Here's a quick tutorial on uploading brushes so you can stock pile your arsenal of brushes.
Note: to follow along with this tutorial you must have WinZip installed. Other zipping/extracting programs like WinRar work too, but i choose to use WinZip (plus its the least complicated program
).
first, start out by finding the brush set you would like to download.
most brushes come as sets, not as individual brushes, meaning you must download them as a pack. there are a lot of free brushes online as well as some you will have to pay for.
Note: not all brushes are compatable with all versions of Photoshop. as far as i believe, brushes are compatable with the next version, but usually not backwards compatable, meaning a brush designed for CS2 will not work on 7.0, but most brushes made for 7.0 will work in CS2.... unless it it told to you in the download page, you will not know if it is compatable until you try to upload it into Photoshop.
after you locate the brush set you want, you then want to download it.
i use DeviantArt.com for most of my brush findings, so thats what i will reference here.
click the orange computer icon to download the brush
since i dont plan on needing the zip file of the brush, i opt to just choose "Open With" rather than saving the file. for this tutorial's purpose, make sure you have WinZip selected as the program of choice.
next, open the file with WinZip, and locate any files that end in the extension .abr
there may be more than one, so highlight them and hit the extract button
it doesnt matter where you extract the files to, so long as you remember where you put them. it is not necessary to put them in a specific folder for them to work in Photoshop.
after you extract the file(s), go back to Photoshop, and select the brush tool. go to the brush toolbar and click the down arrow next to the type of brush. from there, click the right arrow button next to the Master Diameter slider. and in the drop down menu, choose "Load Brushes..."
locate the .abr file(s), and hit Ok, and your new brushes will now be available in the brush selection window.
