50 Must-Have Photoshop Brushes
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Smashing Magazine’s Photoshop Brushes
Splatter and Watercolour Brushes For Photoshop
(al)
nick
November 10th, 2008 2:49 pmgood stuuf!
Michael
November 10th, 2008 2:50 pmsweet stuff!
perfect
November 10th, 2008 2:52 pmgood！ thankyou
Mitternacht
November 10th, 2008 3:10 pmAll 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.
lagaba
November 10th, 2008 3:17 pmGreat ones! thank you.
Reinier
November 10th, 2008 3:27 pmI was waiting patiently for a post like this on Smashing Mag. Great!
Angie Bowen
November 10th, 2008 3:29 pmGreat collection. And thanks for including one of my brush packs in the list!
Franz Jeitz |fudgegraphics
November 10th, 2008 3:33 pmwow this is a great list. some are new to me. thanks for including 3 my brush sets! you’re smashing!
leszek
November 10th, 2008 3:38 pmOh, another “best of…” article. It is sad that SM turned into this fast-&-not-necessarily-creative blog :-/
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?
Eric
November 10th, 2008 3:53 pmGreat selection of brushes — thanks much! Don’t listen to the haters — posts like this are definitely helpful.
Thanks!
Eric
http://www.thecosmonaut.com
Nick Pagano
November 10th, 2008 3:54 pmAwesome 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!
natanya
November 10th, 2008 4:06 pmGreat 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!
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!
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.
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!
archknight79
November 10th, 2008 6:31 pmgood brushes! yahoo!
namik_pasha
November 10th, 2008 6:37 pmhi
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.
Derek McDonald
November 10th, 2008 6:48 pmNice 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 “ABR Viewer” Lets you look at the brushes outside of Photoshop and can export them to plain images.
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.
dreamzmaster
November 10th, 2008 7:06 pmNice Collection…
Mariella
November 10th, 2008 7:46 pmLOVE this! Thanks!
Jenna Fox
November 10th, 2008 8:13 pmWow, 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.
Siah
November 10th, 2008 10:06 pmAWESOME! 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!
Dragon
November 10th, 2008 10:17 pmAny tech brushes?
vladimir_cze
November 10th, 2008 11:23 pmPerfect collection. Great post! Thank you SM
Adel
November 10th, 2008 11:36 pmNow this is some thing useful
I gotta bookmark this page
thanx a lot man, I really appreciate this …
Mike
November 11th, 2008 12:38 amNice collection as always but are those brushes free for commercial projects???
Dedail
November 11th, 2008 1:00 amwow
Ali Reid
November 11th, 2008 1:02 amdown with the haters. just go somewhere else!
Dan
November 11th, 2008 1:17 amwow. amazing stuff. thanks SM
Sandie Sørensen
November 11th, 2008 1:36 amI love the handdrawn examples!
The rest I feel like I’ve seen too many times allready. :)
Matthew Pennell
November 11th, 2008 1:52 amExcellent timing – just as I need something special for a new header… :)
Hugo
November 11th, 2008 1:58 amfor me, one of the best brushes resource:
link
keep up the good work SM!
Hugo
Tom
November 11th, 2008 2:38 amits another great list but not really a “must-have”. thanks for this great article again. sm is my nr1 source!
VIGAHILL
November 11th, 2008 3:21 amYELEEEEE:D
DM
November 11th, 2008 4:25 amI 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!
orth3rion
November 11th, 2008 5:22 amold … and not so “must have” material ….
Craig Hooper
November 11th, 2008 7:05 amYou’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…
Dan
November 11th, 2008 7:38 amFan-bloody-tastic!
gr8pixel
November 11th, 2008 7:56 amholy macaroni! now that is what i’m talking about! Thanks a bunch SM! :D
jorge
November 11th, 2008 8:30 ammore grunge? no thanks.
Mike
November 11th, 2008 8:41 amGreat 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…
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!
Srecko Bradic
November 11th, 2008 11:30 amThis 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.
http://www.letletlet-warplanes.com
http://www.sreckobradic.com
mikem
November 11th, 2008 12:50 pmAnother stunning – and helpful! – compilation. Thanks so much!
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.
Jurgi
November 11th, 2008 4:36 pmIt 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. ;)
Zimdoo
November 11th, 2008 4:51 pmThanks 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!
Tom Ross - PSDFAN
November 11th, 2008 7:10 pmGreat list. I’m just getting into using brushes more and some of these will definitely come in useful.
leDzuc
November 11th, 2008 7:41 pmThks, I like it :’). I will use it for next design. Thk a lot.
Riza
November 12th, 2008 4:23 amThanks
Rakesh.S
November 12th, 2008 5:11 amI didn’t like this listing.. Some kind of repetitive work
Jon
November 12th, 2008 8:23 amAwesome. I love these. Thank you! :)
Nicky
November 12th, 2008 12:38 pmAWESOME LIST! Thanks Smashing Mag – totally rockin!
Pedro
November 12th, 2008 10:51 pmgracias desde España
Wazdesign
November 13th, 2008 12:44 amNice Collection of The Web2.0 , i mean its all about we need.
Thanks
Timothy
November 13th, 2008 5:55 amAwesome list! Delicioused
Sara
November 13th, 2008 8:09 amThis is great! Thanks
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.
Okibi
November 13th, 2008 3:28 pmGreat list, I’m such a brush-a-holic, thanks for giving me my fix.
Jon Williams
November 13th, 2008 8:47 pmI 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.
motor9
November 14th, 2008 9:25 amnot 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]
Ceres
November 14th, 2008 8:06 pmCool… Thx so much for all ur post, they r all very useful to me… Keep up the good work :) Smashing mag Go Go Go!
Jehzeel Laurente
November 16th, 2008 11:50 am*bookmarking this page* :)
Thomas
November 18th, 2008 1:53 amE’ proprio quello che stavo cercando questa mattina…. IWD è sempre un mito!
Shah Ankit H
November 22nd, 2008 1:42 amthis is really good collection. it’ nice collecttion. pick up
tasarhane
November 24th, 2008 2:44 amNice collection.
ALPHONSE
November 29th, 2008 7:53 amvery good ThayOU
Andrew
December 1st, 2008 5:54 pmGah! So awesome! I’m going to be sorting and organizing these forever, haha.
Thanks you, for being you ;)
jerviswang
December 2nd, 2008 3:38 pmGood!thank you.
shawnpetriw
December 5th, 2008 10:28 pmWhy are these comments showing up in my RSS feed? (Google Reader).
I’ve never seen it before. It it Smashing or is it Google?
shitu
December 5th, 2008 10:35 pmHey are your comments Feed and post feed are interchanged since all your comments are coming on your post feeds!!!
kirandulo
December 6th, 2008 1:20 amooops…!!! feed problem!
smashing article feed accidentally has been replaced by your comment feed
Prasanta
December 8th, 2008 8:45 pmnice
Vincent Beneche
December 16th, 2008 7:14 amso nice !
Mariana
December 17th, 2008 7:40 pmhi
thanks … great collection!!
jhoney
January 6th, 2009 1:36 pmNice And awesome collection…..help me in my thinkings..
i really appreciate the work,,, thnx to the team
Hh
January 6th, 2009 5:53 pmThank you for your generous spirits; together we accomplish so much more!
GJ
January 9th, 2009 3:58 amomg ¡¡¡¡¡!!!
b.k
January 16th, 2009 7:40 pmhi!
these brushes are awesome!!! thanks =D
Jeff
January 25th, 2009 12:00 pmPretty 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.
SlashDOT (/.)
January 27th, 2009 2:45 amSuperb Collection…
ws
February 1st, 2009 7:48 pmvery good !thank you
wujianhau
February 9th, 2009 7:37 pmhenbang
caturstudio
February 22nd, 2009 1:27 amThx for resources..
Aaron
February 23rd, 2009 5:51 pmAre these brushes compatible with CS4 ?
alexander1k
March 11th, 2009 6:49 pmCool stuff, we have most of them already
Bruna
March 16th, 2009 3:49 pmnaum conseguientender quero em potuguês mais detalhado
reneschmidt
March 22nd, 2009 11:16 pmSeems to work beautifully
封雷
March 27th, 2009 6:01 pm很好
Thiago
May 19th, 2009 7:23 amomg it’s amazing!
Thank you very much!
Navdeep (www.zanetine.com)
June 5th, 2009 3:40 amWOW!
Navdeep (http://www.zanetine.com)
June 5th, 2009 3:41 amReally i like it..will use it
Jaspal Singh aka jsxtech
June 14th, 2009 6:08 pmThanks for sharing awesome brushes.
Vanella
July 24th, 2009 4:18 pmExcuse me…Can I download the brushes…?
Jef
July 31st, 2009 9:41 amRock on! Thanks!
narendra
January 31st, 2010 8:22 pmnice collection. cant wait to use them.
Mikael
February 2nd, 2010 7:50 amIm doing my early stages of my portfolio…. this is much usefull
El barto
May 4th, 2010 4:35 amHe takes these brushes on the Internet and then want to sell.
Fuck off !!!