What format and appearance should a custom brush tip have?

If you want to create an image and use it as a custom brush tip shape in Harmony, you have to make sure the image and artwork follow some simple rules in order for it to work well as a brush tip. Take note of the following guidelines when creating an image for custom Harmony brushes.

If you would like to know how to import these custom images as brush tips, see How do I import a custom brush tip?

Image file types

A brush tip can be made in any image creation software, including Harmony and Storyboard Pro. Just make sure your custom tip image is saved/exported in a format that Harmony recognises. The following formats are accepted file types for custom brush tip imports:

• Portable Network Graphic (.png)
• Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg/.jpeg)
• Photoshop Document (.psd, .psb)
• Tagged Image File Format (.tif)
• Truevision TARGA (.tga)
• Adobe Brush Resource (.abr)*

Image size and shape

Custom brush tips are always bitmap. Therefore the quality of the image is important - we want to avoid low quality, but also keep the brush tip optimised. Consider the following when setting the size of the brush tip canvas:

Canvas/image shape: 

• The canvas should ideally be square (same length on all sides), with the brush tip artwork in the centre. 

Canvas/image size: 

• It is recommended that the brush tip file resolution ranges from 100 x 100 pixels to 400 x 400 pixels, and 72 DPI.

Brush tip shape and properties 

The actual artwork created to form the brush tip can be any shape or texture, however there are a few things to keep mind:

• The brush tip can be any shape and any texture.
• The artwork should not touch the sides of the canvas unless you want there to be very harsh, straight edges on the brush shapes. Do not leave too much space around the brush shape either as this can result in unpredictable strokes.
• The background of the brush tip artwork should be solid white, not transparent.
• The brush tip artwork itself must be in greyscale, as Harmony will not acknowledge any colour used in the tip.
• Harmony will translate the greyscale into transparency - 100% black will be solid, 100% white will be transparent, and grey will be anything in between.
• Any variation in spacing or randomisation will be done with the brush settings in Harmony.

Once you are done, import your custom tip. See How do I import a custom brush tip? for more information.

Brush Tip Requirements Checklist

Below is a summary of the above requirements: