Take Control of your Photoshop Brushes!

Posted on 14/02/2012 by Michael Hoffman

Are you tired of the hunt and peck method of finding your favorite Photoshop brushes? Learn to organize and save your favorite brushes with Preset Manager. With you could save an entire palette of brushes with color and opacity preset? You can, and today we’ll see how using Tool Presets.

About Michael Hoffman (224 Articles)

Mike has been a photographer, artist, educator, and technophile for most of his life. Early in his career, he created technical illustrations and photographs for electronic equipment manufacturers, and taught classes in computer aided drafting and 3D modeling software. When digital cameras became widely available in the late 1990s, the move was a natural one, and has led to a happy combination of technology, software, photography and art. Mike is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop and Acrobat, and is well versed in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements, as well as Illustrator and InDesign. He has also contributed his time and efforts to the excellent work being done by Operation Photo Rescue, in restoring photographs damaged by natural disasters. As an active member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, he continues his quest for excellence in art, excellence in design, and excellence in education.

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10 Comments on Take Control of your Photoshop Brushes!

Jóhann Léo // 11/12/2012 at 2:30 pm //

Thank you for this very useful tutorial.
Sonny // 23/12/2012 at 4:29 am //

Thanks, Michael. This simple, but confusing topic somehow has always evaded me. You did a great job.
Amanda // 15/02/2013 at 10:01 am //

Can you update this for CS6? They moved everything around and it’s just awful…. complete trainwreck….
Michael Hoffman // 25/02/2013 at 6:10 pm //

Amanda, thanks for the suggestion. I will add this to my future list of tutorials!

mh++
Lora // 14/03/2013 at 7:15 am //

Thanks for the great tutorial:) I have problem on CS6 though. The brushes keep replicating and I have something like 4 sets of them. I have deleted so many but it’s very difficult to determine if they’re the same because the numbers are not constant. BIG mess.
Julie Denning // 30/05/2013 at 12:21 am //

This is the best tutorial I have seen on this!
Trevor Dennis // 23/09/2013 at 8:03 am //

Excellent tutorial. There’s always something new to learn with Photoshop
Lea // 30/01/2014 at 8:59 am //

Hello, Photoshop noob here. I am having some trouble when adding brush sets made by someone else. All the brushes (there are about 30 in a couple sets) seem to just scatter among the PS brush presets when added. I have no idea how to differentiate many of them from the brushes that were already there, as they’re not all named or obvious. Is there a way to add them as a group/folder within the brushes panel, so I don’t lose them in a sea of random brushes?

Thanks so much for the custom brush colour preset tip at the end! I didn’t know I could do that. Would you say that method is more or less efficient than having a palette on canvas and using the eyedropper (assuming I am using the same brush for each colour)?
Dingo Lingo // 12/01/2015 at 9:22 pm //

Vey good video Mike! Thanks a lot.
Ez // 25/04/2017 at 8:21 am //

Excellent tutorial for us CS5 diehards.
Thank you!