How to Use Photoshop Brushes in GIMP

When we refer to photo editing programs, if there are two solutions that are representative in this sector, we must point to GIMP and Adobe Photoshop . They are one of the two great applications worldwide for this type of task, as many of you already know first hand.

The main difference between the two is that Adobe’s proposal is paid, while GIMP is free and you can download it from here . Well, here we want to focus on the use of brushes, very common tools in this type of program. To start we will tell you that Photoshop brushes, both free and premium , are widely used and numerous. In fact many times we will encounter the problem that we do not know which to choose when it comes to a particular type of brush in Photoshop.

photoshop brushes gimp

Brushes are widely used elements in photo editing

However, the same cannot be said for GIMP, since while it may not be as popular as Adobe’s editing application, it doesn’t have many brushes available either. Of course, we must bear in mind that we have the possibility of using Photoshop brushes in GIMP , which can solve this problem for us. So next, let’s see how we can do it.

The first thing to know is that these brushes can be found with the file extension .ABR. In addition to those that Photoshop itself incorporates, we can also download additional ones from the Internet, to use. At the same time you have to know that these can come in a compressed file. In that case we have to previously extract it in order to attach it and use it.

Once we know all this, the trick to being able to use a Photoshop brush in GIMP is to move it to the brush directory that the open source program uses. Therefore all of this focuses on something as simple as copying the corresponding file with the mentioned extension to the correct place. But of course, first of all we must know where we must copy it exactly.

How to use Photoshop brushes in GIMP

Therefore, for this that we discuss, the first thing we will do is open the Windows File Explorer . Once here, what we have to do is locate ourselves in the following disk path: “C: / Program Files / GIMP 2 / share / gimp / 2.0 / brushes”.

Pinceles GIMP

This is where we are going to see some subfolders that actually correspond to the brushes that GIMP offers us by default. That is why at the same time we recommend you create a new one for each Photoshop brush that we add here. As you can imagine, these folders will be very helpful when dealing with these elements later. In this way, once we have pasted the ABR file in the aforementioned location, we can now open GIMP .

In the brush selection tool, we will now see the default ones, in addition to the ones we just added belonging to Photoshop. If we don’t see them, what we can also do is to right- click within the functionality and select Update Brushes from the context menu .

Pinceles GIMP

At the same time we can use the brush search bar to search for the one we just added.