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50 Must-Have Photoshop Brushes

By Daved Brosche, November 10th, 2008 in Graphics | 177 Comments | Forum

by Daved Brosche

Having a good collection of Photoshop brushes is essential for any designer. There is certainly no shortage of Photoshop brushes on the Web these days. The problem with Photoshop brushes isn’t in finding brushes, but in finding quality brushes. Below you’ll find a collection of quality brushes that every designer should find handy.

These 50 Photoshop brush sets are ones I find myself using over and over in a variety of projects. This collection is the result of years’ worth of downloads, trials and experiments. I hope this list helps you find some new Photoshop brushes that improve your collection.

Paint Splatters

Paint splatters are an essential set of Photoshop brushes to have. Lord knows there are plenty of them out there, but they are not all created equal. I have a good number of splatter brushes in my arsenal, but these are the ones I find myself calling upon the most for a variety of effects.

Splashes of Paint

Splatters

Splatter

Photoshop Brushes Set 1

Photoshop Brushes Set 2

Photoshop Brushes Set 3

Lucidity Brushes

Gradiant Splats

Go Media Brushes

Massive Splatter Pack

Brush Strokes

These types of Photoshop brushes are great to have on hand because they can achieve a variety of effects. They can do anything from helping you finish off an edge to grunging of a photo, and endless amount of other tasks. Brush stroke brushes are a commodity in Photoshop. These are some of my favorites.

Simple Smudges

20 Painted Brushes

Watercolor Brushes I

Watercolor Brushes II

Messy Spraypaint

Grungy Watercolor Brushes

Hi-Res Water Color Brushes 2

Hi-Res Watercolor Brushes

Fingertips

Blood

Textures

While actual texture photos come in handy for adding textures to your work, sometimes a Photoshop brush comes in more handy. For those times, you may want to look into some of the texture brushes I have picked out below. They are great for adding a touch of texture to your latest grunge design.

Concrete Series Vol 3

Fabric Textures Hi-Res

Texture Brushes Set 2

Paint Peel Pack

Wood Photoshop Brushes

52 Texture Brushes

Grunge Brushes

Hi-Res Dirt Brush Set

Grunge Brushes Moved

50 Texture Brushes

Borders and Edges

While not as multi-purpose as the stroke brushes, these edges and border are nonetheless valuable. I probably have more border and edge brushes in my collection than any other type of Photoshop brush. A good border or edge brush pack can make all the difference in your design. Many of these brushes come in super-large sizes to give you quality results.

Dirty Grunge Brush Set 1

Grunge Corners Brush Pack

Grunge Grit Borders

More Borders

Hand-Drawn Elements

Ok, so these are only really essential if you are trying to create that hand-drawn effect in your design. That said, these are some essential Photoshop brushes that will help you create a design with a hand-drawn look. Most, if not all, of these Photoshop brushes were made from real drawings. You can’t get much more “hand-drawn” than that.

Hand-Drawn Ornaments

Handwriting Brushes

Flower Brushes Drawn

Hand-Drawn Floral Pattern

Smashing Magazine’s Photoshop Brushes

Splatter and Watercolour Brushes For Photoshop

67 Health and Beauty Brushes

Grunge Photoshop Brushes Set

(al)

Published in Graphics, November 10th, 2008
Tags: brushes, downloads, photoshop

1.

nick (November 10th, 2008, 2:49 pm)

good stuuf!
2.

Michael (November 10th, 2008, 2:50 pm)

sweet stuff!
3.

perfect (November 10th, 2008, 2:52 pm)

good！ thankyou
4.

Mitternacht (November 10th, 2008, 3:10 pm)

All these brushes are certainly useful and convenient, but I’m a bit skeptical about the doodle brushes. They’re nice for sure, but isn’t it far better to draw and scan your own? It doesn’t take that long.
5.

lagaba (November 10th, 2008, 3:17 pm)

Great ones! thank you.
6.

Reinier (November 10th, 2008, 3:27 pm)

I was waiting patiently for a post like this on Smashing Mag. Great!
7.

Angie Bowen (November 10th, 2008, 3:29 pm)

Great collection. And thanks for including one of my brush packs in the list!
8.

Franz Jeitz |fudgegraphics (November 10th, 2008, 3:33 pm)

wow this is a great list. some are new to me. thanks for including 3 my brush sets! you’re smashing!
9.

leszek (November 10th, 2008, 3:38 pm)

Oh, another “best of…” article. It is sad that SM turned into this fast-&-not-necessarily-creative blog :-/
10.

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (November 10th, 2008, 3:44 pm)

@leszek: you see, we have a really large audience. We try to do our best to offer something useful and/or interesting for as many readers as possible. And we are pretty sure that such posts are quite useful for designers and graphic artists. Are we wrong?
11.

Eric (November 10th, 2008, 3:53 pm)

Great selection of brushes — thanks much! Don’t listen to the haters — posts like this are definitely helpful.

Thanks!

Eric
Link [www.thecosmonaut.com]
12.

Nick Pagano (November 10th, 2008, 3:54 pm)

Awesome post! Some really, really cool brushes here. I like how yall broke it down into categories for easy browsin. Congrats to all featured! Great post!
13.

natanya (November 10th, 2008, 4:06 pm)

Great post and as a designer it’s definitely useful. For those of us in fashion design some must have brushes to add; standard denim, a distressed finish for over logo & screen tees, a translucent ribbed effect!
14.

Phobos (November 10th, 2008, 4:12 pm)

@Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
You’re far from wrong. I just started new study, Digital communication. And things like this always help me out big time.
Just stepped into the whole internet thing, but already hooked to Smashing Magazine!
15.

Francis Belisle (November 10th, 2008, 4:31 pm)

@Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz

i totally agree with your comment. Smashing still a reference for graphic designer.
16.

Mark (November 10th, 2008, 6:00 pm)

@ leszek - it amuses me when I see comments from people like you. You obviously see yourself as so far above everyone else in terms of your creativity. As my mum used to say, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

If it’s so sad for you, then why don’t you leave this site, and go somewhere you are amongst other people with such high opinions of themselves.

I’ve been running my own successful design agency for the last 7 years, and this site continues to be a fantastic resource for beginners and professionals alike.

Vitaly and Sven, keep up the good work!
17.

archknight79 (November 10th, 2008, 6:31 pm)

good brushes! yahoo!
18.

namik_pasha (November 10th, 2008, 6:37 pm)

hi
im also beginner here. for leszek “get out of here” I’d says. if u so creative why dont u make for ur own..huh

ps: nice collection.
19.

Derek McDonald (November 10th, 2008, 6:48 pm)

Nice collection of brushes there. One type missing is “Clouds”.
I have quite a collection of brushes that I use.

Might be good to note there is a program for windows called “Link [abrviewer.sourceforge.net]” Lets you look at the brushes outside of Photoshop and can export them to plain images.
20.

Steven Snell (November 10th, 2008, 7:05 pm)

@ Vitaly and Sven,
What makes Smashing Magazine unique is the depth and usefulness of lists. Tons of blogs post lists, but very few put as much practicality and usefulness into the lists. Smashing’s list posts certainly stand out to me as they always go way beyond everyone else. As someone who’s written a few similar posts for Smashing I know that I always feel I have a lot to live up to with these posts because of the standard that has been set.
21.

dreamzmaster (November 10th, 2008, 7:06 pm)

Nice Collection…
22.

Mariella (November 10th, 2008, 7:46 pm)

LOVE this! Thanks!
23.

Jenna Fox (November 10th, 2008, 8:13 pm)

Wow, this is fantastic. Stuff like this really helps me as I start to get in to web design. I just wish a zip of all of this were provided.
24.

Siah (November 10th, 2008, 10:06 pm)

AWESOME! i spent most of the day making grunge borders for a site im workin on and here you guys go making life easier once more.. many many thanks!
25.

Dragon (November 10th, 2008, 10:17 pm)

Any tech brushes?
26.

vladimir_cze (November 10th, 2008, 11:23 pm)

Perfect collection. Great post! Thank you SM
27.

Adel (November 10th, 2008, 11:36 pm)

Now this is some thing useful
I gotta bookmark this page
thanx a lot man, I really appreciate this …
28.

Mike (November 11th, 2008, 12:38 am)

Nice collection as always but are those brushes free for commercial projects???
29.

Dedail (November 11th, 2008, 1:00 am)

wow
30.

Ali Reid (November 11th, 2008, 1:02 am)

down with the haters. just go somewhere else!
31.

Dan (November 11th, 2008, 1:17 am)

wow. amazing stuff. thanks SM
32.

Sandie Sørensen (November 11th, 2008, 1:36 am)

I love the handdrawn examples!
The rest I feel like I’ve seen too many times allready. :)
33.

Matthew Pennell (November 11th, 2008, 1:52 am)

Excellent timing - just as I need something special for a new header… :)
34.

Hugo (November 11th, 2008, 1:58 am)

for me, one of the best brushes resource:
Link [browse.deviantart.com]

keep up the good work SM!

Hugo
35.

Tom (November 11th, 2008, 2:38 am)

its another great list but not really a “must-have”. thanks for this great article again. sm is my nr1 source!
36.

VIGAHILL (November 11th, 2008, 3:21 am)

YELEEEEE:D
37.

DM (November 11th, 2008, 4:25 am)

I love it! SM is a really great resource. It’s really great that there are people out there that still share their creativity with others. Thanks again!
38.

orth3rion (November 11th, 2008, 5:22 am)

old … and not so “must have” material ….
39.

Craig Hooper (November 11th, 2008, 7:05 am)

You’ve got to take care of your extremely long page loads. This page (50 PS brushes) took 1 minute to load, and you don’t need to know about my bandwidth. It’s the same as everyone else: 7mbps cable broadband. Network conditions are fine this morning. I checked the Safari activity window, and the culprit is your images. They are all hovering around 150-300KB. I don’t think it would be that difficult to crunch them down a little more in PS’s save-for-web feature. These things should be no more than 75KB each…
40.

Dan (November 11th, 2008, 7:38 am)

Fan-bloody-tastic!
41.

gr8pixel (November 11th, 2008, 7:56 am)

holy macaroni! now that is what i’m talking about! Thanks a bunch SM! :D
42.

jorge (November 11th, 2008, 8:30 am)

more grunge? no thanks.
43.

Mike (November 11th, 2008, 8:41 am)

Great post. As for the long page load… what did you expect when you saw a post for “50 Photoshop Brushes”; a quick list of links? And the crying about the hand-drawn brushes… the same could be said about many of the other styles as well.

I’ll go find my tiny violin brush set for both you…
44.

romanovichk (November 11th, 2008, 11:25 am)

@ Vitaly and Sven,

Making these lists of brushes is great way to look at the past post without constantly searching or digging up posts in the past. The lists are great!
45.

Srecko Bradic (November 11th, 2008, 11:30 am)

This one of the “must have it” material for all of the Adobe Photoshop users. For few years I use special brushes with great capabilities of simulating artist brushes like the watercolor stroke, oil stroke, chalk, dry brush and so on and I know the value of this type of tools.

So as a official illustrator for the two publisher I highly recomend this topic and all tools diplayed here.

Link [www.letletlet-warplanes.com]
Link [www.sreckobradic.com]
46.

mikem (November 11th, 2008, 12:50 pm)

Another stunning - and helpful! - compilation. Thanks so much!
47.

leszek (November 11th, 2008, 2:05 pm)

@ Mark - If you judge me after one short comment “you obviously see yourself as so far above everyone else in terms of” psychology ;-*
I don’t check only this site for inspiration & creativity, but SM was so different from others when I came here. And I really liked this difference. Now in my opinion there are too many “best of” articles (which are indeed useful, but not so useful for me if I have this on X other sites).
I prefer not-best-ofs at SM so I voiced my opinion - sorry if I said it in wrong way.
48.

Jurgi (November 11th, 2008, 4:36 pm)

It would be great to see info, which/if presented stuff is compatible e.g. with Paint Shop Pro, or other painters. Not everyone is using PS. ;)
49.

Zimdoo (November 11th, 2008, 4:51 pm)

Thanks for another great collection of “Must Haves!”

Please DO continue to provide this type of resource — it provides great inspiration and saves so much time whenever Smashing publishes a great collection like this! You guys are providing a great service, and I always look forward to visiting Smashing Mag at the start or the end of my day. Thank you, Vitaly & Sven!
50.

Tom Ross - PSDFAN (November 11th, 2008, 7:10 pm)

Great list. I’m just getting into using brushes more and some of these will definitely come in useful.
51.

leDzuc (November 11th, 2008, 7:41 pm)

Thks, I like it :’). I will use it for next design. Thk a lot.
52.

Riza (November 12th, 2008, 4:23 am)

Thanks
53.

Rakesh.S (November 12th, 2008, 5:11 am)

I didn’t like this listing.. Some kind of repetitive work
54.

Jon (November 12th, 2008, 8:23 am)

Awesome. I love these. Thank you! :)
55.

Nicky (November 12th, 2008, 12:38 pm)

AWESOME LIST! Thanks Smashing Mag - totally rockin!
56.

Pedro (November 12th, 2008, 10:51 pm)

gracias desde España
57.

Wazdesign (November 13th, 2008, 12:44 am)

Nice Collection of The Web2.0 , i mean its all about we need.
Thanks
58.

Timothy (November 13th, 2008, 5:55 am)

Awesome list! Delicioused
59.

Sara (November 13th, 2008, 8:09 am)

This is great! Thanks
60.

Mark (November 13th, 2008, 2:35 pm)

@ leszek - I’ve been a reader of SM since the beginning. And, like you, not all of the articles are of direct use or interest to me personally, but a large enough selection of them ARE. If something doesn’t tickle my fancy, I just don’t give it a second look. There’s no need to whinge about it. All I was saying was that your comment came across like you were some uber-designer worthy of far superior content than that which most of the other readers here get great inspiration, ideas and learning from.
61.

Okibi (November 13th, 2008, 3:28 pm)

Great list, I’m such a brush-a-holic, thanks for giving me my fix.
62.

Jon Williams (November 13th, 2008, 8:47 pm)

I just downloaded almost all of them. Forget the guy who thinks all “top whatever” lists are the same and easy to crank out. He’s obviously never made one before. When the web is filled with massive amounts of junk(brushes included) its simply amazing that people like you are generous enough to sift through it all for us. I for one appreciate that. Keep it up.
63.

motor9 (November 14th, 2008, 9:25 am)

not hatin’, but - many of these brushes have been around the interwebs for years and many are at such a low resolution that they’re essentially useless. I am seeing more and more designers putting out 2500 pixel brushes lately, though. Which is a good thing :)

thx for the resource - [m]
64.

Ceres (November 14th, 2008, 8:06 pm)

Cool… Thx so much for all ur post, they r all very useful to me… Keep up the good work :) Smashing mag Go Go Go!
65.

Jehzeel Laurente (November 16th, 2008, 11:50 am)

*bookmarking this page* :)
66.

Thomas (November 18th, 2008, 1:53 am)

E’ proprio quello che stavo cercando questa mattina…. IWD è sempre un mito!
67.

Shah Ankit H (November 22nd, 2008, 1:42 am)

this is really good collection. it’ nice collecttion. pick up
68.

tasarhane (November 24th, 2008, 2:44 am)

Nice collection.
69.

ALPHONSE (November 29th, 2008, 7:53 am)

very good ThayOU
70.

Andrew (December 1st, 2008, 5:54 pm)

Gah! So awesome! I’m going to be sorting and organizing these forever, haha.

Thanks you, for being you ;)
71.

jerviswang (December 2nd, 2008, 3:38 pm)

Good!thank you.
72.

shawnpetriw (December 5th, 2008, 10:28 pm)

Why are these comments showing up in my RSS feed? (Google Reader).

I’ve never seen it before. It it Smashing or is it Google?
73.

shitu (December 5th, 2008, 10:35 pm)

Hey are your comments Feed and post feed are interchanged since all your comments are coming on your post feeds!!!
74.

kirandulo (December 6th, 2008, 1:20 am)

ooops…!!! feed problem!
smashing article feed accidentally has been replaced by your comment feed
75.

Prasanta (December 8th, 2008, 8:45 pm)

nice
76.

Vincent Beneche (December 16th, 2008, 7:14 am)

so nice !
77.

Mariana (December 17th, 2008, 7:40 pm)

hi

thanks … great collection!!
78.

jhoney (January 6th, 2009, 1:36 pm)

Nice And awesome collection…..help me in my thinkings..

i really appreciate the work,,, thnx to the team
79.

Hh (January 6th, 2009, 5:53 pm)

Thank you for your generous spirits; together we accomplish so much more!
80.

GJ (January 9th, 2009, 3:58 am)

omg ¡¡¡¡¡!!!
81.

b.k (January 16th, 2009, 7:40 pm)

hi!

these brushes are awesome!!! thanks =D
82.

Jeff (January 25th, 2009, 12:00 pm)

Pretty much you are saying, “hey, if you don’t know how to be a real designer, here’s how you can fake it.” How about encouraging people to create their own design tools? Instead you just help everyone become lazy followers who mimic popular trends.
83.

SlashDOT (/.) (January 27th, 2009, 2:45 am)

Superb Collection…
84.

ws (February 1st, 2009, 7:48 pm)

very good !thank you
85.

wujianhau (February 9th, 2009, 7:37 pm)

henbang
86.

caturstudio (February 22nd, 2009, 1:27 am)

Thx for resources..
87.

Aaron (February 23rd, 2009, 5:51 pm)

Are these brushes compatible with CS4 ?
88.

alexander1k (March 11th, 2009, 6:49 pm)

Cool stuff, we have most of them already
89.

Bruna (March 16th, 2009, 3:49 pm)

naum conseguientender quero em potuguês mais detalhado
90.

reneschmidt (March 22nd, 2009, 11:16 pm)

Seems to work beautifully
91.

封雷 (March 27th, 2009, 6:01 pm)

很好
92.

Thiago (May 19th, 2009, 7:23 am)

omg it’s amazing!

Thank you very much!
93.

Navdeep (www.zanetine.com) (June 5th, 2009, 3:40 am)

WOW!
94.

Navdeep (http://www.zanetine.com) (June 5th, 2009, 3:41 am)

Really i like it..will use it
95.

Jaspal Singh aka jsxtech (June 14th, 2009, 6:08 pm)

Thanks for sharing awesome brushes.