Understanding some aspects of brushes suitable for creating peeled paint effects in Photoshop will improve your efficiency in creating such effects. Two such aspects include brush hardness and randomness. If you don't find a suitable brush among Photoshop's galleries, create your own brush with the "Edit" menu's "Define brush preset" command.
Hardness
- Brushes used to create peeling paint effects in Photoshop should have a hard edge, not soft. Begin creating such an edge after selecting the "Paintbrush" tool by clicking the second leftmost drop-down control above the canvas. Drag the "Hardness" slider in the small window that appears all the way to the right to give the brush a crisp, hard edge. This means that only the pixels directly under your brush will receive paint when you press the left mouse button. Soft-edged brushes bleed paint onto surrounding pixels.
Randomness
- When you apply brushes to create a peeled paint effect, the paint shouldn't look manipulated by a human, but random, as though nature produced the weathering. To create random-looking paint strokes in Photoshop, use the program's "Jitter" options in the "Brush" panel. Begin by clicking the manila folder icon above the "Tools" panel, after running the "Paintbrush" command. This action opens the "Brushes" panel. Click the "Shape dynamics" item on the panel's left side, then drag the "Size jitter" and "Angle jitter" sliders all the way to the right. The next time you apply paint with the brush, the "Angle jitter" setting will make the brush rotate after each mouse click, and the "Size jitter" setting will vary brush size.
Use Existing Brushes
- You can use some of Photoshop's existing brushes to create paint peeling effects. Things to look for in a brush tip shape include linearity. The brush shape shouldn't look speckled with round flecks, but raked with roughly horizontal or vertical lines. These shapes represent both the grain direction of painted wood, and the direction in which real-world painters apply brush strokes.
Searching for a Paint Peeling Brush
- Begin searching for a suitable brush shape by clicking the second leftmost drop-down menu above the canvas to display the "Brush preset" gallery. Scroll through the gallery's icons until you find a brush tip with many linear elements arranged in a way that looks random or naturally disordered. To begin loading additional galleries in which to locate such a brush, click the button at the top right of the gallery to display a list of brush categories, such as "Dry media" and "Natural." Click a category to load its brush tips into the brush-tip gallery.
