Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual

Installing New Brushes

You're not alone when it comes to creating new brushes. Folks love sharing their creations, and once they've made a really cool brush, they're usually happy to share it with the masses. That's why all manner of free brushes are available on the Web.

One of the best resources you'll ever find is the Adobe Studio Exchange site (www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange). Click the site's Photoshop link and then choose Brushes from the category list on the right side of the page (you can find all manner of actions, custom shapes, gradients, and so on here, too). You can even download a brush set that'll make your image look like it was printed on torn paper as shown in Figure 12-33. Once you've downloaded the brush set to your hard drive, choose Load Brushes from the Brush Preset picker's fly-out menu (or from the Brush panel's menu) and navigate to where the brush set lives (look for a file whose name ends in ".abr", such as Paper_Damage.abr) and then click Load (you can also double-click the .abr file and Photoshop will put it in the right spot). Your new brushes appear in the Brush menu, ready for you to use.

The streaks in Figure 12-33 were made by setting the foreground and background chips to white and brown (respectively) and then choosing Filter→Render→Cloud followed by Filter→Blur→Motion Blur. Next, the streak layer's blend mode was changed to Hard Light. With a few clicks of the funky Paper Damage brushes, the photo looks ancient!

Figure 12-33. At the Adobe Studio ...