Learn how to make dashes and stitches in Photoshop using brushes and then how to paint with them and use them to stroke shapes.

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Complete transcript of this video:

Hello, I’m Helen Bradley. Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can make dash lines and stitches using brushes in Photoshop. And this is going to allow you to not only paint with stitches but also to use these to stroke things. One of the really nice effects that you can achieve in Photoshop is the idea of having dash lines that might show as for example faux stitching on an object. I’m going to show you the basics of doing that now. The first thing I’m going to do is create a really small document. So I’m thinking about 300 x 300 because I want to create my stitches. It’s going to be transparent. Now stitches are a brush so the first thing I’m going to do is go and grab my brush. And I’m going to use a rounded rectangle for this. So I’m just going to select the rounded rectangle tool, and I’m going to draw something that I can use as a stitch. Now I’ve drawn it as a shape. So let’s just undo that and let’s go and draw this as just pixels. It’s a much better option. And I’m just going to call that my brush shape. Now you can get into more detail with your brush shape. What I’m going to do is just show you how you can use this to create stitches. So now that we have this shape I’m just going to Ctrl Click on it so I have a selected. I’m going to make it a brush by choosing Edit Define Brush Preset. I’m just going to call this Stitch and click Ok. And now I can get rid of that document. So now we’re ready to use of the stitches to draw around this shape and perhaps across it as well. So I’m going to select my Brush tool and I’m going to select the very last of my brushes which is my new stitch. And right now it’s not going to do really very much of what I want it to do. But we’re just going to undo that and let’s go and set it up to be a bit more friendly. We’re going to open the Brushes Panel to do this. And this is my brush. And this is the reason why it’s painting the way it is is because that’s the way it’s set up to paint. So I’m going to adjust its spacing so it looks a little bit more like stitches. And I can make them close together or far apart. I can also change the size of them because they’re pretty large right now. But I could make them considerably smaller if I want to. Now I can adjust Shape Dynamics as well. And we’ll just see right now how this brush is going to paint and see if we need to make some changes to it. Now I’m going to add another object to this design. Let’s just add a shape up here. Let’s go and fill it with a darker orange color, Alt Backspace, Option Delete, Ctrl D or Command D to deselect the selection. And now with my brush I’m going to paint with white, and I’m going to paint some white stitches across this shape. So I can either paint with my paintbrush or I can click once up here to start my painting and then Shift Click across the other side so that I get evenly placed stitches, Click once, Shift Click on the other end. Now as you can see the brush is not really following the shape of my painting so I want to change the way that this brush is behaving. But to do that I’m going into shape dynamics. And I’m going to make sure that Size Jitter is disabled because I don’t want it to change size. And I don’t want the diameter to change either so I’m going to remove that. I don’t want the Angle to change so I don’t want it to change as I paint. But I do want it to follow the direction of my brush. And I also do not want any Roundness Jitter. So I’m going to make sure that everything is disabled except that the controls are for the Angle is now following the direction of the brush. And now look how it’s painting. Wherever my brush goes it’s starting to follow that brush. So that’s a lot more of the way I want that brush to be painting. Okay, let’s face the problem of this circle. I’m going to actually just increase the size a little bit for this circle. Let’s turn that off. So now I have my brush selected and I want a stroke around the circle. So let’s just go and get this layer. And I can Ctrl Click on this layer to make a selection but I want a stroke inside the shape. So I’m going to choose Select Transform Selection because that allows me to transform this selection. And provided I now hold Shift and Alt as I drag in I’m going to actually drag in on the shape so that it now becomes a concentric circle inside the original circle. I’m going to click the checkmark here. So now I have a strokeable selection. But I want to stroke it so I’m going to choose Window and then Paths, and I’m going to turn it into a Work Path. And when it’s a Work Path it can be stroked with a brush. And this is the option here. So I have my brush selected, my color, my stitch, and it’s all set up. I’m going to click here to Stroke Path With Brush. And we’re seeing not only the path but also the brush so let’s just trash the path for now. And you can see that I now have a stitching line inside the shape. And because I have the angle correct the stitching line is going around the shape as if that shape were actually stitched. So there you have a way of creating brushes in Photoshop that you can use for stitching. You know how to make straight stitching lines and you know how to make stitching lines that follow your brush. And you also know how to stitch a shape by creating a path and then stroking that path so that you have this really nice effect. I’m Helen Bradley. Thank you for joining me for this video training session. Look out for more of my video tutorials on my YouTube channel.

Helen Bradley