Grunge Photoshop Brushes Set
In our previous releases we focused on icons and WordPress-themes; however, there is a variety of further tools graphic designers need on a regular basis. For instance, Photoshop brushes. We have mentioned already that grunge is becoming a trend, so a set of grungy Photoshop brushes sounded like a good idea. You can find dozens of our further releases in our section Freebies.
Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.
Today we are glad to release Smashing Photoshop Brushes — a free set of 74 grungy Photoshop brushes in resolution 69 — 2463px. The set is compatible with Adobe Photoshop 7.0, CS, CS2 and CS3 (you can use it in Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP and Paint.NET too). The brushes were designed by Silvia Bukovac Gasevic, the creative mind behind graphics-illustrations.com, especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Download the set for free!
You can use the set for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell them — please link to this article if you would like to spread the word.
- Large preview (0.56 Mb)
- Download the set (.abr, 3.1 Mb)
Motivation behind the design
As usual, here are some insights from the designer herself:
“Originally conceived to be nothing but a fine retouching tool, Photoshop brushes evolved to be “point and click shape placing tool” which became increasingly popular among professionals and Photoshop enthusiast alike.
There are many categories of Photoshop users who use Photoshop brushes in their projects. Scrapbookers or professional photographers who use them to decorate photo albums. Many designers amateurs use them to design their own stuff whether it be T-Shirts, mugs, badges or web designs. Professional designers buy commercially licensed Photoshop brushes and use them regularly for they projects.
I like to play with different styles when creating Photoshop brushes. Inspiration for new shapes can be found just about anywhere. Once, with a little help from my scanner, I made brushes out of the items that were laying on my working desk, including my mobile phone. Today, we live in the era of grunge shapes and swirls which, somehow, suits me fine and as a professional designer I always wanted to have some kind of “swiss knife” brushes set. One set to serve them all. (Kind of resembles “One ring to rule them all” but that’s just me being a Tolkien fan.) So, making a free brush set for Smashing Magazine readers turned out to be a great chance to do it.
What I had in mind was to create a brushes set that would fully cover the needs for one standard blog (or other graphic design projects) with grunge-swirls look.
So here they are, 74 brushes of 69 — 2463 px resolution, feel free to use them in all your commercial or non-commercial projects with no restrictions at all. Set is compatible with Adobe Photoshop 7.0, CS, CS2 and CS3 (you can use it in Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP and Paint.NET too).
More of my work can be seen on my blog at graphics-illustrations.com.
Last but not least…
We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we might feature you in one of our upcoming posts.
If you would like to release a high-quality free font, a WordPress-theme, Photoshop brushes, a Drupal theme, some wallpapers or an icon-set please contact us — we would like to support you (both financially and with the broad coverage on Smashing Magazine).
Joseph
August 12th, 2008 1:44 pmFirst to reply cool update!
Ryan
August 12th, 2008 1:46 pmFirst?
Ryan
August 12th, 2008 1:46 pmd’oh second!… and third
beepoll
August 12th, 2008 1:50 pmYou folks are just in time! I was searching for something like this and thought I’d better search smashing magazine for articles with brushes – but there was no need!
bill
August 12th, 2008 1:51 pmnice set of brushes! thanks…
Daniel
August 12th, 2008 1:51 pmAnother great set. These will come in useful for my new blog design! Thanks!
Daniel
Ty
August 12th, 2008 2:13 pmWait, what? Grunge is becoming a trend? Grunge is on it’s way out. It’s been in for the last 2 years. Don’t get me wrong, love the style, but I say download and use them now, Grunge is about to go the way of bellbottoms.
pickupjojo
August 12th, 2008 2:18 pmVery nice set, it could be very useful!
Thanks for sharing SM. :)
Joffrey,
Geek and Hype
Violeta
August 12th, 2008 2:23 pmCool brushes!
BTW: Keep posting this often!! My twitter is full of Smashmagazine and that’s great!!
Steven
August 12th, 2008 2:29 pmSM is amazing. Who agrees?
Steph
August 12th, 2008 2:34 pmI do!! Great brush set, tough.
Daniel Whyte
August 12th, 2008 3:40 pmnice guys
Jan
August 12th, 2008 3:41 pmTy: “Wait, what? Grunge is becoming a trend? Grunge is on it’s way out. It’s been in for the last 2 years. Don’t get me wrong, love the style, but I say download and use them now, Grunge is about to go the way of bellbottoms.”
So true. Especially this “shield with wings and grungy shit”-motif is so outdated and is just looking plain ugly. As if it was created by a robot.
Absolutely not contemporary.
Mike Tosetto
August 12th, 2008 4:28 pmI seriously don’t get the rush to post first…. or second… seriously, wtf?
Iseewhatur
August 12th, 2008 5:07 pmThe first and second are just immature kids in the bloggosphere. I used to get irritated but it’s a unsolvable problem to make people smarter
Irene
August 12th, 2008 5:15 pmNice set but I’m having trouble downloading. When I click, it leads to a page with gibberish text. Is there any way to fix this? I’m using FF 2.0 with Windows XP. Same thing happens on Vista.
Eli
August 12th, 2008 5:28 pmRyan: congrats, you contributed absolutely nothing worthwhile in the comments section, you should be proud.
As for myself, these brushes look like they will come in handy with collage designs, thanks for the freebie.
Max | Design Shard
August 12th, 2008 5:51 pmThe Grunge hearts look really cool, could be very useful for some designs
Thanks Max
Grant Friedman
August 12th, 2008 6:13 pmNice set! I have some cool Illustrator brushes on my site at http://colorburned.com/illustrator-brushes/ they can easily be converted to Photoshop brushes if you need to.
Benjamin
August 12th, 2008 7:00 pmThank you Silvia Bukovac Gasevic and thank you Smashing!
I have a softspot for Photoshop brushes.
Pete
August 12th, 2008 7:27 pmGreat set, if you are looking for some more grunge brushes, check out http://www.digitalrevolutions.biz/free-grunge-photoshop-brushes/2008/04/12/
This is one of my personal favorite packs, very hi-res.
rahman
August 12th, 2008 8:43 pmthanx………………….smashing
gr8pixel
August 12th, 2008 9:04 pmSmashing!
Manuel
August 12th, 2008 11:08 pmNice!
hal9000
August 13th, 2008 12:08 amthe gibberish text would be your browser trying to display the abr file rather than download it. right click it and ‘save as’.
either you have somehow added this as a mime type or not – i can’t remember which.
+1
August 13th, 2008 12:11 amF##, man, grunge style used to be a trend, and nows it’s almost kitsh
Sandie Sørensen
August 13th, 2008 12:25 amLet’s keep the freebries coming! :)
I just browsed through the freebies, and found… Not so much I could use.
I love the desktop calendars and I try to join as often as possible. I’m inspired by the icons but rarely can I use them… I don’t need wordpress themes, as I don’t have a wordpress-website.
Therefor I cheered, when I saw this article.
Only… Why the restictions??
When I see wonderfull photoshop brushes and custom shapes and so on I emidiatly download them and keep them in a library. This way I don’t forget where I saw them when someday I need to use them. But with all these restictions my creativity is dying!
I can’t efford to download this freebie- ’cause I know I would violate the copyright if I did.
So pardon my french: Thanks for nothing…(?)
Or let me ask another question- how do other handle that issue?
-remebering where the great tools are or
-remembering who to credit and ask permission?
mick
August 13th, 2008 12:39 am“So here they are, 74 brushes of 69 — 2463 px resolution, feel free to use them in all your commercial or non-commercial projects with no restrictions at all.”
:|
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
August 13th, 2008 12:57 am@Sandie Sørensen (#27): there are no restrictions whatsoever. I am not sure what you mean…
@mick (28): the brushes are absolutely free to use, what’s the problem?
Micah Paz
April 6th, 2010 8:11 pmThe Link Is Not Working For Me Just Taking Me Here http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/images/grunge-photoshop-brushes/smashing-grunge-brushes.abr and not downloading what can i do??
Riccardo
August 13th, 2008 1:47 amA nice brush set, thanks Silvia!
Cosmi
August 13th, 2008 2:18 amWhy always you say “first” “first” ?? It’s ugly.
bruno byington
August 13th, 2008 2:23 amhello,
Rajnish
August 13th, 2008 4:02 amIts really very nice brush set, Thanks! would be helpful in designing.
Jason
August 13th, 2008 5:56 amThis is really useful, thanks !
dindong
August 13th, 2008 9:13 amAWESOME!
hoschi
August 13th, 2008 12:07 pmIs such a style called Grunge ? I didn’t know that . But I think its a wrong description for this kind of style. grunge was a music style in the early 90s and has nothing to do with this “fashion-victim” style which stands for commericalism. The music-Grunge never did this
okykrismadi
August 13th, 2008 6:45 pmcool..
download ah..
Volumex
August 14th, 2008 2:10 amGrunge….mmm, who named this distorted style anyway…. I reckon she’s a goner!
Aida
August 14th, 2008 10:57 amWell, I love it. I use it to produce fanart, and it suits my needs perfectly. I am sure everyone can find something for themselves in the resources provided by Smashing Magazine.
Leigh
August 14th, 2008 11:25 amJust curious – for those of you mentioning that the grunge style is going out….any clues as to what the new trend is/will be?
Mike Diesel
August 14th, 2008 3:32 pmGrunge was in two years ago and was cheesy and already out less than a year ago.
This style is typical and overdone.
Real Design Team
August 15th, 2008 6:01 amIt’s very nice bruses. I like very much..
Natalie
August 15th, 2008 12:27 pmWell, i just love this website..
Mike the Chicago Designer
August 22nd, 2008 10:18 amThe style is (drum roll please…………………)
Tinting or Color treatments.
For an excellent example look at http://www.barackobama.com/
(Full disclosure: I had a little to do with the design, but I am not bias.)
Karen
September 15th, 2008 12:53 amAmazes me the people who gripe about something when it’s free! If you don’t like it, or it doesnt suit your tastes- move on and leave it alone…sheesh!
I love anything grunge and appreciate the time it takes to create things for our use. Thank you for sharing with us!!!
tim
September 22nd, 2008 9:29 amwtf, why is everyone hating something that looks really cool to some people :/
if you dont like it, go back to your prep ass shit which is WAYYY over done
Ash
September 24th, 2008 9:21 amHi there… can use these to enhance my stock illustration?
SA
September 24th, 2008 9:12 pmSuperb, as always! Many thanks. :)
Aze
October 7th, 2008 3:48 amThanks. Nice one.
Duane
October 7th, 2008 6:40 amI’m using GIMP… How do I install & use new brushes?
Thanks!
ZOUP
October 29th, 2008 2:21 amCoo&ThankYou
Angelica
January 9th, 2009 12:02 pmThank you so much!!!!
seth
March 9th, 2009 12:44 pmI have downloaded the brushed to my desktop and have opened them into photoshop but they dont appear in the brushes tablet, any suggestions?
Ahmed
April 12th, 2009 11:31 pmgamda gedan ya man :)
Jeremy L
April 25th, 2009 9:49 amThanks a lot for this! Just what I was looking for!
ola
May 5th, 2009 1:13 ami just love all of dis there cool
Kelly
October 30th, 2009 8:39 amI downloaded, but can’t find them in PSE7. where did they go?
Simon Wells
November 27th, 2009 11:49 amIs it just me, but I am get a 403 Forbidden error when trying to download from the link.
cutcopypaste
December 2nd, 2009 5:46 amyup link is broken for me as well :(. i’m getting a not found, not a forbidden, though
Blackout
January 8th, 2010 8:02 amReupload the file.
fr34k
January 11th, 2010 12:19 ampls reup
Christiane Rosenberger
January 21st, 2010 10:50 amThank you guys, the link is now available again :-)
yusra
March 28th, 2010 10:49 amNice brush! i like it!
Imee
April 12th, 2010 3:10 amAwesome set of brushes. I used them a couple of times for several of my sites’ layouts. It’s now used in the current design of imeerocks.net and of course I gave credit in the colophon page :] Thanks so much you guys!
zduyhaiz
May 12th, 2010 7:27 amthank you very much
Marcus
July 22nd, 2010 2:59 amPersonally I don’t get what the big deal is with the whole ‘in’ thing regarding the style of it. Who gives a flying f**k? It appeals to some people, so be it, it doesn’t to others, no biggie, there’s others they can find without bitching about how ‘in’ or ‘out’ something is (lol…love ‘kitsch’…this isn’t a frikkin fashion blog). I think the brushes are great, and it’s always nice to get a freebie. Why so many people moan about a freebie, lord knows. It’s free…shuddup and stop moaning.
mladen
December 18th, 2010 6:27 pmthanks a lot good brushes!!!
grafix
August 10th, 2011 9:25 pmthanks for these… i hope we’ll still see this in the future
pam
January 25th, 2012 4:57 pmthank you for these great brushes!