How do I create Brushes that are not blured?

[Papa Mike]

Hello everyone. I just started a new project and was trying to create a brush set for Photoshop instead of painting every mountain by hand. Only problem is, that my brushes are not as crisp as the original drawing. Anyone encountered the same problem? Is there a solution for this?
Thanks in advance ...

[- Max -]

Not sure if I understand well but the best way is in my opinion to draw your elements by hand, then scan them, import in PS and turn them into brushes. You have to set the brushes size that you want on your map and don't scale them or they're gonna blur when you use them.

[Diamond]

That's a problem that you're really not going to get away from using a raster-based program like PS; the brush is only crisp and sharp at the size it was originally 'built' at. To scale a brush up or down in size and still maintain crispness, you'd need a vector-based program like Illustrator.

[Midgardsormr]

However, you'll get less blurring by scaling down than by scaling up, so it's generally a good idea to create a large brush rather than a small one.

Also, just to cover all the bases, make sure that Hardness is set to 100%.

[Hai-Etlik]

That's a problem that you're really not going to get away from using a raster-based program like PS; the brush is only crisp and sharp at the size it was originally 'built' at. To scale a brush up or down in size and still maintain crispness, you'd need a vector-based program like Illustrator.

Even if you use vector symbols, scaling them by different amounts will likely result in a visual mismatch in the level of detail, although this varies with the symbols and the style. When I did the symbols for my Britannia map for instance, I was very careful to draw them all at the same size using the same pen, and then scale them by the same amount after vectorizing.

[Papa Mike]

Thanks for any advice, but the problem is not how to get the drawing into Photoshop.
I've done the drawing, and then used the standard "create brush" thingy Photoshop provides for that kind of task. I always thought this would be a simple task where nothing can go wrong, but obviously I'm doing something wrong. Here is an Example so that you guys can see what the problem is.blurred_brush_example.png
The left hill is the original which I used to create the brush, the right one is created by that brush. No scaling or dynamics involved, but its blurred and I don't know why and how to fix that.

[vorropohaiah]

i doubt it but - brush hardness not set to 100%?

[tilt]

The brush should be a perfect copy - I would say to look at all your settings when you paint, hardness, opacity, paint mode and also check the layer settings.

[Papa Mike]

I can't change the hardness on my custom brushes. The control for that is greyed out, so I think it is using some kind of a default setting. I painted them both on the same layer, so there are no different settings. Opacity and Flow is at 100 %
The only thing I noticed is, that the result is less blurry the bigger the brush gets. Anyone heard about that before?

[RobA]

It is probably an issue of pixels interpolation. Even if you paint with the brush at 100% it might be blurry unless you snap it to pixels.

Think this way... If your brush was a perfect 1px thick horizontal line and you touch it to the canvas anywhere other than dead center on a pixel, it will get interpolated as a blurry line.

That's my guess, though I haven't used photoshop for a while... Not sure of the workaround, other than starting larger then scaling the finished product down.

-RobA>