Photoshop ® : Square Brushes

Square Brush Strokes for Photoshop, Elements, PaintShopPro and others

Thumbnail gallery of Square brushes (Set 152)

Square Brushes - access via the Photoshop toolbox

The brushes for Photoshop are accessed via the toolbox - tools include paint, pencil, clone, blur and others

Square brushes palette

Load the brushes via the brushes palette - either use the load brushes or replace brushes command. The load leaves the earlier brushes, the replace removes the brushes and only displays the newly loaded designs

Adding a shadow to square brushes in Photoshop

The brushes can be applied as is but if you wish to add a shadow to the brush stroke then apply the brush to a new layer and then add a shadow via the layer menu followed by layer style command. You can apply the shadow to all the brush strokes applied or you can just add the shadow to the brush itself and re-define the brush stroke via the edit define brush command

EPS files included in the brushes set - editing vector designs

Not all the square brush sets include the eps vector designs but ones that are based on sharp vector designs contain the eps format files. The square vector designs can be imported into Photoshop and Photoshop Elements as well as other applications. If you import the designs into an application such as Illustrator then you can modify the designs and re-save as a new square brush stroke

The brush set also includes a script / action file that can be run to add the eps files to Photoshop at a higher resolution / file size than the current square ABR file set (so you can then have brushes to 3000 x 3000 etc if you so wish)

In Illustrator or other vector applications you can edit the design - create near infinite designs from just a basic set of eps designs. The vector designs can be re-colored, the paths edited and so on.

On placing the design in Photoshop, the design will be stored as a smart object. Double click on the square EPS design in Photoshop and if you have Illustrator installed then the eps design will be opened in Illustrator - on saving in Illustrator you will be returned to Photoshop with the new brush design to re-save via the edit menu.

The result is a layer which can be saved as a brush or just used as a normal layer.

Hue color dynamics in Photoshop

Go to the window menu and brush palette and then the color dynamics options and you can set the 'foreground / background jitter', 'hue jitter', 'saturation jitter', 'brightness jitter' and more for the use of the square brushes (as well as any other brushes sets). Use the color dynamics options to create random color designs as well as subtle color shifts of blue or red or green (you can just set the foreground to blue and the background to light blue to create brush strokes only of blue colors)

Xara import of brush strokes

You can use the eps designs to import (via the file import) the brush stroke into Xara. This can then be used either as a brush stroke within Xara Photo & graphic designer application or it can be used with effects such as 3D extrude or with live effects or contours.

Contour example below in Xara

The square brushes can be used in countless other applications such as other 3D software. The eps files can be quickly converted to JPG or PNG etc formats.

Opening the square brushes in Photoshop Elements

Open the brushes via the preset manager (found in the edit menu) and use the load command to browse for the ABR files. The EPS files also can be used in Photoshop Elements as a layer etc (so you can create brushes 3000 x 3000 etc to the limits of Photoshop elements)

Impressionist brush tool in Photoshop Elements

Once loaded into Elements, use the square (or other) brushes with all the brushes tools such as 'impressionist brush tool' - set the brush type to dab, tight short, loose long and others. Use to create truly stunning impressionist paintings in seconds.

Open any picture and use the impressionist brush and brush types with the square brush designs.

The tool comes with a selection of additional options such as the blending mode etc and you can always apply additional effects such as blurs or artistic effects.

Sadly, Photoshop Elements does not offer the complete range of brush features found in the brush palette of Photoshop.

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Date modified: April 30th, 2012

Creating plugins and presets since 1995. Privacy - no details sent to third parties. After buying the square brush strokes set, you receive the download link to a zip file (from shareit.com) that contains the square brushes in ABR and PNG format along with documentation about the installation of the square brushes and also basic use in Photoshop, PaintShop Pro etc - also includes a thumbnail gallery of all the square brushes and a serial number for any future updates of the brushes. Unique items, commercial use, royalty-free.