I use PS 7 and I have downloaded some really cool brushes from some websites, but I have so many brushes that I can't find them very quickly, plus my DH uses his own brushes for the work he does on PS 7 so we have TONS How can I organize my brushes on PS 7 so that I can find them easier than having to look through hundreds of brushes in the pull down menu to find them?

TIA
Shawnery

My brush collection got so enourmous I spent an entire weekend indexing it.

When you click on the LOAD BRUSHES fly out, the folder where brushes are stored opens...from here you have a couple of options;

Right click in an open area and create a new folder. You can keep all your brushes in one folder, and your partner's in another. Create new folders within your folder and categorize your brushes under different sub-headings according to style; like stamps, edges, grunge, techno, letters, clouds, etc.

I also combined similar style brush collections into one giant topical brush palette under sub-headings like "paint splats and stains", "grunge edges", etc.. That cuts down a lot on having a multitude of small collections, all having only a couple brushes each. Load them all in the open collection, then SAVE AS... (collection name that you will recognize) Then you don't have to search through a dozen tiny sets looking for a specific brush, all brushes of similar style are there under one collection. This goes a long way towards cleaning up master lists.

After you have saved all the tiny sets into one large collection, gather all the tiny sub-sets into a folder, name it, then save somewhere else on your hard drive (or burn to a disc) outside of Photoshop as a back up.

When downloading new brush sets, always try to include the preview jpg, so when you explore the folder looking for a specific set, you dont have to go to all the trouble to install then open the set just to see whats in it. Make sure when you save them initially, that they have the same name, so the preview is right next to the abr file in the folder.

Save with specific names like "PAINT; small splotches & swashes", instead of thier given names, like "Billy Bob's Dark Vampire Spatters". That way, all sets of similar content are at least grouped together in the master list, with names that are meaningful to you.

To preserve authorship and credit for the various brush sets within the master collection, rename the individual brushes as you load each new sub-set. (Kathy's watercolor washes, 1-5)

If there is no preview included with the brush set, make your own. Install the brush set, switch to LARGE THUMBNAIL view, and take a screen shot. Crop & save as a jpg with the same name as the brush set in the same folder. You won't get a "Warning of duplicate file names" pop-up because one will be a jpg and the other an abr.

At this point, your brush collection file will have a lot of data in it, and could affect the boot-up time of Photoshop. I leave my Presets folders in thier native states, only adding maybe a handful or so of frequently used favs, then install a short-cut to a different folder on my E-drive where I keep all custom presets in a folder named "Photoshop CS; Active Content"

All custom preset collections; patterns, gradients, tools, etc., can be kept in this type of file outside of Photoshop itself, to keep it from bogging down. They are all easilly navigated to from within the "Load New ____" fly outs.

I cannot stress enough the importance of continually updating back ups of all your custom sets, fonts, etc. In the event of some catastrophic hard drive failure, having to re-install Photoshop, upgrading, or even if someone accidently deletes an important file folder, you'll have everything there and ready to rebuild, and not have to start over from scratch.

As we saw mentioned in a different thread this past week, sometimes cool brush sites are Brigadoons that mysteriously disappear. You can't always go back and re-download them from the source.

Discs are cheap and have plenty of room, use them. One day, they might be priceless.

Wow! Thanks for the information. I am still new to photoshop so I will have to try and figure all that out, but I am so glad you gave me such detailed information and hints. Thanks a ton.

I love this information too ! Thank you for taking the time to type this !

Aspect Ratio, I already follow nearly all of your excellent advice but have to give you kuddos for two things I had not thought of that drove me crazy--one is renaming those sets where the creator did not originally include their name in the set to include their name. Yeah! I was keeping the brushes in creator subfiles just so I could give credit. This will let me group them more "thematically" and still give credit without 8 hours of research. The other tip is the quick jpeg creation for a preview. Good grief, is that intelligent or what? I was trying to create new images containing a few dabs of the different brushes but didn't always do it and it is a royal pain. Your tip is painfree, quick and WONDERFUL.

Aspect Ratio, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I've been getting into brushes more lately, so this posting is timely. This should be put in the tutorials section, it's so well written and detailed.

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Susan
Outer Banks Foto Art