Type Brushes

Text / Type / Antique / Alphabet / Letter Brush Strokes for Photoshop and Elements and PaintShop Pro

Type brushes for Photoshop and Elements

The brushes pack on this page are based on type / text / fonts. The antique type brushes are based on an old public domain copy of a 1735 play - the type is very rough and ready but captures the flavour of Georgian London. The antique type brushes uses various fragments of the play such as the front piece, title, individual letters as well as whole pages of the play text.

The antique type, like all Photoshop brushes, can be applied in black or white or any color (change via the foreground color in the toolbox).

The text can be modified, blurred, distorted, warped etc and then re-saved as a new brush stroke.

Blurring antique text brush strokes in Photoshop tutorial

So if you want to use the antique with a slight blur, you can simply just apply the text in Photoshop and then apply a blur via the filter menu and then use the define brush command to quickly save it as a new blurred antique Photoshop text brush.

Combining multiple brush strokes to create new one in Photoshop

There is no unwritten rule that the brush strokes in the brushes ABR set for Photoshop have to be in stone and forever - you can take any of the brushes, perhaps a single brush or even multiple ones, and apply them to a document and save them as a new brush

The end result can be the start for even more experimentation with type / text brush strokes in Photoshop (as well as Photoshop Elements, I don't want to leave that application out) so you can then apply the brush stroke - in the case below it is a combination of white and black color applied

You can also just select a small part of the brush stroke and use that as a new brush stroke in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements

Part selection of brush strokes can be a great source for abstract brush strokes.

Ornamental type brushes / antique brushes

The Rome 8th century etc brushes are based on the public domain book called 'Ornamental Alphabets' by F Delamotte. The book was published in 1860.

The type brush tools contain a number of the letters in the alphabet but in the case of the Rome 8th century some of the characters are missing. The alphabet back 12 centuries or so, was slightly different and didn't contain all 26 characters of the modern English alphabet.

The antique type brushes sets also include a number of variant designs, distress effects and more based on scans from the ornamental alphabet book.

The other sets of brushes such as the W letter brushes are purely abstract designs based on font outlines created in Illustrator by graphicxtras - there are many different sets of brushes available with different sets of letters

ABR / PNG / EPS and conversion of brushes

All the brush sets include the type brushes in ABR and PNG format (or EPS format). The ABR brushes are for use via the Photoshop brush tools and are loaded and replaced via the preset manager or the brushes palette. The PNG (or EPS) files can also be used in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements such as an additional source for new brushes or perhaps as a layer (you can then apply layer effects).

The PNG type brushes can also be used as brushes in Paint Shop Pro etc but the installation does vary. The packs all include notes how to load the brushes into PSP and some other software but to load the PNG files into other software you will have to consult the application's documentation.

The PNG / EPS format brushes can be convert to JPG etc by many tools freely found on the web.

PaintShop Pro is a wonderful tool for converting EPS etc files to a new format

1) Start PSP

2) file > batch > process

3) select files to convert i.e. EPS

4) Select new format such as PNG

5) Start

file > preferences > file formats > postscript to control the size of the generated file

Type EPS brushes

The type brushes also contain, in most cases, eps files. The eps files are vector designs and can be used to create brushes of any size for many different software. The EPS brushes can also be opened in vector software such as Illustrator or Xara and the designs can be modified further). In Xara you can apply various bevel or 3D effects etc to the vector type brushes.

If you are using Photoshop, you can always use an action and batch processing to add all the eps brushes to Photoshop.

You can also use the type / letter EPS files in PaintShop Pro and save them as a custom brushes. They can also be used as a standard layer or a source for patterns.

Combine text / type brushes in Photoshop

The type brushes, like all the brushes from graphicxtras.com, can be combined. You can open a new document and then apply the brushes in different ways and then select the type / text and use the edit > define brush command to save a new brush to the brushes palette.

The brush can also be permanently saved via the save command in the brushes palette.

Effects can be applied to the type brushes as well to create unique brush forms and these can also be saved. The type brushes can be saved perhaps also in word combinations - so instead of just spraying A A A etc to the image you can apply the design using B R U S H etc to form actual words - this text can also be saved as a new brush.

Wonderful for creating those ransom notes etc - if you need that kind of thing

Type brushes across layers in Photoshop and Elements

The type / text brushes can be applied to the background but they can also be applied to a new layer or even multiple layers.

You can apply say the letter A to one layer and then a letter B to another layer - apply different layer effects or plug-in effects to the type brush layers.

They can then be combined in many different ways by changing the blending modes in Photoshop or the opacity of the layers. The type text brushes can also be used across layers to create frames in animations for saving to a movie.

Free sampler / demo

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