I confess that this tutorial began as a tutorial about brushes, templates and patterns, and their interchangeability. However, just the brush section took so long, that I decided to post it on it's own, then try to do a tutorial or two about patterns and templates later. On with the brushes tut!

Hello, my name is Dawn, and I'm a brush addict. I collect them, use them, make them, honor them. I have soooo many brushes I have not even seen them all! (You will not get advice about how to organize your brushes here, because obviously, I'm clueless! However, I am determined to figure it out very soon, so perhaps I will amend this tutorial later.)

Brushes are implemented by using the pencil, paintbrush or airbrush tools, or even the eraser tool, almost as if the brushes were "stamps." You know, those little things that you press into an ink pad, then press on paper to get the design to show up? It is the same principle. Brushes are confined to a certain size range though, although there are some things you can do to change that. Here is an example of a100x100 brush. A diagonal brush "stamped" on a white background:

 

Brushes are not such a mystery. Anytime you use the pencil tool or paint brush you are using a brush. Usually, just a round one, but a brush all the same. Photoshop comes with a collection of brushes that leaves a lot to be desired. So, along comes custom brushes!

These are the brushes that you see in LJ and GJ brush communities, and all over the web. Generally speaking, you get icon sized brushes at the journal communities, and larger brushes on the web. Just google free photoshop 7 (or your PS version. All PS brushes don't work in all versions of PS) brushes, and you'll get tons of results.

Now that you've found the brushes you want, what do you do next? Generally speaking, you will normally download brush sets in a .zip file. (I'm not going to get into programs here, I'm going to assume you know how to download and unzip files.) Unzip the brushes into your brush directory. On all the computers I've used, this is in C>Program Files>Adobe>Photoshop X>Presets>Brushes.

Open Photoshop, and open an image. Click on the paintbrush tool. (The pencil tool does not work well with custom brushes, I don't know why, but you should just use the paintbrush.) Near the top of your screen, you will see the brush tool pop up in the options palette (I think it's called.) Click on the down arrow next to the brushes to see all your brushes and to access the preset manager. I drew a red box around the area I'm discussing:

Clicking that drop down arrow will get you a pop up box where you can see all your installed brushes. We haven't installed the brushes yet, so you won't see them there yet. You can see some of mine though.

See the small arrow within the small circle on the top right hand corner? ^^up there^^ Click that, then choose Preset Manager. The preset manager looks very similar to this, but it has buttons on the right. See?

Click the button that says Load, and you should be able to choose your new brushes from the list there. When/if it asks you (mine only does sometimes) tell it to APPEND. That means to add the new brushes to the bottom, without removing any of the brushes already there. Scroll down in your preset manager to see your new set of brushes. Go ahead, right here and now, and select and delete any of the brushes you know you won't use. You can always get them back later by reloading this set, and there are just toooooo many brushes to keep the ones you know you won't use.

When you are done, click Done. Next time you use your paintbrush tool, you will be able to see your new brushes in the drop down box from the options palette, like we saw above.

Now that you have them, how do you use them? I'll tell you, on the next page.

 

Page 2 - Using Brushes and Other Tips