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Brush creation question


L

Ladyhawke

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Hey all,
I'm brand new to the forum, so hello!
I'm attempting to create a brush that scatters little squares everywhere as part of a special effect for a book I'm working on. I've tried several different methods, even tried creating a vctor square in Illustrator and pasting it in P-shop as a smart object. My problem is, when I resize the brush, the box pixelates. That's why I tried using a vector object only it doesn't seem to be working. Does anyone have a fix for this or an idea of a work around? The first picture is the vector object I tried to use, the second is the effect I'm going for, only without the pixelation.
Thanks!

Screen Shot 2020-08-20 at 3.39.23 PM.png

Screen Shot 2020-08-20 at 3.40.08 PM.png
 
Hey Julie and welcome.

The problem is that when you create a custom brush, no matter if it started off as a shape created in Ps or a vector imported into Ps from Ai, it will be rastorized and therefore subject to aliasing, especially when the rectangle/box is at an angle.

One option or technique would be to just duplicate the shape or vector, and alter it's angle and size manually using free transform. This way the shape or vector will not alias as much. Very time consuming.
Screen Shot 2020-08-20 at 9.15.06 PM.png
 
[ iLLuSioN ] said:
Why don't you define your square as special brush in Illustrator?
Click to expand...
Thanks, I was just thinking about trying that today. Truth is I haven't used illustrator in a long time. I do all my work in photoshop and only a scant few things in Illustrator. I was thinking perhaps I could make the brush in illustrator, place my piece in Illustrator, use the brush, then copy paste my new vector object back into Photoshop. I think I'm going to try that next. Thanks!
 
HI Ladyhawke
There are two issues that I see you are dealing with. One is just having a good sharp edge square brush and the other is that you are viewing the image at a very high magnification relative to the size of the documents (8.5 x 11 at 300 ppi and viewing at 500%)

1) If you are viewing at 500% any angled edge is going to look stair stepped just because the display pixels are square and that is the limiter. This can be avoided by using some anti-aliasing or feather yet the edges will have a little softness.

I would note that you should view you document at the resolution and distance a viewer would see the document. If it is an 8 1/2 x 11 inch document, normal close up viewing would be 10 inches. At that resolution and distance, those many of those pixelating effects are invisible.

2) Your brush may be too small and when enlarging pixel edge effects can be exacerbated. So I suggest start with the design of a very large brush. PS can handle brush sizes up to 2500 x2500 pixels last I looked at the spec. If you build a brush that larger and then set it to smaller size settings, the pixel edge problems will be less

3) If you really need sharper (not pixel showing edges) at high magnification (doubtful) then some edge feather can be added to make it look a bit better.

Even if you could brush with vectors, at some point your are going to be converting to pixels whether it be in print or on a pixel view screen. So unless you need your final customer to zoom in at arbitrarily large magnifications, we may be over thinking how big of an issue this really is if we just use pixel based approaches as mentioned above.

Just my opinion of course
John Wheeler
 
Ladyhawke said:
Thanks, I was just thinking about trying that today. Truth is I haven't used illustrator in a long time. I do all my work in photoshop and only a scant few things in Illustrator. I was thinking perhaps I could make the brush in illustrator, place my piece in Illustrator, use the brush, then copy paste my new vector object back into Photoshop. I think I'm going to try that next. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Do it in Illustrator. Make it into a symbol. Use the symbol sprayer, and then the resizer set to random.
 
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