I'm very new to all of this. The issue I'm having is trying to use brushes I have downloaded (in the .abr format), I have seemingly no issues copying the file to the brushed folder for gimp 2.8.22, and when I open Gimp it shows the brushes in the list.
However, when I try to actually use one of these new brushes they are always blurry and pixelated. When I look at the settings for the brush, every single one is always at "0" hardness. I am unable to change any setting other than size.
I have tried multiple different brushes, I have completely uninstalled Gimp and deleted all files and folders associated with it and then reinstalled it. No matter what I do it's the same issue over and over.
I have increased the pixels per inch. Nothing seems to work.
I know it has to be something I'm doing incorrectl. I must just be missing something.
In Gimp, there are two kind of brushes: bitmap and parametric.
The parametric brushes (*.VBR) ( which are produced using the brush editor) are actually "vector" brushes. Shapes are simple, but they can be scaled at will. They can be given a "softness" that can be seen as a radial opacity gradient applied on the brush.
The bitmap brushes (*.GBR for Gimp, *.ABR from Adobe tools) can have any shape and even be pictures of things, but as bitmaps, they cannot be upscaled without becoming blurry or pixellated. They have no "softness", but since they are bitmaps you can edit them with Gimp and blur their edges. You can also reduce their overall opacity with the provided slider in the options dialog for the paint tool. If these brushes are full color (3 channels), they are used with their own colors. If they are grayscale (one channel) they are used as an opacity mask (inverted, the black is opaque) for the foreground/background paint color.
Thanks for the responses. I loaded these in photoshop just to try them and they worked perfectly...Which wasn't too surprising.
Thanks for the explanation about the two types of brushes. I just assumed they would all be vector. The odd thing is that the original size in GIMP is tiny. Where as when I use the same brushes in photoshop they are much bigger. I assumed me scaling it up was the cause though I assumed it should have worked (thinking it was a vector).
Anyways, I guess I'll just have to find some VBR brushes if I wish to do this type of stuff in GIMP.
I love open source software and would prefer to use/support that.
12-06-2017, 01:06 AM (This post was last modified: 12-06-2017, 01:10 AM by Espermaschine.)
(12-06-2017, 12:45 AM)korbie Wrote: Anyways, I guess I'll just have to find some VBR brushes if I wish to do this type of stuff in GIMP.
There are no vector smoke brushes for Gimp or Photoshop. They will always be raster based.
Perhaps for Illustrator...
You can use the Brush Editor to make parametric brushes in Gimp, but they are restricted to the shapes you have inside the editor.
So you can make stars, crosses, diamonds, dots, etc. But no smoke.
Photoshop brushes arent vector either. They work the same as in Gimp:
black on white background in greyscale mode.
In fact, Gimp has an edge over Photoshop for having parametric brushes.
12-06-2017, 10:10 AM (This post was last modified: 12-06-2017, 11:42 AM by rich2005.
Edit Reason: edit
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(12-06-2017, 12:45 AM)korbie Wrote: ...snip...The odd thing is that the original size in GIMP is tiny. Where as when I use the same brushes in photoshop they are much bigger.
One for beginners, The brush size takes its value from the previous used size. The little arrow resets to the original brush size, which is shown in the brush dock.
PS abr brushes are typically large, If you want an individual 'shape' from the abr 'set' right-click on the brush in the dock to open as an image, (edit: see later post) then export as a Gimp .gbr see: https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-using-brushes.html
Put the file in your Gimp profile. For windows C:\Users\your-name\.gimp-2.8\brushes
