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Choose a yellow color from any of the color picking methods (ie. the color chooser or swatch palette). Now go to the Shapes tool ‘U’ and choose the butterfly shape. You are going to create this into a brush preset.

Make sure that you are on Fill pixels as shown on the left hand side of the options bar.

Now create a new blank layer by clicking on the new layer icon on the bottom of the layers palette.

With black as your foreground color click and drag to create a small sized butterfly.

Ctrl click on the layer icon of the butterfly and go to Edit: Copy. This will copy the exact dimensions needed to paste the butterfly onto its own new document.

Now go File: new and press OK.

Now go to Edit: Define brush preset and enter a name for your butterfly layer (like “larry”). Press OK and then ‘B’ to get your brush tool.

Now bring up the Brushes palette from the view menu or double click on it to open the palette. Scroll down and you will see your butterfly now has metamorphosized into a brush preset. This is the new theory of evolution.

Welcome to the next evolution smurfs. Now you can adjust the spacing (unless you want really crowded and flustered butterflies) to get a ‘free’ butterfly. You can also adjust other attributes as with any brush (at least in Photoshop 7 and especially CS).

Choose a purple color for your new butterflies.

Create a new blank layer (remember to do this) or they will appear on the currently selected layer in the layers palette. Keeping them on their own layers gives them the freedom they need as new butterflies.

Mix things up a little with your brushes palette still open and enter the Shape Dynamics. Here you can create chaotic butterflies that still look free or just going in different directions by changing the angle and size jitter. Make sure you select Shape Dynamics by clicking on the actual name and not just clicking on the checkbox to enter the editing attributes.

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