How to Install Photoshop Brushes

In this post, you learn how to install pre-made Photoshop brushes that you have downloaded from the internet. It is a part of a series, the other parts are:

The differences between Photoshop brushes and patterns,
How to make Photoshop brushes,
Installing Photoshop patterns,
How to make Photoshop patterns #1,
How to make Photoshop patterns #2.

How to install Photoshop Brushes

A very essential function of Adobe Photoshop is the use of brushes. Basically, a Photoshop brush is just like a brush in “normal life”. Only that Photoshop allows you to adjust a whole lot of parameters like form, spread, structure, color variance, edges and some more.

This can sound confusing if you’re a novice in Photoshop. But it really isn’t that hard to learn how to work with brushes and get the most out of your creativity!

As for our little Photoshop tutorial, now let’s see how we can install them to your computer.

You will find lots of free Photoshop brushes on Beeex.net. We always offer you a download link where you can download them to your hard drive. If it is a ZIP file, you need to unzip it first to get the source files. You can either do this with Winzip, or simply using the Windows Explorer (that is, if you have a Windows PC). That opens a ZIP file automatically if you double click on it.

After that, you get an .ABR file. This is the Photoshop brush file. Do the following:

1. Navigate to your Photoshop/Presets/Brushes folder and copy the .ABR files to that folder.
2. In Photoshop, open your Brushes palette (Window/Brushes), or simply press F5.
3. In the Photoshop Brushes palette, click on the arrow to the upper right, then click on ‘Load Brushes’
4. Find the .ABR file you just copied to the Brushes folder in step 1.

That’s it, your new Photoshop brushes are loaded and ready to use! You may have to scroll down in the Brushes palette to find them, as they have been appended to the existing brushes. The next time you open Photoshop, the brush set will be in the Brush library already.