If you haven’t begun to explore the world of paintbrushes in Adobe Photoshop then you truly don’t know what you’re missing! Brushes offer a wide variety of creative ways to express yourself in your Photoshop projects and come in such a huge assortment that you’ll never stop coming up with ways in which to use them.
You can find optional brushes for Photoshop on the web that are usually free to download. Once you download them, however, you’ll have to know how to install them in order to be able to take full advantage of the creative freedom that Photoshop brushes offer.
First you’ll want to download your brush files directly to your desktop so that they are easy to locate once you’re ready to install them.
Next, use you’re My Computer icon to navigate to the drive in which you have Photoshop installed and locate the folder where your brush files are saved.
For Photoshop CS2 that directory is as follows: C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Photoshop CS2PresetsBrushes
This directory may vary depending on the version of Photoshop you’re running and how it was installed. If you have a problem locating your brushes folder, simply do a search on your hard drive for *.abr
Using the * before the file extension will bring up a list of all of the files which have the .abr extension, which is how your brush files will be named. From your search results, you’ll be able to pinpoint the location of your brushes folder and open it on your desktop.
Once you have your brushes folder open, you’ll want to copy the brush files that you’ve downloaded into the folder. Be aware that most brush files that you’ll download will be compressed in a zip format. If that’s the case then you’ll want to extract the brush file from the zipped folder and then copy only the brush file into your brushes folder. Simply drag and drop the files from your desktop into the brushes folder.
Now that you’ve successfully moved your brand new brush files into your brushes folder, you’ll want to take a look at the new things you have to play with.
In order to access your new brushes, simply open Photoshop once your files have been copied, select your paintbrush tool from the tool box, and then go to your brushes palette. In Photoshop CS2 you’ll find the brushes palette located in the upper right hand portion of the toolbar.
When you click on the Brushes tab it will immediately pop open a window which will show you your brush selections. By default, Photoshop will only load the most recent set of brushes that you used, which are more than likely the default set of standard brushes. In order to see the new brushes you’ve installed, click on the tiny arrow next to the word ‘Brushes’ on the tab and a list of all of the available brushes will appear. You should see the file names of the brushes you’ve installed on the list.
To load the brushes into your brushes menu, simply click on the file name. Immediately you will see a box appear which asks if you would like replace the current brushes with the new brush file you’ve selected. By choosing “OK”, you will only see the brushes that are listed in the new file you’ve selected, however if you choose to “Append” your new brush set will be included in the list along with the ones previously shown.
It’s a good idea, when you’re experimenting with brushes, to use the “OK” option so that you don’t end up with a list of brushes that are ten miles long. This will give you the opportunity to play with each brush file individually to find out how it will best work for your project needs. It’s easy enough to access your default brush set if you need too by selecting “Basic Brushes” from the list of brush files.
Next, you’ll want to scroll through you list of currently loaded brushes and select the one you want to try out! Start out with using a plain white canvas and experiment with your new brushes to see the kinds of effects you can create with your new Photoshop gadget. You can easily create borders for images, attractive graphics for the web, and even nifty embellishments for your scrapbooking projects.
So, go on, what are you waiting for? Grab your paintbrush and get started!
