Ian Swenson .com

Adding Photoshop Brushes

What I ended up doing was going to deviantART to grabbing some brushes. To find them, visit deviantART -> Resources -> Application Resources -> Photoshop Brushes. Then I usually select “All Time” display all the brushes. Go to my bio page for the links to the actual brushes I used.

If you’re using an older version of Photoshop (newest being CS3 at time of writing this), not all brushes may work for you but the brush should say what version it’s for. Also, most of the fine folk posting brushes allow you to use the brushes free for non-commercial web sites, but they’ll state their individual policies. Usually they’re only looking for credit.

Once you’ve downloaded the brush(es) you want, unzip the file if it’s been compressed (usually a .zip file). Take the .abr file and put it in your C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Presets\Brushes folder or equivalent. If you have the Photoshop program open now, close it and restart it for your brushes to show up.

But how do you access your new brush? It’s actually pretty easy. Once you’ve accessed the brush tool (underneath the healing brush tool family) the brush toolbar will appear at the top. Under the Brush: heading, you should see your default or last used brush and a down arrow next to it. Select the down arrow and a bevy of options will appear, but not your new brush yet. Instead now select the circular side arrow in the upper right corner of the pop-up window. The last group of items in this menu include the names of all the brushes in your brushes folder. Select the brush(es) you want to add one at a time. When the prompt comes up, you want to Append it. This will add the new brushes to your list.

I usually go through each new brush individually (because the .abr file you downloaded likely contains many new brushes) and make sure I like it. You can delete any brush you don’t want — like the signature brush many include — by right-clicking on it and selecting Delete Brush.