Ever wanted to understand the details of creating and using Photoshop brushes, but didn’t know where to begin? Then look no further! This article has a combination of both creative and practical resources on Photoshop brushes. Get started with learning the ins and outs of Photoshop brushes.

How To Create Photoshop Brushes

Creating Photoshop brushes is surprisingly easy. To do it well, though, takes planning, creativity, and talent. The tutorials below cover the basic steps for creating Photoshop brushes. You’ll also be walked through the creation of some well-designed brushes. If you have little to no experience with creating brushes, then get started with the first tutorial from Bittbox below. It explains how brushes are not color but rather the image data is saved as ranges from transparent to opaque. It will get you started with some good beginner tips as well.

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  How To Make A Photoshop Brush

  This is a thorough introduction to creating a Photoshop brush. Bittbox covers each step involved in creating brushes. An excellent introduction to the process of making brushes.

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  Creating Grunge Brushes

  Veerle has many tutorials written with clarity on the Internet. This tutorial in no different. She walks you through the process of creating a Photoshop brush from a freely available grunge texture.

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  Complete Guide to Making a Fractal Brush

  This tutorial uses an attractive image of a fractal to create a custom brush. It’s possible to get creative in another program with image making and then use the image in Photoshop to make a brush. This tutorial covers that process.

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  Adobe Photoshop CS3: Brush Creation for Dummies

  I always liked the word Dummies in a title. It’s so much more offensive than the word Beginner, but in a acceptably fun way. This introductory brush creation tutorial covers the making of an attractive cloud brush.

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  Building a Lego Bricks Photoshop Brushes Set

  This tutorial is a bit esoteric in that it covers creating a Lego Brick brush. Not exactly a brush your likely to use often. Though its a fun concept. The tutorial also covers the brush settings by giving visual Lego block examples of how the different settings work.

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  Photoshop—Brush Tutorial

  This is a great video tutorial on making a brush in Photoshop. The pace of the tutorial is a little bit too slow though. The author’s voice might put you to sleep. But excellent material covered in just a few minutes. It’s worth dealing with those issues to learn this material.

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Using Photoshop Brushes

To use Photoshop brushes, you need to understand how to load them, save them as sets, and access them when you need them. There are also numerous settings that can be changed when using a Photoshop Brush. The tutorials, resources, and videos below cover both practical and creative brush uses.

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  Using Photoshop Brushes Tutorials here on Psdtuts+

  We have a handful of tutorials that show creative uses for Photoshop brushes here on Psdtuts+. Advanced Glow Effects covers a simple combination of applying a brush to a path and then using layer styles to get a glowing effect. Or follow the link below to the tutorial How To Create That Last Minute Holiday e-Card in Photoshop. It covers these type of brush techniques and settings in greater detail.

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  Using Photoshop Brush Palette

  This article comprehensively covers the Brush Palette. It explains in detail its features. Toward the end are links to similar articles that cover other aspects of Photoshop brushes.

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  How to Brush—Photoshop

  This is a cool time-lapse video that shows the creation of a layered design. The design is made from a multitude of brushes. This video shows you how an artist uses a variety of brushes to create a grunge tech style design. Brushes can be made from any image; the possible uses are unlimited. This video taps into that feeling of limitless brush options in Photoshop.

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  Photoshop All about Brushes; Editing, Loading, Using !!!

  This tutorial covers some of the basics you need to work with brushes. It’s really easy to save and load brushes once you know how. Brush settings are also covered well in this tutorial. This video tutorial has a polished professional feel. It’s a little long though, timing in at over 20 minutes.

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  Using Brushes in Photoshop CS3 Video

  Photoshop Support has some large training videos available. This tute is a really basic one about using brushes. It shows some simple examples of combining brushes with layer effects.

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  Photoshop Brush Tool Cheat Sheet

  This is a handy little cheat sheet for using Photoshop brushes.

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Finding Photoshop Brushes

There are loads of free Photoshop brushes across the Web. Many of them are of high-quality. There are many Web sites dedicated to listing downloadable brushes. Following are a handful of those available: Brusheezy, PS Brushes, and Brushfed. Graphic design communities are a good resource for finding free brushes. A quick search on DeviantART reveals an enormous collection available. Crazy Leaf Design Blog has an article with a nice collection of Brushes. Photoshop Support has a large collection of Brush Resources.

Brushes are a popular freebie to give away on blogs or communities. They are not that difficult to make so the bar to entry isn’t high. Of course, make an exceptional brush and it will shine. Bittbox gives away quality free brushes on a regular basis. There are some smaller design blogs that give away Photoshop brushes as well: PixlPusher and Blog Spoon Graphics. There are also plenty of blogs and communities that sell brushes, like: Designfruit and AiVault

Conclusion

Brushes are great! There are loads of Photoshop Brush resources available across the internet that you can tap into. If you wanted to, you could create an organized brush arsenal that would be always available at your fingertips. Brushes are a great way to personalize Photoshop. If you haven’t already, then start downloading some and playing with them. If you have any great brush resources or tutorials you’d like to share, feel free to link to them in the comments.