How To Create Vector Retro Circles And Convert Them To Photoshop Brushes
October 13, 2009 | Thoughts & Words By Sneh Roy | 10 Comments
A few weeks ago I shared a free high resolution photoshop brush set with my readers. Today I am going to show you how to create that brush set in 5 easy steps. We will be using both Illustrator and Photoshop to create very high rsolution, clean vector images for the brush. We are going to make some scribbly retro circles.
Software : Adobe Illustrator CS4 & Adobe Photoshop CS4
Level : Beginner To Intermediate
Step 1
Open a new document in Illustrator by going to File>New. Set Fill to red and Stroke to null. Choose the Ellipse Tool. Holding down the Shift key, click and drag to create a red circle in the work space. With the circle selected [Use Direct Selection Tool and click on the circle], go to Object>Transform>Transform Each. Set Scale to 75% as shown in the picture and click on "Copy". This will create another red circle in the forefront, smaller than the first one. Click on this new circle and set Fill to yellow. Then clicking on this yellow circle, go to Object>Transform>Transform Each and repeat the process, finally setting Fill to a new color. Do this a couple of times till you get a few concentric circle. Then select all circles by going to Select>All. Group them together by going to Object>Group [or by clicking on the circles and pressing down Ctrl and choosing "Group" in the panel that opens].
Step 2
Create a new layer in the document by clicking on the "New Layers" tab at the bottom of the Layers Panel. Create a new concentric circles graphic by following the actions of Step 1. Experiment with the scaling percentage and colors to get a new kind of circle. Then create yet another layer and make a new set of concentric circles. Do this 4-5 times till you get a bunch of concentric circles as shown in the picture.
Step 3
Click on the first layer with the first set of circles you made. Go to Filter>Stylize>Scribbles. Set Scribble Options to as shown in the picture. You can experiment with your own settings for a different look. Apply this Filter to each of the layers and all the circles till they are all scribbly.
Step 4
Make one layer visible and keep the rest hidden as shown in the picture. With one set of circles visible, save the illustrator file. Now go to Photoshop and open the illustrator file. Make sure you set the size very high, like 2500px width or higher. Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset. Name the brush as "retro_circle_scribble1". Go back to the beginning of Step 4, this time making a new set of circles visible, saving the illustrator file and importing it in Photoshop. You then save another brush. Repeat this process till all the different set of circles are saved as brushes.
Step 5
Go to Edit>Preset Manager. With "Brushes" selected in the drop down, you will now see all the brushes currently loaded in your software, including the new retro circle brushes at the very bottom of the list. Pressing down on Shift, select all the retro circle brushes by clicking on them. Then click on "Save Set" and name your brushes as "retro_circle_scribbles.abr", an abr file. Your high resolution brush set is now ready. You can stash it in your resource folder, give it away as a freebie or sell it as stock.
Step 6
To get a brush that has a few different circle sets arranged in a collage, in Step 4 collect all your different graphics in one layer. This can be done in Illustrator by clicking the fly-out options tab in the right top corner of the Layers Panel. Choose "Collect Artwork In new Layer". Once all your different sets of circles are in one layer, arrange them in a collage, overlapping or separated as you wish and then save the illustrator file. Then import that file in Photoshop like before and save it as a brush preset.
I hope you enjoyed this process of creating vectors and then importing them to get extremely high resolution Photoshop brushes. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment.
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Thanks…I like all your tutorials!
Nice Simple and quite effective tutorial. Thanks for sharing
.-= Ajay´s last blog ..How to Create a Nice Sleek Dark Button in Photoshop =-.
Thanks guys! Glad it could be useful!
I am 3 days old in the design world…very nice tutorial…my brush after conversion did not retain the colors tho.
wow this very use full page for learning photoshop…
excellent tutorial, excellent, pls keep posting
uhh sorry im still kinda new to photoshop but right after you said Use direction selection tool, where does it say object? Sorry if it’s a dumb question but i really don’t see it..
Object is right on top, next to File and Edit.