Circle / Retro / Ring / Radial / Solar Brushes for Photoshop, PSP, Elements

Loading circle brushes in Photoshop CS5 CS4 etc

The circle / contour etc brush designs are loaded via the preset manager in Photoshop as well as via the brush tools / brushes palette. Select a brush and then apply the design in Photoshop. Set the color of the circle brush design via the foreground color.

example of the load brush command to load the circle / radial brushes in Photoshop

Circle brushes for Photoshop, PSP etc

The circle brushes sets include many different designs such as retro brushes, solar brushes, flower brushes, ring brushes, landscape brushes, crop circle brushes and many more.

The brushes are all 300 DPI varied size.

The circle brushes are easy to load into Photoshop or Photoshop elements, simply access the brushes via the preset manager or the brushes palette.

Circle brushes and the brush tool - impressionist, pencil, blur for Photoshop etc

Use the circle brushes with most of the brushes tools that come with Photoshop such as the clone tool, paint tool, art history tool, impressionist tool, pencil tool, blur tool and many of the other tools.

Of course, other software such as SumoPaint and Post Work Shop Pro have many other ways of using the brushes.

Distort and warp circle brushes for Photoshop

The circle brushes can be modified, warped, re-colored, distorted, combined and much to create 1000s and 1000s of unique brushes.

Re-color circle brushes in Photoshop

How to re-color the brushes? simply change the color via the toolbox (foreground). You can also modify how the color is applied via the brushes palette and the color dynamics section

The circle brushes can also be used as a source for new brushes as well as new patterns - simply apply the brushes dabs and then use the edit > define brush and edit > define pattern command to save the design as a new brush or new pattern.

Creating layers in Photoshop using circle brushes

The circle brushes can be applied in Photoshop as a standard brush stroke - you can set the spacing, size etc via the brush palette. You can also just apply the circle design brushes as a circle dab. Select the brush tool and select the circle brush via the palette (pack 4 brushes are used in the example below)

If you are using CS5 you can also use the layer > smart object convert command to convert the layer brushes (circle brushes) into a smart object and this in turn can have effects applied to the individual layers which can be modified at a future point in the creative process. Layer effects etc can also be applied to the circle brushes such as drop shadows (this is the case for CS4 CS3 etc as well)

Drop shadow circle brushes in Photoshop

Before you apply a brush dab in Photoshop CS5 CS4 etc go to the layer > new layer command and create a new layer. Now select the brush tool and the brush and apply the brush stroke as required. Go to the layer > layer style and set a drop shadow for the circle brush design.

example of the drop shadow applied to the circle brush in Photoshop

Now you have the design, you can go to the edit define brush menu command and save the circle brush as a new brush. Added :January 5th 2012

example - drop shadow brush applied with the color set to red in Photoshop (this is the brush created via the define edit brush above)

PNG brushes and circles in Photoshop

The circle brushes sets come with the designs in PNG (unless stated) and they can be used as a layer or basic design in Photoshop or Elements by using the file > place command to load the design. Once the circle brushes have been loaded as a layer then effects such as the layer effects / bevel / shadow etc can be applied to the designs.

Again, those designs can also then be saved as a new circle brush in Photoshop. You can also convert the circle brushes PNG files to other formats using various conversion tools freely found on the web. The PNG files can also be used as a source for patterns and displacements.

To use the circle brushes as a texture or displacement in Photoshop, you will need to open the PNG file and then save the PNG file as a PSD file to the textures / displacements folder of Photoshop - then access the design via the displace and glass filters.

PNG files and PSP and Painter

The PNG files are more for Paint Shop Pro and many other software. Not all software support PNG format so again you will need to quickly convert the circular PNG files to TIFF or some other supported format - this is the case for older versions of Painter.

Most recent software will support the PNG format but even then, some software will fail to support all parts of the PNG format.

Once loaded into Paint Shop Pro (via the open command), you can then use the brush palette to store the circle PNG file as a brush format file for PSP (PSPbrush)