Creating a Grunge Photoshop Brush

One of the current trends today is creating a grunge look. Utilizing brushes in your designs help achieve that look. There are many photoshop brushes available for purchase and there are also many free brushes available. However, creating a brush of your own is not difficult. In fact, creating a photoshop brush is easy and involves only a few simple steps.

1. Find a image with some texture 

2. Duplicate the image by dragging it to the new layer icon.

3. Convert the image to black and white 

4. Select a channel from the channels panel. The channel you select depends on the look and feel of the brush that you are attempting to develop. I selected the blue channel because it gave me the greatest amount of contrast. Cmd/Cntrl click on the channel to load a selection. 

You will see your selection displayed on the image. Try your selection with different channels to determine which look you like best.

You may need to select Inverse Selection from the Select drop down menu. 

5. With the selection still selected in the previous step, select the background copy layer in the layers panel. Then Cmd/Cntrl J to copy the selection onto a new layer. 

The selection copy will appear on a new layer.

6. Remove the visibility from the background and background copy layers.

7. Select Define Brush Preset from the edit drop down menu.

 8. Name your brush.

9. New brush will appear in the brushes panel at the bottom. 

It is that EASY!  Make a few brushes.