For a moment, let's imagine that you wish you could create an image with a sky, some clouds, a few butterflies, maybe some flowers, and throw in some swirly floral effects too while you're at it. But of course, it's possible that you can't actually draw ANY of those things, so you assume there's no way you can create it yourself. Let me share a little secret.
You Don't Have To Know How To Draw
You don't have to be able to draw to create great banner images, ad images, or site graphics. Lots and lots of people who are incredible artists happily give away individual images that you can freely use as part of your own new image.* And no, I'm not talking about clip art. The lightbulb moment arrives when you start seeing all of the amazing free brushes you can use in your own graphics.
Generally speaking, most people refer to these brushes as Photoshop brushes, because the designers created them with Photoshop and for Photoshop. But no worries if you don't own Photoshop and can't afford to buy it. Nearly all of the Photoshop brushes also work in Gimp, the free, open source image editor.
What Do These Brushes Look Like?
So what's the deal with brushes? Instead of painting with a dot (like you see in the example below), you can paint with a special brush. That may mean just tapping your image with the brush to place one cloud where you want it, or one flower where you want it.
Let's look at a screenshot of a few brushes that I just slapped onto a blue background, so you can visualize how this could help you create killer images, like the one I described above. In the image below, the clouds are brushes, the swirls are brushes, the flowers are brushes, the butterflies are brushes, etc. It's as easy as using an ink stamp!
Each of these brushes and many more can be found at places like Brusheezy. And they are free! Just place them in your brushes folder within Gimp, and use them whenever you need those kinds of elements.**
Trust me, it will open up an entirely new world for those of you who may be artistically challenged.
*Always follow the licensing terms of any brushes you download and use.
** Where is your brushes folder? In Windows Vista or Windows 7, it should be in your user directory at C:\Users\{user account}\.gimp-2.x\brushes . In Windows XP, it's probably in C:\Documents and Settings\myusername\.gimp-2.x\brushes. In Ubuntu, it's in your home folder in gimp-2.x/brushes. (2.x might be 2.6 or some other version number).
Tags: image editing, images
