never made a brush, need one having problems.

[artmaker]

Can't believe I never did this before, never needed one. Do now!
In help, it states select some part of image, go to edit/define brush preset.

So ok, I have a basic black on white graphic, select with wand, tolorance at zero, and edit define brush IS GRAY!

What am I missing?

Also... is there a way to rotate a brush already in photoshop?

CS2 by the way.

[Swampy]

Brushes are not created from those types of selections. Just use the marque tool and select the area "around" what you want to use as the new brush. White is ignored anything in your marquee that is black (or shade(s) of gray) will comprise the brush.

You can rotate the brush in the brush engine. There is a circle with a cross hair that you can spin or reshape for the brush.

[artmaker]

Ok now I'm really confused.

I opened a simple small image, selected some bit with the lasso, and viola. The edit/define brush preset was there.

Tried with marquis, same thing.
Tried with the wand, same thing.

So.. ok. Perhaps it's the huge file I was working on earlier.
I opened that.
Tried all three of the above. I could select with lasso, or marquois, but with the wand? I got such a huge portion, I think that was it.
So made a new layer, with a black fuzzy brush made a squiggle, and selected that with the wand. It worked!
WHY wouldn't edit/define brush preset appear earlier? The thing I selected was not that big. Even tried streatching and shrinking it.
Who knows. computer was constipated I guess.

[artmaker]

By the way, maybe it would help to know what I wanted this for?

I needed to make a torn edge shape I could use as an eraser to make a faux edge around some artwork.
I finally got the result I wanted,
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php...ng_id=13483448
(click the image to enlarge it.)
not the easy way but it worked.

I already had a scan of a torn piece of paper bag.
I opened that, selected the background, inversed, filled with black.
there is my "cookie cutter."
Put that shape on a layer over the art, select it, then turn on the art layer and delete.
Kind of a pain, moving it, resizing it so it's not making any repeating pattern.
But eventually this works.

be a whole lot easier to make a brush shape like this and use it as an eraser.
(Or several)

[Swampy]

Or scan a rectangle of torn paper bag about 5x7(so you have torn edges on all 4 sides). Save as a high res file. Then when you need the effect, open the file resize to the same dimension as your current project (and rotate if necessary) and define as a _pattern_. Then use the Pattern Stamp Tool (under the clone brush) to selectivly mask or add edges where you want them.