Book Review: Photoshop Brush Directory: A Beginner's Guide to 4000 Selections and Settings

The book covers Photoshop CS5 so some new features would not be found in previous versions of Photoshop. It starts off with a brush primer showing what they are capable of with artist examples and then there's the useful section of creating your own Photoshop brushes with brush settings.

Next up is the brush directory with over 300 pages featuring 4000 brush selections. This is an incredibly convenient source of custom Photoshop brushes. It's so quick to browse through the pages and pick a brush than to manually creating one by trial and error. There are no tutorials but based on the first chapter, you'll have no problem finding out where to tweak the brushes.

Each brush featured has their brush stroke shown. The main default brush is picked, and the other brushes modified with different customised settings. All the customised settings are shown. Selected ones have examples of how backgrounds would look when filled with the brush stroke.

At the back of the book are additional content on how to use layers, blending modes and adjustment layers. Those are just bonus material, nice to have but not totally related to the brushes.

This is a fantastic resource. A time saver.

Photoshop Brush Directory (for Europe) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Best Digital Brushes for Photoshop (for USA) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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Best Digital Brushes for Photoshop (for USA) is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn

Photoshop Brush Directory (for Europe) is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn