Custom brushes: suggestions for metal surfaces?

[RoboBobo]

I was curious as to how people go about making custom brushes to give a metal finish to the stroke. Maybe not giving every single detail on making the brushes, but rather the combination of brushes you use...if any.

also, isn't there a way to take a pic of something, say grass or gravel, and put it into the brush palette?

[daveneale]

you can take a picture and make a brush from it, is that what you mean? I find its bestto feather the edge of the selection so that when you overlap the strokes the edge isnt hard

[jodali]

I was curious as to how people go about making custom brushes to give a metal finish to the stroke. Maybe not giving every single detail on making the brushes, but rather the combination of brushes you use...if any.

also, isn't there a way to take a pic of something, say grass or gravel, and put it into the brush palette?

wow a question that I know how to answer...

to create a new custom brush....

1. back up any custom brush sets you have already (highly recommended)

2. create a new document, I use equal proportions (512x512)
import any picture (copy, paste), then desaturate to gray scale or draw a few brush strokes, either way have an image and as daveneale said, feather the edges to prevent hard edges. White areas will be transparent, black areas will be your brush.

3. EDIT> DEFINE BRUSH PRESET ......(in CS2)

the new brush will show up in your brushes
then go to brush options and have fun with all those dynamics

a little tip.. images with a lot of midtones are better with 100% opacity, if you want to use pen pressure with opacity then use a very high contrast image

[bumskee]

honestly I think it's more to do with how you paint it.. metal sort of has that reflection that makes it look metal.. and some other options besides the brush?... photo textures could do the trick..and Noise + linear blur does the trick too..

[Innerabove]

EraserX had a great metal brush in his old pack - anyone around still have it?