving look if that fits the photo better.

More Free Photoshop Tutorials

• Select Subject and Refine Edges in Photoshop
• Three Ways to Use Blend If
• Curves vs Levels: Learn the Difference

Why Custom Brushes Are Worth Building

A custom brush like this one is really just a saved shape plus a set of randomizing rules, which means the same basic approach used here for snow can be adapted to rain, dust, sparks, or any other scattered particle effect. Anyone who wants to go deeper into how far Photoshop’s brush engine can be pushed can check out The Amazing Power of the Brush Tool in Photoshop for a broader look at brush-based techniques.

Final Thoughts

Building this snow brush comes down to two ingredients: a simple painted shape saved as a brush preset, and a handful of jitter and scattering settings that turn a repetitive stamp into something that reads as genuinely random. Once those settings are dialed in and a touch of motion blur is added, the same brush can add convincing falling snow to any photo, no location shoot required.

Related Tutorials

• Keyboard Shortcuts in Photoshop: 5 Easy Custom Wins
• Light Effect in Photoshop: 4 Easy Steps, No Brushes Needed
• Layer Masks in Photoshop: 4 Easy Ways to Paint One