How to Install Photoshop Brushes
Three ways to load an .ABR file into Photoshop, where your brushes live on Mac and Windows, and what to do when a new brush does not show up. The whole thing takes about a minute.
Load a New Brush in About Thirty Seconds
A Photoshop brush is a single file that adds a new tool to your Brushes panel: stars, rain, smoke, fog, texture, whatever that brush was built to paint. Installing one isn’t a setup process. It’s one file and one double-click, on Mac and Windows.
Here is the whole job in three steps. The fastest method works in every recent version of Photoshop, the Brushes panel gives you a file dialog, and the Preset Manager covers older versions.
Prefer a printable guide? Download the PHLEARN Photoshop Brushes install guide (PDF). It is also its own download on every pack page.
What an .ABR File Actually Is
Every PHLEARN brush pack is built the same way, so these steps work for all of them: a brush and a photo to try it on.
Once installed, the brush shows up at the bottom of the Brushes panel, named after the .ABR file.
A single .ABR can hold one brush or a whole pack, along with each brush’s size, shape, spacing, angle and dynamics, so you’re loading the settings, not just a shape. An .ABR isn’t an image: you can’t open it, and there’s nothing to place into a document. And Photoshop can’t read a brush that is still inside a .zip, so unzip the download first.
The Fastest Way to Install Photoshop Brushes
This works in every version of Photoshop from CC 2018 onward, on both Mac and Windows, and it takes about as long as it takes to read.
The fastest way
Double-click the brush
Works in current versions of Photoshop
- 1Unzip the download. Photoshop cannot read a zipped brush.
- 2Open Photoshop and leave it running.
- 3Double-click the .ABR file.
- 4Go to Window > Brushes and scroll to the bottom.
- 5Click the new brush and paint.
Nothing happened? It worked. Photoshop shows no confirmation. New brushes land at the very bottom of the list.
Where to click
Installing From the Brushes Panel
The double-click method is faster, but the Brushes panel gives you a proper file dialog, useful when you’re loading several brushes at once, or when you want to see exactly which file you’re picking. The Brushes panel (the brush library) is a different panel from Brush Settings, which controls how the selected brush behaves.
From the Brushes panel
Import the brush
- 1Go to Window > Brushes.
- 2Click the four-line menu icon in the top right corner of the panel.
- 3Choose Import Brushes.
- 4Select the .ABR file and click Open.
- 5Scroll to the bottom of the panel to find the brush.
Older Photoshop? Go to Edit > Presets > Preset Manager, set Preset Type to Brushes, click Load, select the .ABR file and click Done.
Where to click
While you’re in that menu, Get More Brushes opens Adobe’s own free brush packs in a browser, and Legacy Brushes restores the default brush sets that shipped with Photoshop before 2018, worth knowing if you’re following an older tutorial and a default brush seems to be missing. Adobe documents the same panel in its own guide to importing brushes and brush packs.
The Preset Manager Method
The Preset Manager is the older route, and it’s still there. On a pre-2018 version of Photoshop, go to Edit > Presets > Preset Manager (on much older versions, Edit > Preset Manager), set Preset Type to Brushes, click Load, select the .ABR file and click Open, then click Done. Load adds your brushes to what’s already there; to swap sets instead, use Replace Brushes from the Brushes panel menu.
Where Photoshop Stores Your Brushes
You don’t need to touch these folders to install Photoshop brushes, and we’d suggest you don’t. But it’s worth knowing where they live, because it explains a lot of the odd behavior people run into. Photoshop’s presets folder sits here:
- Mac: Users / [your user name] / Library / Application Support / Adobe / Adobe Photoshop [version] / Presets / Brushes
- Windows: C: / Users / [your user name] / AppData / Roaming / Adobe / Adobe Photoshop [version] / Presets / Brushes
Both of those folders are hidden by default. On Mac, hold Option while clicking the Go menu in Finder to reveal the Library folder. On Windows, turn on hidden items in File Explorer’s View menu.
Installing by dropping a file into the Presets folder
Copy an .ABR into the Brushes folder above and restart Photoshop, and the set appears at the bottom of the Brushes panel menu, ready to load. This is the only method that needs a restart, which is why it isn’t the one we recommend.
Moving your brushes to a new version of Photoshop
The folder path contains a version number, so when you upgrade Photoshop your brushes stay behind in the old version’s folder. Go to Edit > Presets > Migrate Presets and Photoshop carries your brushes, swatches, gradients and patterns forward for you.
What Trips People Up
Three fixes cover almost everything that looks wrong after an install.
“Could not load the brushes”? The download is still zipped or incomplete. Unzip it, or download it again.
The brush is enormous, even at a small size
Detailed brushes are often built very large, and Photoshop’s ceiling is 5,000 pixels, so a brush built at 2,500 pixels looks huge on a small file and about right on a full-resolution photo. Work on the full-size image, or size the brush down on the canvas as in tip 2 below.
3 Tips for Using Your New Brush
Press B to grab the Brush tool, pick your new brush from the Brushes panel, set your foreground color, and paint.
A layer mask over the brushed layer lets you fade the effect exactly where you want it rather than everywhere at once.
