Bringing the World to Life in Your Designs with Brushes in Adobe Capture

Having the right tools during a moment of creative inspiration can mean everything to your design projects. The ability to snap a photo or make a sketch of a pattern or object you would love to add to your designs is not only a necessarily, but fun.

Enter Adobe Capture.

Capture lets creatives take an image of anything from the world around them — pictures, patterns, or art — and turn it into a brush. Now you can capture inspiration everywhere you go.

Don’t just take our word for it. Learn from these designers who use Adobe Capture to take their projects to the next level.

Brian Yap

Brian Yap, a creative director working in advertising for many years, has found Capture very useful in his often very vector-oriented workflow. Mobile apps like Adobe Capture allow him to work while he travels or anytime he is on the go.

For example, one day he was experimenting with creating brushes in Capture when he came across a little piece of cardboard that was shaded on one side. The effect the shading created intrigued him, so he decided to capture a photo of the image and turn it into brush. The resulting brush formed a spiny, striped pattern.

“I used the brush to create the spine of a Lion Fish,” Yap says. “It’s the perfect example of why I love creating brushes in Capture. You can really create some really bizarre, outlandish things. It opens up so many design options.”

Yap’s experience shows that elements in the world around us, like a simple piece of cardboard, have the potential to spark imagination and inspire great design. And the possibilities are endless.

“I can create brushes from almost any image, brushes that can be used in both Sketch and Photoshop. I’ve even laid down brushstrokes and then screen captured the image and run it back through Capture to create a vector shape,” Yap says.

Check out the brushes Yap created in Capture and used in the “Lion Fish” design, and download them here.

Jenean Morrison

“There are several ways that I like to use Capture in my workflow,” says Jenean Morrison, a surface and textile designer. “I usually like to produce a design in Draw and then take those elements into Capture and create either a scatter brush that I can use for texture or a repeat brush that I can use to create a line.”

Morrison has been using Capture for several years, and finds it helpful in her career designing artwork for consumer products such as rugs, fabrics, and scrapbook kits. “Even if I’m struggling for an idea, I can go for a walk and take a picture of anything that catches my eye. I make a brush out of the image, and then, there’s my new look. It just keeps the creativity going endlessly,” she says.

With all of its versatility, Capture remains easy to use. A few minutes with this shapes tutorial and you will be ready to go. You can download Morrison’s brushes here.

Kervin Brisseaux

Kervin Brisseaux is an designer with a master’s degree in architecture. After years of freelancing, he has settled into a career as an illustrator at Vault49, a brand studio out of New York.

Creative Cloud apps, like InDesign and Illustrator, carry Brisseaux far in his projects, but Capture has given him an easier way to be inspired, and a more direct method for creating brushes and patterns.

“What Capture allows you to do is use something as simple as your iPhone or other mobile devices you have, and take a photo of a drawing that you create, or even a brick texture or an item of clothing,” he says. “It will automatically convert that into an asset that you can use. Whether it’s a pattern or some sort of brush, it really is a way of streamlining that whole design process and changing the way I work.”

Below are a few examples of Brisseaux’s strokes from Capture. Download these brushes here.

As you’re getting started with Capture, Brisseaux offers this advice: “Keep it simple. Stick to the one thing about Capture that you gravitate towards the most — I recommend starting with brushes — especially if you’re not familiar with the mobile tools.”

As a designer, you find inspiration everywhere. With Capture, you can act on that inspiration whenever it strikes. Download Adobe Capture and start creating your own brushes today.