Need help managing Brush Presets or Libraries

[varxtis]

I desperately need help finding a better way to manage my brushes as my collection has gotten a bit out of control. Currently I have X amount of brushes in "C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2015\Presets\Brushes"

And some are in subfolders within the "Brushes" folder. The problem Im running into is that when I go into photoshop, look at Brush presets and try to load or replace brush presets, ALL of my brushes within the "Brushes" folder appear, even those in the subfolders, to the point where the list goes out of the view-able screen. First, Im under the impression that a brush "Preset" means a collection of custom brushes. And then Im under the impression that you can create different "Libraries" of brushes, which makes me think Folders or Catagories, to which you can add brush presets to. but when I try to follow the instructions on the help page, it talks about how to create new Libraries, but all it's doing is creating new preset.

On top of the hope to have a way to sort brushes by self determined categories, I also want to start sorting through my brushes one by one to start deleting old ones (10+ years, yes 10+ years of basic Photoshop experience and I still don't know this T_T Its sad). And since the only way you can view a brush preset is through Photoshop, I need a better way of managing my brushes.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

First, Im under the impression that a brush "Preset" means a collection of custom brushes.

I think the terminology may be a bit unfortunate but a Brush Preset is one collection of Brush-related settings (default or customised), but Brush Presets as edited, saved etc. in Presets Manager and saved as abr-files are collections of such individual Brush Presets (though they can contain just one, too).

Some Feature Requests on the issue exist

Photoshop: Custom brushes organization/sub-menus | Photoshop Family Customer Community

Photoshop: Better Preset Organization (sub-folders, tag, search) | Photoshop Family Customer Communi...

Photoshop: Ability to update/edit brush presets | Photoshop Family Customer Community

[varxtis]

First off, thank you for the info. I do appreciate your response.

So, in essence, there's no way to "organize", "Group", or "Categorize" within Photoshop itself yet? If that is the case, how exactly does a Photoshop artist organize their brushes. As I said in my original post "ALL of my brushes within the "Brushes" folder appear, even those in the subfolders, to the point where the list goes out of the view-able screen". I'm literally unable see more than half of my brushes.

Would I just create alternative Brush folders like "Brushes" "Brushes01" "Brushes02" "Brushes03" etc., and then have all tress related in one, all stars in 2, frames in 3, etc.? I mean, I know I could go through and append a wad of different brushes together and then create a new colle...prese.... ABR whatever from that, but then that'll have a mixture of super low quality and super high quality brushes.

[imadamwayne]

Hello,

I was curious about this same topic. Check out the following links and you may find something helpful. In my honest opinion Brush Gordon and Panorabrush look to be really good options but one of the others may work for you as well.

Brush Gordon - A Photoshop Brush Plug-in

http://www.brushgordon.com/

This honestly looks the most promising. They are currently in private beta but you can sign up to be selected for beta or if you want to be notified when Brush Gordon is for sale. Out of all the available options, I am most looking forward to this one. It will be an actual plugin and it's for "CC". So you can assume it will run on both Windows and Mac once it's released.

Panorabrush - PS Plugin For Mac & PC (Photoshop CC 2014 & CC 2015)

http://panorabrush.com/

This seems like a great option as well.

Brush Pilot - Stand Alone For Mac

www.brushpilotapp.com

Allows you to preview Photoshop's .abr brushes and organize then how you like. It also features a quick install button that will automatically load the brushes into any version of Photoshop.

Argus - For Windows

www.tumasoft.com/argus/index.html

This allows you to view all brushes and collections in Windows Explorer just like you would view images. It's not just for brushes though. This also allows you to preview patterns (pat), custom shapes (csh), styles (asl), gradients (grd), contours (shc), documents (psd), and swatches (aco,ase,act,acb,ado) all within Windows Explorer.

Preset Viewer Breeze - Stand Alone Windows & Mac (Runs On Adobe Air)

www.tumasoft.com/shoppe/product.php?productid=16186

Allows you to view, search and organize your brushes and other adobe collections. Similar to Argus above. This and Argus are both may by Tumasoft. Below are features taken from the website.

• Supports ABR, ACB, ACO, ACT, ADO, ASE, ASL, CSH, GRD, PAT, PSD, SHC, GIF, JPG, PNG formats
• Export presets to PNG!
• View installed fonts
• Drag & Drop into Photoshop
• Organize into Groups

ABRView - Stand Alone For Windows & Mac/Linux

www.easyelements.com/abrview.html

Simple .abr brush viewer.

GruntBrushes - Mac & Windows - Photoshop CC 2014/15

GruntBrushes Tool Panel Plugin

I am not sure whether or not you can install brushes that are not from GruntBrushes.com but if you can this is another possibility.

Solution to a different problem:

Custom Brushes and Actions - YouTube

Scott Robertson has a great video on workflows and organization for your brushes and he uses a creative solution of using actions to automatically load certain brushes. He shows the process beginning at minute 5:47.

Hope this helps!

[singhs.apps]

well, godspeed, mate !

[Guest]

I should add a MagicSquire to this thread. This one looks really nice:

I was quite surprised , after all these years of waiting it works pretty cool!

[RLSprouse]

I'm willing to be a beta tester, Derrick, so contact me at RLSprouse <at> icloud [dot] com

[Gabriel Diaz]

Signed up.

Been wanting this for years.

Cant wait. 🙂