Creating a cloud brush

Creating a cloud brush

LINK

Here is a simple yet easily adaptable method to make puffy clouds for your projects.

We will start with a brush about 400 px in size, with a hardness of 0% and spacing of 25%.

These settings can be found and set in your brush palette.

Next let move on to Shape Dynamics. Lets adjust the size jitter to 46%, and set the control to fade and 25, minimum diameter to 25%, leave everything else in this panel to default and move onto the next option Scattering.

For the scattering settings check the both axes box and set the scatter to 100%, the count to 3 and the count jitter to 51 percent. Lets move on to the next setting the texture settings.

OK, for these settings we will choose the cloud texture. Click on the window with the image on the top right of the panel and select the cloud texture. If your not sure if you have the correct texture just hover your pointer over the individual thumbnails and the descriptive text will appear look for the clouds texture. OK, the scale should be set at 1000%, for the mode choose multiply for now. "we will be coming back to this setting later to explore other options for our clouds" Set the Depth to 100%. Lets move on.

The next setting we will be using is Color Dynamics. We will set the foreground/background jitter to 12%. Next is Other Dynamics.

For Other Dynamics set the Opacity Jitter to 18% and the Flow Jitter also to 18%. See below.

Next lets make sure your foreground and background colors in your tool bar are set to their defaults of Black and White. To do this just hit the D key on your keyboard. We want the foreground color to be white for our clouds so if it is black just hit the X key on your keyboard after having hit the D key.

Next we have some options you can change for slightly different effects.

In your brushes pallet you can check off noise for slightly different effects.

One of the more useful options are those in the Texture settings of the Mode. I found three to be especially good. I used these three in my example at the top of the page. They are Multiply, Overlay and Linear Burn. I found that painting clouds and alternating between those three modes while doing so gives good results.

You may also want to try adjusting the opacity of your brush.

Another couple of options which you may find useful is to add some layer styles to the layer with your clouds. Two in particular I used a bit are Outer Glow and Pattern Overlay. For Pattern Overlay I again used the cloud texture and set the scale to 1000% but I turned the opacity down to about 30%.

Lastly you can also try using this same brush for the eraser tool to remove some portions of your clouds and create a slightly different effect.

Play a little bit with the various settings and experiment.