10 groovy brushes for Photoshop

Posted by Joe on Sunday, January 18th, 2009

Brushes are an excellent way to add complex effects to your photoshop compositions, and below I have put together a collection of 10 good examples. They are all free to download and I found them on the excellent Deviant Art.

Alongside each brush listed below, i’ve had a go myself at using them and attached an accompanying image so you can get an idea of what they can do.

To install a new brush into Photoshop, download the file, and place the resulting .abr file into presets > brushes. Then, when in Photoshop, click brushes and the more details drop down arrow. To the right of the master diameter box click the arrow and select replace brushes and choose your newly downloaded set (see image below).

Paint Splatters:

A collection of 11 original paint splatters. Each brush is of a suitably high resolution so they will work well on larger canvases
http://ka05.deviantart.com/art/Splatter-Brushes-31656209

Lightening:

Over 25 brushes in this set, the largest brush size is 628×628 so not massive, but used in conjunction with the others, you can get some pretty cool effects
http://redheadstock.deviantart.com/art/Lightning-Photoshop-Brushes-37337848

Clouds:

Some very high resolution brushes here, cool
http://redheadstock.deviantart.com/art/Clouds-II-Photoshop-Brushes-91356293

Floral:

A lovely set of 10 floral brushes, high resolution as well. Excellent!
http://summerair.deviantart.com/art/Floral-Brushes-52478959

Winter Breeze:

Some useful curvy lines which can be made to produce some pretty cool glow effects
http://axeraider70.deviantart.com/art/Winter-Breeze-Brushes-44617350

Cracks:

A great collection of walls and various cracks, pretty high resolution too.
http://latebraking.deviantart.com/art/Cracks-Brushes-37874185

Grunge:

Some very useful brushes here, and they work well with the splatter brushes mentioned previously.
http://keren-r.deviantart.com/art/gRUNg-BRUSHEs-48899861

Vector 2:

A collection of 15 brushes offering sunlight rays coming from different angles. Very useful, and the resolution of each brush is at 1280×1280. Nice.
http://physicalmagic.deviantart.com/art/Vector-Line-Brushes-2-39244177

Smoke:

http://falln-stock.deviantart.com/art/Smoke-Brushes-Set-1-92730901

Z Design Tech:

Some very useful generic technical swirls and lines to make things look complicated, awesome.
http://z-design.deviantart.com/art/Z-design-Tech-brushes-set-v2-20701749