35 Tutorials for Mastering Photoshop Brushes
Published in Design, Photoshop TutorialsFor Photoshop users, downloading free brushes and creating your own custom brushes can quickly help you to achieve more effective results and improve productivity and efficiency at the same time. There are essentially unlimited options when working with brushes, so it’s a skill that can always be further developed.
Regardless of your skill level in working with brushes you should find some tutorials here for you. Some cover the basic uses and functionality of brushes, some will teach you various ways to create your own custom brushes, and some will help you to develop your skills by using them as an integral part of a design.
You may also be interested in the following collections of Photoshop tutorials:
- 35 Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Your Own Posters
- 45 Photoshop Tutorials for Better Navigation
- 35 Photoshop Tutorials Inspired by Apple
Rotating Brushes
A simple way to rotate any brush to fit your needs.
Managing Your Brushes and Brush Libraries in Photoshop
Once you’ve downloaded and created a number of brushes, managing and organizing them will become more important.
Photoshop Brush Tutorial: Shape Dynamics – Size Controls
This tutorial looks at the basics of working with brushes and how size control can impact your results.
Define Brush Photoshop Tutorial
A simple tutorial for getting started with creating and working with brushes.
Custom Brushes Tutorial
A quick tutorial to help you create your first brushes in minutes.
Funky Web Design Layout
Create a layout using several different brushes for the header.
How to Install Photoshop Brushes
Knowing how to install brushes is a basic, but necessary, skill.
Creating Your Own Custom Adobe Photoshop Brushes
A nice tutorial for creating useful brushes from public domain images.
Fire Brushes: Photoshop Tutorial
Using brushes can be a quick way to create excellent fire effects.
Adobe Photoshop Brush Dynamics Tutorial
This tutorial will show you how to get the most out of simple brushes.
Create Photoshop Brushes for Coffee Stains and Splatters
Use real coffee stains and a scanner to create effective brushes.
Master the Brush in Photoshop
Learn more about various aspects of working with brushes.
Create Custom Photoshop Brush from a Photo
Learn how to create awesome brushes straight from a photograph.
Creating Your Own “Dirt” Brush
An easy way to create a grungy, dirt brush.
Building a Lego Bricks Photoshop Brushes Set
A fun way to work with brushes and Lego shapes.
Creating Your Own Grunge Brushes
Get a trendy grunge look by making your own brushes.
Design a Grungy Web Layout
A real-world example of brushes in action while creating a layout.
Creating Grunge Brushes
Veerle shows us some simple techniques to create impressive results.
Photoshop Brush Tutorial
This tutorial shows how to create a brush from a texture image.
Photoshop Brush Tutorial
See several different possible effects that can be created with brushes.
Advanced Brush Techniques in Photoshop
Go beyond the basics with some of these techniques.
Photoshop Brush Tutorial on deviantART
Learn how to quickly create stunning light effects.
How to Make a Photoshop Brush
Bittbox’s tutorial for creating brushes.
Create Eye-Popping Graphics with Photoshop Brushes
This tutorial from SitePoint shows a few different styles that can be created by using brushes.
Stroke Text with a Brush
A simple way to add some life to text, with plenty of possibilities.
How to Make an Awesome Grungy Paper from Scratch
This Bittbox tutorial uses brushes for creating the grungy paper.
Grunge Type Photoshop Tutorial
Creating Grunge-style text is easy with the help of brushes.
Lighting Effects in Photoshop
This tutorial from Digital Arts makes heavy use of brushes.
Add a Sparkle Trail to a Photo
Use a sparkly brush to enhance a photo.
Really Cool Eclipse Effect in Photoshop
Fabio shows that brushes can even be used for creating an eclipse.
Create Cool Watercolor Effects in Photoshop
Several different brushes are used here to create the watercolor effect.
Amazing Photoshop Light Effect in 10 Steps
Brushes can be used to create sparkling light effects.
Create a Space Explosion from Scratch
Brushes are used here to create the debris in the explosion.
Easily Create a Beautiful, Unique Website Header
Brushes are used for creating the lighting effects on this header.
Abstract Dust and Spray Effect
Using brushes to create this abstract effect.
For more even more Photoshop tutorials, please see:
83 Responses
Whoa, I just started writing an identical post yesterday. Guess you beat me to the punch eh? Not a problem, this is a great collection – well done!
Sorry Brian. I’ve had that happen to me before and it kind of sucks.
some great resources here!
Awesome post with some great resources. Definitely a bookmarker/stumbler
I like creating my own brushes and customising existing ones, so this list will come in handy for giving me new ideas. Thanks, Steven.
Damn, just in the morning tought about this kind of review about how to use brushes! Maybe that’s good because I really got interest to use my brushes better. Anyway – I like the post, because I will really learn from it!
Thanks for posting my two tutorials!! Much more to come from us!
Thanks for the feedback everyone. I’m glad it’s a useful resource that can help improve your design process.
nice list.its very useful.thanks for this steven:)
Ronald
wow, muy buenos tutoriales,
saludos a todos
Thanks, for the list
Really nice and helpful list. Thanks so much!
Thanks for including our posts on your list.
I just need to find the perfect workstation that give me all the CPU power with all the filters in place in Photoshop
Thanks for including our posts on your list.
br
svetainiu kurimas
wow excellent thanks for thi s impressive list.
Nice collect, but for me… brushes is not that great if you don’t have the keen eye of a designer… coz you still need to combine it with colors.. and designers have that eye… but anyway this is cool collectu buddy..
Very Cool! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your tutorial, that’s really help me to learn it.
The use of Georgia/serif fonts here doesn’t look as good as the sans-serifs you used earlier. You could use sans-serif at least for the sidebars.
Additionally the attribution to Cutline in the footer is barely visible on the off-white background.
Hi Shivanand,
I have been meaning to fix the text color in the footer and just hadn’t gotten around to it. It’s fixed now. As far as the font is concerned, it’s not Georgia, it is Times New Roman. I got sick of looking at Arial so I decided to try something different. Will probably go back to Arial at some point. I don’t think it makes sense to use a serif on body copy and a sans serif in the sidebar. They should be consistent in my opinion. Using a one for headings and the other for body copy makes more sense to me.
Of course. I just find that serifs look more acceptable on white backgrounds which gives a newspaper like feel. For a site as polished as yours… as you said it, a sans-serif font will look better. Thanks for fixing the footer attribution.
There are some great tutorials here Steven, just what I was looking for, brushes make it much easier to produce pro content in Photoshop.
great thanks im trying to do my new website in flash this is a great help ill let you know when i have mastered it
this is a great help i just managed to tweek my own creative in photoshop yesterday very addictive thanks
very nice and ig collection of photoshop lovers. Thanx for the effort.
Wow, this is awesome! Thank you so much for this brush information!
Although I found this post two years later, but still useful to me as beginner in photoshop. Well done !
Very good Photoshop brushes tutorials, some very interesting ideas for new Photoshop brushes — thanks
I am still looking for brushes that work like the oldfashioned pens – thick to thin lines and very smooth. Am I missing something obvious?
Jan,
Have you tried a Wacom tablet?