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In this tutorial you will learn how to make your own set of grunge brushes for Photoshop using After Effects.You don’t need to install any additional plugins or any assets.You can create as many brushes as you need starting with this example, and create your own unique grunge set.A ready made set of grunge brushes is available for download at the end of this tutorial.

Step 1

First open up After Effects, now go to COMPOSITION/NEW COMPOSITION and use the settings bellow.

Step 2

Once you created your composition, you can save your project.The next step is to add a solid layer to your stage, to do that go to LAYER/NEW/SOLID and use the settings bellow.

Step 3

Now you need to add the Effect that will generate our grunge background, in this case we will be using Fractal Noise, so go to your Effects & Presets panel and drag that effect over your solid.

Step 4

The next step is to change the settings needed in order to generate a grunge background, the settings used in this tutorial are in the next two images, you can generate as many backgrounds as you need in order to create different brush presets all you need to do is change the settings bellow, there is no limit to how many you can make.

The second part of settings for our effect.

Step 5

When you like the background that is being generated you can export that image as a PSD so we can use it to create our brush, for that go to COMPOSITION/SAVE FRAME AS/PHOTOSHOP LAYERS

Step 6

Now open the PSD file you just saved in Photoshop, and go to VIEW and disable PIXEL ASPECT RATIO CORRECTION, once you did that you can save your PSD and move on to the next step.

Step 7

Now we need to select only the parts of the image that will be included in our brush, those parts should be black in this case, so we need to create a new adjustment layer, so go to LAYER/NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER/LEVELS, or select it from your ADJUSTMENTS panel, and start moving the sliders until you have a  complete white background and clearly visible dark shapes.

Step 8

When you image is clean enough, like the parts visible bellow, you can select the two layers you have and merge them, now go to IMAGE/MODE and select RGB and 16 BITS/CHANNEL.

Now we need to make a selection, and remove all the white parts, keeping only our grunge dark parts.Go to SELECT/COLOR RANGE, a new window will pop up make sure you have selected the first checkbox, and use the settings bellow, you can use the color picker tools to add or remove colors from your selection if necessary, click ok when done.

Step 9

Ok now you have your selection, but you selected all the white and not the dark parts, to correct that go to SELECTION/INVERSE, now select a selection tool (for example Rectangular Marque Tool), now right click over your selected area and click LAYER VIA COPY, this will create a new layer that will hold only your selection, turn off the visibility for the old layer and done.

Step 10

Now to make our brush, go to EDIT/DEFINE BRUSH PRESET and name your new custom grunge brush.

Saving your brushes

You can now use your new brush, make a few more by playing around with the settings in After Effects and repeating all the steps in Photoshop, once you have a set ready you can save it as a ABR file, to do that go to EDIT/PRESET MANAGER, a new window will open, select Brushes at the top (you can delete all the brushes you don’t need) press and hold CRTRL and clcik teh brushes you want to be in your set, release the CTRL key and hit SAVE SET and you just made a custom set of brushes.

You can download a ready made set of grunge brushes bellow or preview a ready made set.