I’m always looking for a quicker, easier way to do things – and here’s a doozy! Know you how load brushes by clicking on the little menu thing in the upper right corner of the brush selection window and choosing Load Brushes? Well, there’s an even easier way! I’ve tried this in PS and PSE, and it’s SOOOO cool! Here’s whatcha do:
1. Navigate to the folder where you keep your brushes (you DO keep them in a folder with your scrap stuff so it’s included with your regular backups, RIGHT?) and find the .abr file you want to load.
2. Click and drag it onto your Photoshop or PS window – right into the gray background area of the work space.
3. Give it a sec, then open your brush selector, and TA-DAAAA! it’s THERE!
If you’re like me and keep Explorer windows open to drag stuff into PS, then this is the super-easy way to load brushes!!
For more neat things you can do with brushes, take our Brush Up! Class – Next session is October 19, 2009 at 10PM Eastern!
See you in class!
September 1, 2009
Another thing I’ve found is when I’ve just downloaded a new brush (into a special folder) I double click on it and it loads into PSCS3. I can then try the brush out. If I like it, I save the brushes – if not, I delete it from the brushes. Then I go back and move it from the folder that I downloaded it into, into a subfolder to try again another time.
Love your tips! Thanks for sharing,
Robin
.-= RobinW´s last blog ..Free Download-A-Day starts today at http://www.3scrapateers.com =-.
yes, Robin, that works great as long as you have PS set as your default program to open .abr files. The problem is I have two versions of PS and two versions of PSE installed, so I can’t really do that, as I ‘m always using the version I DON’t have designated. Of course you can do right – click and Open With, but I find dragging is easier. That’s the cool thing about PS – there’s a million ways to do everything!
.-= Jenn´s last blog ..Quick Tip Tuesdays – draggin’ my brushes around! =-.
No way! I’m going to try that.
Can anyone recommend a good brush previewer? I spend waaaaay too much time loading brushes that I don’t want. If I could see them before hand, it would be so much easier.
.-= Creative Junkie´s last blog ..There’s a 99% chance this blog post will suck =-.
I have Tumasoft’s Preset Viewer 2.1 – it’s pretty good when I remember to start it up! It also shows you styles, patterns, shapes, etc. That’s very useful, and totally worth the price. You can find it here:
http://www.tumasoft.com/
They’re having a sale right now, you can get it for just $25! Totally worth it!
.-= Jenn´s last blog ..Quick Tip Tuesdays – draggin’ my brushes around! =-.
I do have mine in a folder & back up as I download them. I just don’t remember to download them as a whole.
.-= Zanne´s last blog ..Summer Splash =-.
That is a great tip I can’t wait to try it, thanks so much !!!
.-= Sherrie´s last blog ..Lunch – The Alford Arms (again) =-.
I loved this tip, but I tried it and couldn’t get it to work by dragging the brush to the gray space of my open document window in PSCS 4. So I tried dragging the .abr file to the Photoshop icon on my dock (Mac) and it worked! Yeah! I never would have thought of that on my own. It will make loading brushes a whole lot easier. Now if I could only find a brush viewer that works well on the Mac. Thanks for all the great tips!