I'm not Really obsessed with brushes today.. (well maybe a little) but I found a stock photo of this great tree and I want to make a brush from it. However, I'd like it to have some sort of soft edge.. rather than the hard edges of the photo. Or maybe just a brush of the tree itself. I've no idea how to do the later, I've never worked with layer masks, but from the thread I read a few minutes ago that sounds like it might be the way. Here's the photo. I'd love to hear your suggestions on how this might be done, or suggestions of where to look for tutorials that might get me there. 

Thanks

Myst 

I really need to get some sleep.. because I am answering my own posts again. I was fiddling around just now.. and I wanted to show someone my very first brush. I just painted in with white the areas I didn't want to show, then added a layer and painted it in with white and reduced the opacity a great deal.. and came up with a brush of the tree. Its not a great brush..but I did get one made. I'd still Love to hear your suggestions for making a good one

Myst.

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2650390

looks real good i just started to make brushes here's my first brush i made scroll down to the first image thats the brush the other was used in a image.

Deadman 67

love the forest brush! very nice! I was able to clean up the one I made a lot after working on it some more but I still think theres got to be a better method than theone I used for picking one element out of a photo and making it a brush I'm going to keep reading and experimenting

myst

,,

 

What you want to make is a matte, not a brush. A matte will let you re-color, re-light, and manipulate just the tree.

Here's a quick example of what I mean by making a matte. This is the source image:

And here's the matte:

1. Take your source image, and go the the Channels window.
2. Select the channel (Red, Green, or Blue) with the most contrast between the tree and the background.
3. Duplicate Channel....
4. Use Curves to make the duplicated channel black and white (white what you want to keep, black what you want to remove). You can use any other tool to remove unwanted areas like Brush Tool, Lasso Tool, Paint Bucket Tool, etc.
5. Use Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches... to remove unwanted specks.
6. Ctrl-LMB on the duplicated channel, when you're finished, and go back to the Layers window. Select the Background layer, and hit Ctrl-j to duplicate only what is selected into a new layer.
7. Layer > Matting > Defringe a few times to clean up the edges.