How do you use photoshop brushes that you just downloaded?

Question

i just downloaded some brushes for photoshop from deviantart??? and i have the format i just don't know where to go to use it??

Answer 1

I answered a similar question a while ago (two by now actually)

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

and since I'm too lazy to write it all again:

Just unzip (if packed) or copy any brush files (brushname.abr) into your PS directory into the folder "Presets", there's a folder called "Brushes". There should be other files from the same type (.abr). Put the file(s) there. Then, when you start PS you should be easily able to load the brushes. (If PS is already active they won't appear in the brush menu yet)

To load brushes (in case you do not know) you choose a tool that uses brushes, then you see the little box (the second next to the one that shows you the activated tool) in the bar above,

Click the (second) box (showing the current brush), you get to see the menu to choose from the currently loaded brushes, there is a little arrow in the up right corner, click it and then you can either choose from the brushes you put into the folder

Photoshop CS3/Presets/brushes, their names are listed, or you choose "load brushes" and search for the folder you keep them in (because you can store your files anywhere and search for them then).

Then PS should ask you if you want to add them to the currently active brushes or replace the activated ones by the new ones (either is fine, you can load the other ones again, adding too many brushes could slow PS down, by the way). Done.

Here's a nice tip from

http://www.squidoo.com/photoshop_brushes

If you downloaded many brush sets and saved all of them in the default brushes folder (probably C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop X.X\Presets\Brushes where X.X is the version number), you will likely suffer long Photoshop loading time. In order to avoid this, it would be better to create a new folder inside the default brushes folder, and save your brushes there.

It is also possible that you can't remember where you downloaded your brushes from (in order to give proper credit), and since some brush authors don't give descriptive names to their sets, you should take care of it.

Some suggestions:

1. Inside your brushes folder create a new folder named website-name.com for every brush source. Save all the brush sets you downloaded there, renaming each with a menaningful name, for example vector-swirls.abr and similar.

2. Create a new folder named downloaded brushes or similar. Open all brush sets you downloaded from a particular site and save them as a single brush set named website-name.com.abr for each site.

I myself use abrviewer now, keeping my brush files in an extra folder, before loading tons of brushes into PS I can use abrviewer to look and sort the brushes without even opening PS.... So great, especially if you have many brushes... So get it if you intend to get a lot and sort them before putting them all in one folder....

Answer 2

You didn't even google, did you?  The first thing that comes up on a google search of "how to install Photoshop brushes" is exactly what you need.