custom gimp brushes????

rdgracer71 · **Joined:** Dec 11, 2011 **Posts:** 532

GIMP Version: 2.6.11
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: XP - SP3
GIMP Experience: Beginner Level

How do i get my custom gimp brushes to paint in color. i know i have to change it to greyscale , but what then. i read somewhere that you have to give the brush a white background and then flatten the image but how do you do this. please i need help. if you answer please leave me detailed step by step to get this done thanks.....

bkh1914 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 12, 2012 8:22 am **(#2)**

Fence-post has written an excellent 3-part tutorial on making brushes:
http://fence-post.deviantart.com/art/Cr ... 1-36169355
http://fence-post.deviantart.com/art/Cr ... 2-36169666
http://fence-post.deviantart.com/art/Cr ... 3-36169952

I found this tutorial to be very helpful when I first tried to make brushes.

The key section for using a brush with the foreground color is at the bottom of Part-1

Quote:

· Next, I flattened my image. We can't have layers in a gbr brush. If your background layer is any other color than white, you need to make it white.

· This step is for those of us who started with an RGB image. Convert the image to grayscale (Image | Mode | Grayscale)

LadyLithia · **Joined:** Sep 12, 2016 **Posts:** 22

So I'm a total newbie, and I'm having issues with my brushes going on sabbatical after awhile, but I'm thinking those are peculiar problems to my situation and not gimp in general.

Ironically, I ONLY know how to make color brushes. Simply put, I create what I want to be my brush on a transparent background, then when it's exactly what I want, I select the area I want to be the brush, and copy. Then I go to the Edit menu, down to the Paste As option, and one of the options is "Paste as new brush" A window pops up to allow you to name your new brush, and you name it and voila, you now have a brush that works in technicolor. (as in, whatever color you made your brush in will be the colors for your brush forever.)

So if you have a white background, you'll have a white background when you use the brush.

There are more complicated ways to make brushes (and I only know one of them), but this simple method works.

Word of warning... if you make a couple hundred brushes, you might start losing them like me, so personally, if I was doing it all over again, I'd not only choose the "paste as new brush" I'd secondarily choose "paste as new image" and then save the new image in a folder as a back-up.

Hope this helps. I'm getting some awesome advice in the Case-of-the-disappearing-brushes, but thought I'd help with probably the one single thing I am (mostly) good at.

Wallace · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2016 9:35 pm **(#4)**

rdgracer71 wrote:

GIMP Version: 2.6.11
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: XP - SP3
GIMP Experience: Beginner Level

How do i get my custom gimp brushes to paint in color. i know i have to change it to greyscale , but what then. i read somewhere that you have to give the brush a white background and then flatten the image but how do you do this. please i need help. if you answer please leave me detailed step by step to get this done thanks.....

Have you tried to created a brush with the Image Mode set to Gray Scale,
before saving it as a .gbr,
without flattening it?

Flattening an image is the same as removing it's Alpha Channel.

With gray scale brushes.
The White represents Transparency.
The Black represents Full Opacity.

If you want the background of your brush to be transparent,
use a white background.
As you move from white toward Black in the gray scale spectrum.
The hue becomes brighter/darker.
As illustrated in the image above.
Notice how the blue dot gets darker as it moves away from white.

Being that you're using an older version of Gimp.
I do believe that you need to flatten any Gray Scale Brush.
I also think that the most recent version of Gimp,
in some cases,
does the flattening for gray scale brushes automatically.

Flattening An Image