12-05-2017, 11:29 PM
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.
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.