Tip: Create a custom brush with Generative Fill

Introduction

Did you ever wish you had a Photoshop brush that's just right for fine tuning fur or other fuzzy edges?

Well, now you can make your own custom brush for that purpose using Generative Fill in Photoshop.

Hi, my name is Lisa Carney, I'm an Entertainment Industry Designer.

And I'm going to show you how to use this technique to create a very special brush to add the effect of realistic fur edges.

And the best thing is Generative Fill makes it so easy.

Let's check it out.

Removing the background and identifying edge issues

I have an image of an explorer that I'd like to mask out and put on this mountain scene.

So I'm going to be on the layer, and I'm going to use the Contextual Taskbar and hit Remove background.

Well, that was fast, but not quite exactly what I need, especially around the fur edge.

So what I'm going to do is make a new brush to mask that edge.

Creating a custom fur brush with generative fill

Starting with a white layer I'm going to use the Marquee Tool, but I'm going to use the Ellipse Marquee Tool and I'm going to hold the Option key and the Shift key and pull it out about the size where I think I'd like it.

I think that's about right.

Now with Generative Fill, I can simply type in, long, fuzzy shaggy furball, and hit Generate.

Well, that's a cool furball.

It's got a shadow though.

That's a cool furball.

That's the one I'm going to use because it has no shadow.

And I'll go ahead and delete the ones I don't want to keep my file clean.

Now all I'm going to do is I'm going to do a levels move.

So under Image, Adjustments, Levels...

I can make it really dark because I really want a mask that's just for the fur edges and I want to bring the whites in just a bit.

That looks good to me.

So now I'm going to go back to the Marquee Tool only the Rectangle, again, hold the Option key and the Shift key to select around it.

So now what I'm going to do is go into Edit,

Defining and refining the custom brush preset

Define Brush Preset... and I like to name it the exact same name I used for my prompt.

Let's see what that brush now looks like.

I'm going to deselect, Command D, go to my Brush palette, you'll notice the last brush you made will show up there, and let's go ahead and tap on this white with black color and see what we got.

Wow, that's amazing.

Now, if you want to change it up, tap on the Brush settings and you can tap on Shape Dynamics and let's change that Angle Jitter, so it'll spin a little bit.

Close that.

That gives me a little more variation.

I think this is going to be fantastic.

Applying the custom brush for realistic fur edges

Now let's see how to use the custom brush to create more realistic edges for the fur parka hood.

I started with the Lasso selection of just the parka hood.

I did this to ensure that only the area of the layer mask would be affected by the fuzzy brush.

Then I used the custom brush preset to paint on the layer mask with black along the outer edge of the parka hood to make it look more realistic.

And in just a few seconds I was able to make it detailed fur edges with the custom brush I created with Generative Fill.

Wasn't that fast and easy?

With Generative Fill, you can make your own custom brush preset any time.

You can make a cloud brush, a smoke brush, give it a try!