Photoshop 60 Second Quick Tip, Signature as a Brush tool

Hello, welcome to my blog. Today I wanted to offer another Photoshop 60 Second Quick Tip. If you have ever tried to watermark or add a signature to your images in Photoshop, you might have run into (more than) a few steps than needed, to make it happen.  Today I will demonstrate how to turn your signature, symbol, or logo into a brush tool.  It’s a really a simple process and a huge time saver.

First you want to make a digital version of your signature. I used a Wacom tablet to create my signature, because with a mouse it is almost impossible to create a signature that looks good.  If you don’t have a Wacom tablet, you can use a black marker on white paper to make your signature, then take a picture of it and bring it into Photoshop.  TIP: You may want to run a “levels” adjustment to define a black and a white point (super simple, ctrl+L).  By doing so, the levels will help you to make a clean selection so you can extract the signature from the background.

A simple way to make the selection would be with the with the magic wand, but there are many other ways to do it. When you have the signature on a transparent background you can use it in Lightroom as an identity plate (be sure to save it as a .png for the artwork to be converted as a brush tool).

Note: Symbols and shapes can all be turned into brushes. Using your signature as a brush preset allows you greater flexibility, as well as speed, when you are trying to sign a photo or protect it with a watermark, just click it and you are done. Please watch the video below to see, just how easy it is, to turn your signature into a brush tool.

Thanks for taking time to visit my blog today and if you have any suggestions or questions please comment below.  I always try to answer them as soon as I can. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thomas Shue