How to create a custom broken glass brush

Adding broken glass effects is a fun way to get people's attention and interest. The visual effects of broken glass are very shocking, vibrant and conflict-filled. Creating it is full of technical challenges, is difficult and time-consuming, it's also not easy task! Here, I will show you a good way to teach you how to create a broken glass brush in Adobe Photoshop.

　　First, create broken glass and shoot

Before we start, I know what you're thinking. "What's the trouble? Just some broken glass, and take pictures of it!" But the project is actually a lot harder than it looks. When breaking the glass, need to prevent the splash of glass, because the glass is very sharp, based on this consideration, we need to create a controllable condition, so that the glass in a broken moment, become a bit slower, eliminate the hidden danger.

Once the security issue is resolved, the next challenge is background and thinking. Because this allows us to create a brush in the process, greatly improve the efficiency, shorten the editing time. However, this does not suggest that the elimination of background reflection in dozens of tiny pieces of glass is a simple matter.

Luckily, this tutorial will guide you through these two challenges and eventually get some clean, broken glass brushes!

Step 1th Preparation Materials

The material you need is very simple and universal. You need to:

1, a few small panes of glass, I bought in the department store some high quality and low price of the photo frame, took out the glass.

2, some sturdy card paper.

3, Spray glue. Need to be sure to be invisible after drying.

4, transparent plastic packaging bag, large enough to hold the glass.

5, Hammer.

2nd Step

I suggest that we do the project outside on a cloudy day. Because the heavy clouds will give a soft environment light and make it easier to keep the reflection clear. Our key is to control the fragmentation of the glass and prevent the debris from splashing, so I put a card paper on the glass mat, and through the spray binder, make the glass glue on the card. The use of aerosol sprays, rather than the use of liquid drop adhesives, is to prevent adhesives from being visible through the glass. The binder does not need to remain firmly on the glass, it just helps us to fix the glass, preventing it from sliding around and splashing.

3rd Step

When the binder dries, it takes about a minute and then gently presses the card paper on the glass panel. Be careful when you press, do not print your fingerprints on it.

4th step

Trim the card paper so that the plastic bag can hold the card paper and then put the paper and the glass in the plastic bag.

5th step

Using a hammer to quickly crack the center of the glass, the binder guarantees the distribution of the debris, while the plastic bag prevents the tiny glass residue from splashing.

6th step

Carefully take the card paper out of the plastic bag, this step requires careful, take out while not destroying any glass fragments. Keep it level and start shooting glass fragments. When shooting, be careful to prevent your reflection from appearing on the glass surface.

7th step

Carefully remove some glass fragments, take more individual pieces of photos, make our shooting sets, and here again, we need to emphasize that we should not make any reflections on the glass.

8th Step

Repeat the above process, take a little more, as long as you want to, you can beat wildly, self-willed.

　　Second, modify the picture to create a brush

Now we end the shot of broken glass, turn into the digital post and start using Photoshop to create a custom brush.

1th Step

Open a broken glass picture and use the cropping tool to tailor the image appropriately.

2nd Step

Photoshop Brushes Ignore color information, if we take pictures with color information, not grayscale, then we need to add a black and white adjustment layer, and adjust the best contrast.

3rd Step

Add a curve adjustment layer, adjust the curve, increase the contrast of the image. Our goal is to make the cracks as dark as possible, but not to produce distortion.

4th step

Add a new layer at the top, set the foreground color white, and use rounded edge brush, around the edges of broken glass carefully smear, suggest timely adjustment of opacity, so that the edge of the glass broken, as the center of the radiation to the edge slowly softened.

5th step

Click Edit > Define brush preset, the brush is finished. We can continue to use this method to create other brushes until you have built your own broken glass brush library.

　　Third, use our brushes

While I completely encourage you to follow my steps and create your own custom broken glass brushes, I know that not everyone has time or opportunity to take photos of broken glass, so this post also provides downloads.

Category:

• PS Getting Started Tutorial