Photoshop Brushes and Cursors

[Tom V]

In my upcoming tutorial on masking and selections (as requested by fellow forum followers), I realized that all of it would be easier if Photoshop users had access to the nice set of Photoshop brushes that I use.

http://users.foxvalley.net/~tomvoegeli/Brushes/index.html (link updated Feb 23, 2004)

I find Photoshop's default brushes hard to work with, so I made my own set of brushes. There are 4 groups of brushes in sizes from 1 pixel to 300 pixels in DIAMETER. All have 100% ROUNDNESS and 15% SPACING. The first set has 100% HARDNESS (no fuzzy edges), the second set has 75% HARDNESS, the third has 50% HARDNESS, and the last has 25% HARDNESS. There is another group of really soft brushes from 1 pixel to 400 pixels with 0% HARDNESS, which I use for subtle effects like dodging / burning / smoke / blending, etc. There may be a few oddball brushes at the bottom I never use. I set my BRUSHES palette so that the first 4 sets of brushes each take up two rows each, which makes it very easy to click on the brush I want. I don't find the BRUSH palette to be the most intuitive thing, so I don't like to spend time there.

Make your life a lot easier by setting your cursor to show the brush diameter. Go to EDIT > PREFERENCES > DISPLAYS & CURSORS... set PAINTING CURSORS to BRUSH SIZE, and OTHER CURSORS to PRECISE. Now you will see the area your brush is painting (at the 50% threshold - important to remember on soft brushes) and you will see the exact location other cursors are acting on.

Whenever I help a friend or client set up Photoshop, I load in my uniform brushes, and set all the preferences as above. It make their life easier, and my life easier as I try to explain how simple everything is.

[Added 10/03/03]: This thread has some posts in it that refer to a problem with some of the original file compression used on the above mentioned .abr brush file. The file compression was removed, and all the problems talked about below have been straightened out. And in the end, everyone (that I know of) had success downloading and using the .abr file that is at the link in my hack webspace.

[Swampy]

Will be waiting patiently for your tutorial. BTW, how do you ADD the brushes? IE: Where do you put them and how do you tell PS to use them? Told you I'm bad at PS!

[Steve Wynn]

No I'm really bad!

Steve

[Tom V]

Originally posted by swampy101
... BTW, how do you ADD the brushes? IE: Where do you put them and how do you tell PS to use them? ...

Good question. I realized that I should put some instructions in here somewhere.

Photoshop has several sets of brushes built in, which can be activated, amended, replaced, edited, etc. in the BRUSHES palette sub-menus.

Uncompress the file of your choice (link above), and put the Tom's_Uniform_Brushes.abr file in with the rest of Photoshop's brushes.

... > ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 7 > PRESETS > BRUSHES.

I am fairly certain that the file will work with Mac or PC, just as Actions presets do.

The file may also work with previous versions of Photoshop. You can rename the file if you like, but I would leave the .abr on it.

To activate the newly installed brushes in Photoshop: Start Photoshop,... go to WINDOWS > BRUSHES (to open the Brushes palette). On the upper right of the Brushes palette there is a "pull-out menu" triangle icon you should click on. In that menu is LOAD BRUSHES, from which you navigate to Photoshop's Presets and Brushes folders, and select Tom's_Uniform_Brushes.abr (or other brushes).

By "Loading" Brushes, they will be added to your Brushes palette. If, in the Brush palette side menu you select REPLACE BRUSHES, the current brushes are replaced by whatever you select.

You can make your own brushes, save them in sets (.abr files), and recall them via the menu, trade with friends, make a massive list of brushes, or a streamlined set. Customize it the way you want.

I have just the brushes I made in my Brushes palette, and do without the eyeball, stars, firetruck and zigzag brushes.

[Tom V]

i just realized that the brushes available for Photoshop to activate are listed at the bottom of the Brush palette side menu. So you don't have to go through all the "Load Brushes..." dialog and navigation. But it is probably good to know anyway.

[jknights]

Thanks Tom, more useful learnings.
I am sure I could live to 200 and still not know everything that I need to know about about Photoshop, much less all there is to know !!

BTW the download page works fine.

[Claude Ollieuz]

Tom,
Thanks for a once more enlightening contribution.
Just a little hitch: the brush file cannot be used by PS 6 or PSE 1

[Tom V]

Claude,

I will see if I can make a set of brushes with Adobe Elements, and I will look for the brushes I used with Photoshop 6. I hope I can make this easy for everyone. When I find / make them, I will post the files on my hack website.

[Swampy]

I think Claude is experiencing the same thing as me. When I unzip the file, I get "Tom's_Uniform_Brushes.abr.bin", not an "abr" file. So, just for giggles, I take off the .bin and now photoshop will actually see it when adding a new brush. But, try and add it and it comes up with the error that Claude posted. And I'm using PS7.

[Claude Ollieuz]

Tom and Swampy,
On a hunch I downloaded the .sit, the .zip and the.exe.
All three lead to the same problem when decompressed.
I did that because because of the .bin extension that Swampy mentions. It is apparently another stage of compression wich Stuffit extracts to .abr,...but still no dice:(

[toners]

For what its worth, I used Tom's Window's self extracting file, got a resulting file with an .abr extension, but got the error message, which was not too surprising, as Ii am using an antique - PS 5.0. If I could overcome laziness, I suppose I could build the brushes myself from Tom's specs, which are clear. Then, making the big upgrade is a possibility also, if my $$ hadn't been used up by the S2, a pile of CF cards, an Image Tank, and lastly the new Dell which will arrive in a few days. Thank goodness we save so much going digital!

[Tom V]

I found the Brushes that I used in my Photoshop 6 program and saw that it was a much smaller file (4 K vs. 32 K) than the .abr that I used in Photoshop 7. I figure that the additional options in PS7 make the .abr files bigger.

I was able to open either .abr file in PS 6, PS 7 and Elements 1.0.

I posted the Tom's_Uniform_Brushes6.abr file in my hack webspace in .sit , .zip, .hqx (BinHex), and without compression.

Just maybe something will work.

Beats me what is going wrong or how to fix it.

http://users.myexcel.com/tomvoegeli/brushes/

[Swampy]

Don't know why the Zipped version keeps coming out as a .bin file when I unzip it. But. I grabbed the straight .abr file and I could add them no problem.

Thanks Tom!

Now, where's that tutorial? :D

[Tom V]

Alright!

I deleted all the compressed files, and now only have the straight uncompressed .abr file at the hack website.

The other day, I had problems downloading the straight file, so figured I had to compress it. So I posted a bunch of compressed versions, which everyone had problems uncompressing. I uploaded the .abr file again, redid my HTML, reloaded the web page, tested the new link, and it all worked.

Now, to finish that tutorial....

[Claude Ollieuz]

Thanks Tom,
The straight .abr now works fine with both PS 6 and PSE 1.

Forgot to say I am under Win XP Home

[Swampy]

Tom - Did you mean next weekend for the tutorial..... ;)

[Tom V]

Last night, I finished writing the tutorial. I did all the screen shots, and now just have to crop the screen shots and throw it all up on the forums. It takes FAR LONGER to write the tutorial than to do work described. The tutorial is on how I select and mask, specifically on how I did the viola.

I originally did the viola work in about 1 hour, and creating the tutorial has taken 6 hours.

[Don65Stang]

I need all the PS help I can get. Thanks for your 6 hours in developing the tutorial and thatnks for the other 6 in dealing with the compression issues.

BTW, remember:
Violence and technology don't make good bedfellows.