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  • Photoshop brushes have evolved over the years

  • and designers now use them as a fast and easy way

  • to place clipart and shapes into their artwork.

  • There are thousands of free Photoshop brush sets

  • and more every day.

  • and more every day.

  • Watch this video and learn how to install Photoshop brushes

  • and get the best results with advance colorizing techniques.

  • How are Photoshop brushes used today?

  • The default brushes that come with Photoshop work like paint brushes.

  • They work great for paintings

  • and are extremely good at simulating brushes, pencils, and other media.

  • However, most Photoshop brushes have evolved into stamp-style brushes.

  • Instead of simulating artistic media,

  • theyre used like stamps to quickly place shapes and pictures into their artwork.

  • By using these stamp brushes,

  • designers can create everything from simple shapes to photorealistic splatters

  • and lighting effects without drawing anything.

  • Installing Photoshop brushes

  • There are a few ways to install Photoshop brushes.

  • The most convenient way is to go into the brush preset picker palette menu.

  • To do this, select the brush tool

  • then bring up the brush preset picker.

  • You can find this in the options bar

  • or by right-clicking anywhere in your document.

  • Next, click on the palette menu and select Load Brushes.

  • Browse for the brushes then click OK.

  • The brushes will now appear at the bottom of your brush preset picker.

  • If you want to save or delete brushes,

  • you can do this easier in the Preset Manager.

  • The Preset Manager can be accessed by going to Edit > Presets > Preset Manager.

  • Here, you can select multiple brushes at a time and save or delete them.

  • Want to have the brushes show up in the panel menu of your brush preset picker?

  • You can do this by placing them in your Photoshop brush presets folder.

  • To do this, look in the video description for the folder locations that matches your operating system,

  • copy and paste the file into the folder, then restart Photoshop.

  • Avoid copying any brushes with a large file size because they can severely slow down Photoshop’s loading time.

  • Using Picture Brushes

  • Solid shape brushes are the easiest ones to use.

  • Just pick the color you like and click anywhere to place it.

  • Things become more complicated when it comes to picture brushes.

  • Most people who use these brushes find that they lack depth.

  • This is because they need to be colorized using a different technique which we will show you in a bit.

  • But first, let’s understand how Photoshop brushes work.

  • All Photoshop brushes are black and white.

  • Picture brushes use varying opacity to create different tones.

  • So something that appears gray is actually black with some transparency to make it look gray.

  • What you end up with is a picture with more transparency in the brighter areas and less in the darker.

  • Because of this, you always paint picture brushes with black on a white background to get the full tonal range.

  • Use any other colors and it will look flat.

  • To use picture brushes, create a new layer and fill it with white.

  • Set your foreground color to black.

  • You can do this quickly by pressing D on your keyboard to reset your foreground and background colors.

  • Select the Brush tool then right-click anywhere in your document to bring up the Brush preset picker.

  • Select the brush you want to use and adjust the size.

  • You can change your brush size using hot keys by pressing the left bracket key to decrease and right bracket key to increase.

  • Click anywhere to place the brush into your layer.

  • Some brushes are inverted meaning that theyre designed to be painted with white.

  • If you are using inverted brushes, such as these bokeh brushes,

  • youll need to fill the layer with black and paint with white.

  • Colorizing your brushes - The Easy Way

  • Now that we have the image placed, we can start adding color to it.

  • There are several ways to do this.

  • The quickest way is to use the Hue/Saturation tool.

  • To do this, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation.

  • Checkmark the colorize option then adjust the settings.

  • Here’s how to do it.

  • If you want the most vivid colors, start off by setting your Saturation to 100 and lightness to 50.

  • Adjust the hue setting to the color you like.

  • Alter the saturation and lightness to get your desired color then click OK.

  • Colorizing using Gradient Maps

  • For some brushes, such as these explosion brushes by SparkleStock,

  • you'll need to use a gradient map to get the best results.

  • Gradient maps take more time, but the difference is day and night.

  • Here's a comparison of the difference between colorizing with the Hue/Saturation tool and colorizing with the Gradient Maps.

  • As you can see, the one with the gradient map looks a lot better.

  • Create a new Gradient Map adjustment layer by going to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map.

  • Click on the gradient to bring up the Gradient Editor.

  • Select the black to white gradient.

  • If you don't see this, click on the panel menu and select Reset Gradients.

  • Click anywhere below the gradient to add a stop

  • In the locations field, enter 50%.

  • Click on the color then pick the color you'd like to use.

  • Add another stop by clicking anywhere below the gradient.

  • Photoshop should add the same color that you used before.

  • Set the position to 75%

  • Click on the color then pick the color you'd like to use.

  • Add another color stop and change the position to 25%.

  • Click on the color then pick the color you'd like to use.

  • There you have it!

  • These explosion brushes now look photorealistic.

  • Colorizing by hand

  • There's also one more way to add color to your brushes.

  • This method should be used when you want to manually paint in the colors and can be used to create abstract results.

  • We'll show you this using these Smoke brushes.

  • Start by creating a new layer.

  • Position this layer above the layer with the brush then change the blending mode to color

  • Hold the Alt key then click between the current layer and the layer below.

  • This will clip your current layer to the layer below so that the color we add to this layer only affects the smoke layer.

  • Select the brush tool, set the brush to the default round brush, and start painting with any color you like.

  • I'm going to stick with the colors cyan, magenta, and yellow to make these smoke look abstract.

  • You can quickly access these colors in the Swatches palette by going to Window > Swatches.

  • Click on the panel menu and select any one of the Pantone CMYK presets.

  • The colors will appear as the first four color.

  • To paint, I will use the default brush with a hardness of 0.

  • Start painting to add some colors.

  • You can adjust the opacity in the options bar at any time to adjust the strength.

  • We're done!

  • We just made some abstract smoke art by combining the smoke Photoshop brushes with an abstract coloring technique.

  • It's that easy.

  • There are many ways to color Photoshop brushes.

  • Give it a try and let us know which one you like!

  • How to blend Photoshop brushes into your artwork

  • You just learnt the most advance techniques to colorizing your Photoshop brushes.

  • Now you need to learn how to blend these brushes with your artwork.

  • Start by converting the layers to a Smart Object.

  • To do this, select all the layers that are involved with your brush.

  • Right-click and select "Convert to Smart Object".

  • If your brush has a white background, set the blending mode to Multiply or Linear Burn.

  • If your brush has a black background, set the blending mode to Screen or Linear Dodge.

  • If blending modes aren't doing the trick for you, right-click on the layer then select "Blending Options".

  • Set the blending mode back to normal then go to the Blend If options near the bottom of the window.

  • If your brush has a white background, you'll need to adjust the white input slider.

  • If your brush has a black background, adjust the black input slider instead.

  • Hold down the Alt and drag the input slider towards the other side.

  • The slider should split in half and you'll see the background disappear as you move it towards the other side.

  • You can also drag the other half of the input slider to make the edges blend harder.

  • Were done!

  • Speed up Photoshop by deleting unused brushes

  • Some brushes are so big that they can bog down Photoshop by taking up disk space and increasing the loading time.

  • If this happens, you can try fixing this by deleting any large presets in the presets folder.

  • See the video description to find the location of your folders.

  • You can also reset Photoshop by holding down Alt, Ctrl, and Shift

  • or Command, Option, Shift on Macs while starting up Photoshop.

  • Photoshop will ask if you want to delete your preferences file.

  • Click yes.

  • Note that this will delete all of your Photoshop preferences including all the brushes, patterns, and other presets you've loaded.

  • Thank you for watching this tutorial.

  • Check out the video description for a list of our favorite websites to download Photoshop brushes from.

  • Download some Photoshop brushes and give them a try!

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Photoshop brushes have evolved over the years

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