Adobe Photoshop Brush Links 

In Obscuro Photoshop brushes

All sorts of quality Photoshop brushes: pixel, vector, grunge, graffiti, paper textures, swirly, gothic, flowers, borders, objects, doodles, stamps, icons, ornaments, frames, splatter, ink, glitter, burton, symbols, wings, postmarks, barcodes, paint, lace, fishnet and many more.

Hybrid Genesis

Very creative ornamental, textured and special effects brushes for a modern look.

Fifth Muse Photoshop brushes

Special effects, lyrics and objects perfect for your ethereal, vintage and gothic manipulations.

500ml.org Photoshop Brushes

Historical, medical, animals, vintage, seasonal etc.

GetBrushes

Brush exchange site, featuring the best Adobe Photoshop brushes on the net and their authors, free PS brush downloads, as well as linking you to the finest Photoshop resources, tutorials and art communities.

graphics-illustrations

corners, Wood Leaves, Grass, negative films and slides, hair, kisses, swirls, floral and swirls, plants, textile, beads and more.

At0mica.net Brushes

Stamps, matches, leaves, splatters, film, blotches, hearts, stars, sparkles, etc.

BrushFed

Various photographic brushes.

Photoshop brushes

Characters, grunge scratches, splatters, skulls, scribbles, sketches, bar-codes, leaves etc.

Pootato.org brushes

Abstract, grunge, scribbles, swirls, text, etc.

studio brushes

Feathers, leaves, grunge, swirls, floral, stars, paper, scratches, signs etc.

vbrush

Over 160 grungy, textured and photographic brushes.

deviantART brushes

Many individual artists upload their brushes to deviantART - thousands of brush sets available!

Seishido

There almost 100 free brush sets, and paid brushes are categorized under: Angelic, Grungy, Artbooked, Japanese, Bubbled, Ornamental, Butterflies, Pixelated, Colored, Poetry, Creative, Romantic, Curly, Seasonal, Dedicated, Sparklies, Doodles, Starful, Dressed, Swirlies, Fantastic, Symbolical, Floral, Textures, Framed.

Fragiledecay Photoshop brushes

Broken, bubbles, decay, clouds, feathers, film, flourish, grunge, notes, postal, stains, swirls, tape, textures, vintage, wings, ivy, flora, shapes etc.

Miss M brushes

Swirls, lyrics, ink, splatters, denim, notes, calculus, flourishes, technical, scratches, sparkles, foliage, victorian, antique, star dust, doodles, abstract, colouds, etc.

Angelic Trust

61 free Photoshop brush sets, plus many more in the members-only area.

Toastsnatcher

Grungy, sketchy, geometric, ornamental, splatters, hearts, swirls, leaves, electronic, textures etc.

Magurno

Old-school, "cool", kitsch, text, and generally fun brushes.
Also offering free fonts and audio samples.

Misplaced Moments Photoshop brushes

Soft masking, roughage, splatter, textures, borders, abstract, textures, books, picture frames, masking, stars, brackets, signs, polaroid, feathers, running water, geometric, mosaic, grunge, mist, fog, scratches, clouds.

Kessia Nina Brushes

A small collection of brushes: smoke, grunge, dirty, border, curls, lines, etc.

23outlet

Tribal, grunge, cards, sketch, borders, curls, crew, rope, stars, splat, script, print error etc.

Kiss My Pixels Brushes

Valentines, ink drops, butterflies, doodles, skulls, stars, snowflakes, flares, pixels, eyes, daisies, patterns, lines, shapes, statues, owls, swirls, cats, dogs, disney, hello kitty, faeries, music, chickens, wildlife, floral etc.

Papercuts

Chinese, text, swirls, vintage, flowers, border, crosses, ribbons, deco boxes, border edges, grunge, doodles, coffee paper, lines, drips, chinese, alphabet, objects, oriental, doodlings, botanics, ripped pages, chrysnthemums, etc.

Buy Adobe Photoshop 

The Number 1 graphic program, recommended by most graphic designers and digital artists.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 [OLD VERSION]

Amazon Price: (as of 07/20/2008)
Used Price: $175.00

Useful tools 

Websites that offer brush-related services and tools

BrushFind

A brush directory with many websites listed, and also a tag list to make your search easier.

Brush search engine

What the name says. Browse directory, or search for the keywords.

ABRviewer

Gives the preview of a brush set without having to install it. You must have Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installed to run it.

Brusheezy

Brushes and patterns archive featuring some of the web's best resource artists.

Buy Photoshop brushes 

...and other Photoshop resources

Photoshop Brush Bonanza

Over 2,000 amazing artist-quality Photoshop brushes, 100% Royalty Free! Sets include Design Essentials, Holidays and Events, Scrappers, Sports, and Menu Makers. Brushes are extra large to allow for sharp, high-quality images at all sizes.

Amazon Price: (as of 07/20/2008)

Photoshop Bonus Bonanza

Over 500 amazing artist-quality Photoshop patterns, shapes & styles for Photoshop 7.0 or higher.

Amazon Price: (as of 07/20/2008)

Inspirational brush making 

Where to find materials and how to use them best?

As a brush designer, you might choose to define your own distinct style, or experiment with various techniques. I prefer the latter, and this way I never lack inspiration when it comes to making brushes.
You must learn is to see the potential in images. Graphics that can be applied together with other graphics make good brushes.
There are many types of brushes: ornamental, textured, abstract... some of them are very subtle and are used to improve a graphic, but some may be used alone, similar to clipart.

Here are some possible ways of creating brushes:

Photography
If you own a digital camera, the world is full of details that may make good brushes. Look around you for natural or manufactured items. Take a lot of photos and examine them at home. Try desaturating them and see if you can still isolate the forms.

Drawing and painting
You need a scanner or a digital camera for this.
I draw and doodle a lot. Most of this will never show up in my gallery, but why not use it for brushes? If you're in the mood for creating, but aren't confident in drawing something complex, just doodle what comes to your mind, draw vines and foliage, funny faces, fancy letters, spill or spray paint to get random shapes... After scanning the drawings, you may edit them further and get effects you couldn't with traditional tools.

Digital drawing
We've seen the circular, triangular, rectangular and similar shapes, and they're boring. Go freehand! Use your mouse or tablet to draw either abstract or figurative shapes. If you can't control the mouse/tablet that well, use the Pen tool. Digital drawings will be more clean than the scanned ones.

Combination
Try combining two or all three techniques mentioned above. You can use and reuse a single motive numerous times in many different ways and always get a unique result! Look at example images shown below to see what I mean.

Photoshop-related books 

Photoshop CS2 Bible

by Laurie Ulrich Fuller, Deke McClelland

Amazon Price: $26.39 (as of 07/20/2008)
Used Price: $16.00

Adobe Photoshop CS2 Classroom in a Book

by Adobe Creative Team

Amazon Price: $34.64 (as of 07/20/2008)
Used Price: $8.85

Creative Thinking in Photoshop: A New Approach to Digital Art (VOICES)

by Sharon Steuer

Amazon Price: (as of 07/20/2008)
Used Price: $8.77

Photoshop for Right-Brainers: The Art of Photo Manipulation

by Al Ward, Sybex

Amazon Price: (as of 07/20/2008)
Used Price: $14.00

Tips on organizing brushes 

If you downloaded many brush sets and saved all of them in the default brushes folder (probably C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop X.X\Presets\Brushes where X.X is the version number), you will likely suffer long Photoshop loading time. In order to avoid this, it would be better to create a new folder inside the default brushes folder, and save your brushes there.

It is also possible that you can't remember where you downloaded your brushes from (in order to give proper credit), and since some brush authors don't give descriptive names to their sets, you should take care of it.

Some suggestions:

1. Inside your brushes folder create a new folder named website-name.com for every brush source. Save all the brush sets you downloaded there, renaming each with a menaningful name, for example vector-swirls.abr and similar.
2. Create a new folder named downloaded brushes or similar. Open all brush sets you downloaded from a particular site and save them as a single brush set named website-name.com.abr for each site.

Whichever method you prefer, the result is a neater brush archive.
Enjoy!

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Brushes examples 

Some basic graphics made using brushes. It's so easy!

This graphic is made using my brushes "Frail Ivy", and "Clouds" which will be available for download soon.


This one is made using "Frail ivy" set, "Spider webs" and "Old papers".


The brushes used on this one are "Ink spill and splatter", "Paint strokes" and "Paper textures".