Create your own tag brush

Tagging in Photoshop is a simple as a single click of the mouse, once you’ve created the proper custom brush tip preset. In this tutorial, we’ll reveal the simple process of custom brush preset creation. This is the ideal approach for simulating a convincing graffiti stencil tag effect in Photoshop.

The most important thing to remember when creating a custom brush preset is that brush tips operate using the principles of greyscale. Simply put, this means that wherever you have a solid black area, 100 per cent paint will be applied when you use this image as a brush tip preset. Inversely, areas of white will deposit no paint at all, and areas of greyscale will fall into place in-between, dependant upon the amount of black in those particular areas.

When you create a brush, it’s always a good idea to start with an image that is much larger than any brush you’ll want to use later on. That way, your brush tip preset is always larger than what you require and you can always reduce your preset size layer without affecting the sharpness of the tip. Increasing your brush size beyond its original dimensions, on the other hand, will result in deterioration of quality, and possibly visible pixels.

Click here to download the support files (~2MB)