Download: Photoshop Brushes Series 30 By Dave Nagel For our 30th collection of brushes for Adobe Photoshop, we're entering into a slightly new area of texture-oriented brushes. This time around, we focus on animal textures, with brushes designed to create scales, fluff, fur, feathers and other elements that can be used either for abstract background images or textures for 3D maps. They're compatible with Photoshop CS and CS2, as well as Photoshop Elements 3. ...Read More »

Download: Photoshop Brushes Series 29 By Dave Nagel We return this week to our series of brushes for Adobe Photoshop with a new collection of natural media brushes--that is, brushes designed to emulate the appearance (and sometimes the behavior) of traditional drawing and painting tools, such as charcoal, pastel, bristle brushes and the like. This is our 29th collection of brushes for Photoshop. Read on for download and installation instructions. ...Read More »

Download: Photoshop Brushes Series 28 By Dave Nagel It's been a while since we've had a brush collection focusing on elements of nature, so I thought I'd rectify that lapse with a brand new set of brushes--our 28th collection of brushes for Adobe Photoshop. This new set is a real grab bag of of nature-oriented brushes, covering everything from clouds and other vapor effects to ground cover, leaves, grass and other earthy elements. And, as always, this collection of brushes is completely free. ...Read More »

Download: Photoshop Brushes Series 27 By Dave Nagel Skin textures are among the most difficult to create when you're working with 3D figures. Unless you have access to one of the more advanced texture creation programs (such as Maxon's BodyPaint 3D) or are satisfied using textures created by others, you don't have a whole lot of options. Fortunately Photoshop's painting tools will allow you--with a bit of effect--to generate skin-like textures, whether you're working with tiles or UV maps. You just need the right set of brushes. ...Read More »

Photoshop Brushes Series 26 By Dave Nagel Several graphics programs out there create "bristling" effects with their brushes by taking any given nib and simply stretching it over the length of a path. This has its drawbacks though, as the quality of the bristle is in direct proportion to the length of the path. In Photoshop, though, you can use bristle brushes that maintain a constant bristle quality regardless of the length of the stroke, but whose shapes and other characteristics can vary over the course of a stoke through various parameters. Here we present a collection of 15 such brushes for Adobe Photoshop CS. ...Read More »

Brushes for Corel Painter Series 3 By Dave Nagel Since we've been on the topic of cloning in Corel Painter IX, it seemed a good time to release a new set of brushes for Painter designed to do just that. The brushes in this collection--our third series for Painter--are designed to create textured clones from photographic images resembling various paint styles, from thick and creamy strokes to spongy patches of uneven paint. ...Read More »

Download: Brushes for Adobe Photoshop, Series 25 By Dave Nagel One of the great things about the paint engine in Adobe Photoshop is its ability to alleviate repetitive drawing tasks while allowing you to keep control of the drawing process. Most of our recent brush collections for Photoshop have been designed to take advantage of this capability by allowing you to paint textures and effects quickly into your image so you don't have to paint elements pixel by pixel or rely on plugins to take care of you effects for you. This week we have another collection along those lines, this one geared toward elements of nature. ...Read More »

Download: Custom Photoshop Brushes, Series 24 By Dave Nagel There are several commercial filters you can use to generate cloud, fog and smoke effects in Adobe Photoshop. While these may work fine in some situations, there are times when filters just don't give you the exact effect you're looking for. In other words, you need something a bit more custom for your composition. Enter our latest collection of brushes for Photoshop, a library of 25 dynamic brushes designed to help you create your own vapor effects with just a few strokes of your pen. ...Read More »

Download: Brushes for Corel Painter, Series 2 By Dave Nagel We haven't offered a collection of Painter brushes for download for quite some time now. But I've recently been inspired by the release of Corel Painter IX, and so I've decided to bring it back into the rotation. This new collection of free brushes for Painter includes 21 various presets, from natural media emulators (including brushes in the all-new Artists' Oils category) to more wild effects brushes. ...Read More »

Download: Custom Photoshop Brushes, Series 23 By Dave Nagel This is our fourth collection of hair and fur brushes for Adobe Photoshop. This time around we have 30 brushes designed to simulate a variety of strand types--long, short, curly, straight and wavy--for applications like texture mapping for 3D objects or compositing in 2D images. They include several brushes for creating body hair; some for generating long, straight hair; and several hatched brushes for creating shorter hair effects, such as eyebrows and mustaches. ...Read More »

Adobe Photoshop Style Layers: Series #15 By Don Lee Sometimes you want a certain design but you want it quick and easy. That's where Adobe Photoshop's style layers feature comes in handy. You can apply a style layer effect direct from the palette and continue on with your work. This two styles are named "RCSurfer" and "snowman." Enjoy! ...Read More »

Download: Custom Photoshop Brushes, Series 22 By Dave Nagel This is our seventy-fifth collection of downloadable goodies and our twenty-second collection of brushes for Adobe Photoshop. And on this momentous anniversary, we return to the theme that started it all: brushes designed to emulate natural media. This time around we have an assortment of 25 such brushes designed for painting and drawing with the appearance of wet and dry tools, all loaded up with textures and dynamics for your emulatory needs.... ...Read More »

Adobe Photoshop Style Layer Effects: Series #14 By Don Lee In series 14 of my Adobe Photoshop Style Layer tutorials, I have created 2 more effects that you can implement into your style layers palette to give your designs or text elements a new look quick and easy. The effects are named 'hurricane' and 'halloween.' Detailed instructions have been added to help the user install and implement the style layers into their next Photoshop project. Have fun and enjoy the effects! ...Read More »

Download: Custom Photoshop Brushes, Series 21 By Dave Nagel For our twenty-first set of brushes for Adobe Photoshop, I've decided to create yet another set designed for producing hair effects. This is owing mainly to the remarkable popularity of the previous set, as well as the fact that it's pretty difficult to exhaust all of the useful possibilities of these types of brushes. Once again, this brush collection is geared mainly toward the creation of textures for use in 3D modeling, though these sorts of brushes work well in 2D compositing environments as well. ...Read More »

Adobe Photoshop Style Layers #13 By Don Lee In series 13 of my Adobe Photoshop style layer tutorials, I have created 2 more effects that you can implement into your Style Layers palette to give your designs or text elements a new look quick and easy. The effects are named “Surfer” and “Liquid.” Detailed instructions have been added to help the user install and implement the Style Layers into their next Photoshop project. Have fun and enjoy the effects! ...Read More »

Download: Custom Photoshop Brushes, Series 20 By Dave Nagel Last week we started a new series of custom brushes for Adobe Photoshop focusing on the creation of textures for use in 3D imagery, kicking it off with several brushes designed to simulate the look of body hair. This week we extend that collection with 20 new texture brushes, this time covering skin textures. ...Read More »

Download: Custom Photoshop Brushes, Series 19 By Dave Nagel Most of you who create textures for 3D objects incorporate Adobe Photoshop into your workflow, so I thought I'd start a new series of brushes for Photoshop to help generate the various elements that go into a texture, particularly human and animal forms. For this first installment--our 19th collection of brushes for Photoshop--I've put together 20 individual tools for creating hair and fur effects. ...Read More »

Adobe Photoshop Style Layer Effects: Series #12 By Don Lee In series 12 of my Adobe Photoshop Style Layer tutorials, I have created 2 more effects that you can implement into your Style Layers palette to give your designs or text elements a new look quick and easy. The effects are named Showtime and Fireball. Detailed instructions have been added to help the user install and implement the Style Layers into their next Photoshop project. Have fun and enjoy the effects! ...Read More »

Download: Expression Strokes, Series 8 By Dave Nagel While we may not yet know the ultimate future of Creature House Expression, the program's current owner, Microsoft, has updated the software and released free versions for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and Windows. And, now that it's back, this seems like as good a time as any to release a new series of brushes for the program. So, if you know what's good for you, grab a copy of Expression while you can, and come on in for our latest package of free addons for this software, our eighth series of skeletal strokes. ...Read More »

Photoshop: Custom Brushes, Series 18 By Dave Nagel Most of our brush collections for Adobe Photoshop to date have been along the lines of natural media emulators and abstract pattern creators. This time around, however, the brushes are a bit less general, offering a range of images from nature designed to create deep, complex backgrounds or decorative borders out of objects like flowers, butterflies, leaves and the like. ...Read More »