Creating Custom Photoshop Brush Folders

Creating Custom Photoshop Brush Folders 

Watch the video demonstration below for an easy to follow explanation of how to load your new custom brushes.

Creating Custom Photoshop Brush Folders:

Creating custom Photoshop Brush folders inside the brush panel engine is a an easy and effective way to organize and keep track of brushes that you buy or create. Why would you want to be able to create brush folders? Simply- for organization purposes. If you are an illustrator and create many of your own custom brushes, then putting your brushes into easy to access and easy to identify folders makes finding and using them a breeze.

If like me, you are a photographer, and only use brushes for retouching or sporadically, then putting them in folders helps you remember which brushes you have created or purchased. These brushes are then kept in a easy to find, organized manner.

As seen from this screenshot, you can access the saved folders from the flyout menu (gear cogged in upper right corner of the brushes panel). There you decide to append, or add to the default brush engine, or you can replace the default brushes with your folder. Replacing the default brushes with your custom folder makes it easy to find just the brushes you want to work with per image.

You can always get the default brushes back by going to same flyout menu and choosing “Reset brushes”.

Nothing is lost and your custom brushes are easily found in the flyout menu.

In this second screen shot, you will see the preset manager folder. To access the preset manager folder, click next to the brush panel in the upper left of your screen. There you will see an icon that looks like brushes in a jar. Click on this icon and you will see another panel appear. This panel is the brush optimization panel. This panel lets you change how your brushes look and behave.

At the bottom of this panel, you will see three icons. Choose the center icon to get the brush preset manager dialog box.

Inside this dialog box, navigate down to where the new brushes that you have created and want to put in a folder.  You can shift/click to get the first and last brush that you want to load. On the right hand side of this dialog box, click “Save Set.”

Saving your brushes into the appropriate places on your Operating System:

On a PC navigate through to the appropriate folders:

OS/Program files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CC 2015/Presets/ Brushes

Place your new folder of brushes within this folder and give it a name

On a MAC navigate through to the appropriate folders:

Applications/Program files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CC 2015/Presets/ Brushes

Another quick tip:

If you want your brushes to appear above the default brushes in the brushes flyout menu, give them names that can be found Alphabetically from A-Z. In this way they will appear at the top of all the default brushes.

Places to get brushes- free or for purchase:

As detailed in the video here are a couple of places to get royalty free brushes for use with your images.

www.deviantart.com

Conclusion:

I hope this tutorial helps you realize how easy it is to organize and work with brush folders inside of Photoshop.

Thanks for stopping by.