Using Multiple Colors with Photoshop Brushes

Using Multiple Colors with Photoshop Brushes Tutorial
by Stephanie Shimerdla

Have you ever used a brush and thought how pretty it would look, if only you could make it show up in more than one color? Being able to change the color of Photoshop brushes upon application is a beautiful thing, but sometimes the colors on image brushes and the like can look rather... flat in color. This tutorial will show you how to add multiple colors to the same brush.

1. First off, start by creating a new layer on top of the Background layer. On the layers palette, click the "Create a New Layer" button on the bottom right (just next to the trash can). Now, on that layer... using black, make a single brush stroke on the canvas using the brush of your choice. I'm using a flower brush, and it looks like this:

2. Now, in the layers palette, right click on that layer, and choose "Layer Properties," then rename the layer to "Black" so that you know that the color on that layer is...well, black! You should now have a background layer, and this new layer with the black brushstroke on it named "Black." Now, to add some color! So that you don't have to paint in everything and hope to "stay in the lines" of where the boundaries of the brush is, we're going to just duplicate the layer and then you can work with that. Here goes! Right click on the "Black" layer in the layers palette and choose "Duplicate Layer."

3. Name that layer whatever color you would like to use first. The primary color of my phlox flower is a blue-violet, so I named mine "Blues." You can rename it either as you duplicate it (it will ask you what to name it) or afterward, if you forget, you can right click on the layer in the layer palette and choose "Layer Properties" just like we did in the first step. Now, on the layers palette, make sure you have the "Blues" layer selected and click on the "f" at the bottom left corner of the layers palette.

4. Choose "Color Overlay" from the dropdown menu, and then pick out a color.



5. You should have an image exactly the same as the original black, but now in whatever color you chose. We're going to change the way that this layer blends into t

he entire image, but first we need to get rid of the "color overlay" on this layer (but keep the color, of course!). In the layers palette,click on the layer just beneath the colored layer - in my case, the layer just below my "Blues" layer. Click on the "Create a New Layer" button at the bottom of the layers palette (highlighted in red on the image to the right). It should look like this:



6. Click on the "Blues" layer to

select it. In the top menu, choose "Layer" and then "Merge Down" (or hotkey CTRL-E on a PC, CMD-E on a Mac).

7. You'll probably have to rename your "Blues" layer. Whenever you merge a layer down, it takes on the name of the layer below it. So, do that now using the same way we did it earlier.

Now we want to change the way that the blues layer blends in with the whole image. Select the "Blues" layer by clicking on it in the layer palette. Now click on the "f" at the lower left of the layer palette again. Choose the first option, "Blending Options":




8. In the menu that pops up, at the top, you'll want to change that from

"Normal" to "Color."



9. What this is doing is changing it so that this layer now merely changes the color of anything on the layers below it. It does NOT change the luminosity of it, so if you had this over white, it wouldn't do anything. It would make it a blue white, but a blue white is still white - white doesn't have any color to it at all. However, when you have gray tones in the layer below, as we do, it adds color to those gray tones to make them blue-grays. I played around with my blues layer and added different tones of blue simply by painting it in. If you didn't want to actually paint them in, you could add a gradient - with this flower, I added a radial gradient so that the tips were darker and the inner portions had more purples in them:

10. I followed steps 2-8 again, beginning with the duplication of th e black layer, and created a layer with yellows and oranges in it. You can do this as many times as you want, with as many layers as you want.. or just with the one beginning layer that y ou created, if you'd rather put all the colors on one layer. I tend to use separate layers so that if I want to, I can change the hue/saturation of each individual layer.

11. You can do a lot of "playing around" with it afterward by changing the hue/saturation like that, or by changing the lightness/darkness or opacities of each layer (including the black one!). Here's another image of a pansy where I did just that. The first one is the original, where I have the black layer's opacity set at only about 60%. The second one is different hues AND the black layer's opacity is set much higher, at 100%. The third one is different hues again, with the blues on the edges much more saturated and the black layer at a lower opacity, around 30%.

13. If you're not familiar with where to change the hue and saturation, brightness, etc, it's under the top menu. Click on "Image" then "Adjustments" then "Hue/Saturation.." A window will pop up that has three bars where you can play around with the colors (hue), how strong or weak that color is (saturation), and the lightness/darkness of that color. As you change them, you'll see the changes to the image itself, so you can see exactly how it will turn out.


14. That's it! Now you can do all sorts of things with colors and brushes!

An alternative method that I use sometimes is to make a single black brush stroke on its own layer, then make another layer just beneath it where I "paint" in the colors that I want that brush to have. Just like I'd paint one of my paintings. This method isn't for everyone, though, and can be difficult to do with just a mouse. So I spent much more time outlining the method above. However, if you're an artist or would like to do these colors much more intricately, try painting the colors in on a layer below yourself.

Enjoy!