Well maybe few persons who will read this tutorial will ask what are vectors and where can be used ? The answer is quite simple. They can be used in any artwork from printing to web design because vectors can be scalable and can generally be resized without any loss of quality.
Here's a sample took from Wikipedia. You can read more about the benefit of using vectors in design here.

Now let's create some Photoshop brushes from a vector pack, you can find many stock vector sites, as well free vector sites. The must known vector stock sites are: Artbox7, Designious Gomedia. Free vector sites: FreeVectors, Qvectors, Vecteezy, Vector4Free and many more. For this tutorial I have chosen an ornamental vector, because I love to use ornaments and decoration in any design.

The vectors are provided in eps (Encapsulate Post Script) which means that they can be opened with Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Free Hand and even Photoshop.I will demonstrate first with Illustrator and then with Photoshop (for those who don't have Illustrator installed on their machines)

Let's begin - Open up your vector pack in Illustrator. When I open it I have 15 vector files. I am using Illustrator CS4 and Adobe Photoshop CS4.I am looking to export the files from Illustrator to Photoshop, one by one. I didn't opened the eps file with Photoshop because in this pack I have 15 vector elements and it's quite hard to define a brush in Photoshop having 15 vector elements. You can use the crop tool to separate them but you will end up with a little brush, which cannot be used at a higher resolution. For this vectors I want to create some high resolution brushes which then can be used in almost any design. Another thing you will need to know is that currently Photoshop CS4 doesn't support resolution higher than 2500px X 2500px for brushes.

1. So I've opened the vector and now I will select an vector element (simply by clicking on it). Those blue lines are telling me that the whole vector is selected

2.Next I will open up Photoshop and here I will create a new document (File>New). A new window will pop-up asking me to set up the setting for my newly document. Look on the preview image to see exactly what I have entered (make sure that the background is transparent and the document size is 2500px wide and 2500px high):

than hit OK.

3. I will go back to Illustrator and here I drag the selected vector and I drop it in Photoshop (on my newly created document).

4. As you can see the vector element is too small compared to the working area. What I have to do is to make it a little bit bigger. All I have to do is to go with the mouse in one of the vector corner and then while dragging I am pressing Alt+Shift (to make it proportional)

5. When you are satisfied with the dimensions hit ENTER to place the vector on your document. Here's a preview.

I am satisfied with the width of my vector but I couldn't make it to be 2500px height (other ways it has been disproportional)

6. Next I will cut a little bit the height of the document (using the crop tool (C)) to fit with my vector file.
Here's my result so far:

7. The final step will be to define the brush. All I have to do is to go to : Edit>Define Brush Preset....

An high resolution brush (2500px X 999px) for Photoshop has been created from a vector file. On the this method I have used both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

If you don't have Illustrator installed you can also create some Photoshop brushes from vectors (eps files)
Here's how:

1. Right click on your vector file (for Windows users) and choose to open it in Photoshop

2. A pop up will appear asking you what dimensions would you like the vector to be Rasterized . This step is very important. If you don't setup a high resolution for your file you can't create some high quality brushes. Because in this pack I have 15 vector elements I will try with a resolution of 7000px with 5084 (please see the screenshot)

3. You should have now a really large file. Next using crop tool (C) try to separate the elements. I will start with the first one

I select the element which I want to keep it and then I hit enter to erase the other 14 elements.

4. In this step I will define the brush - Edit>Define Brush Preset....

5. Once I have defined the brush I will hit Ctrl+Alt+Z to get back to my vectors. I have created a single brush (14 more needs to be created) and I repeat the seam steps (described above)

Comments (1)

Write comment

Next >