Hey guys! So today I want to give you seven clever tricks for keeping your brushes organized.
The first one is: create easy access to your most-used brushes.
When you paint, you always have a set of brushes that you use more than the other ones.
Make sure to keep them close.
So for me, I keep them at the top left, right here, I got my set of brushes.
And to make sure that they are there, you simply have to go over that little icon here,
and click on the Preset Manager.
Once you click on it, it's going to open this window, and from here you'll be able to click on a brush, and move it wherever you want.
And that way, I'm able to keep those brushes all together.
I have the first three are for my sketches, and the rest are for rendering.
And those represent 90% of what I do.
The rest of them are for texture, or some special effects, and therefore or not as important as those ones.
The second trick is: keep similar brushes grouped together.
So the first group that I have here is obviously the one that I use all the time.
But then I got some extra brushes.
And a little bit further that way, I have brushes with the same texture.
So all those four have the canvas texture, so I keep them together.
Then over here, I have brushes which are mimicking lines. I keep them together.
And same thing for the particle brushes that I have here.
And that way, I'm able to know where is everything.
And that way, I don't lose time trying to figure out which is the kind of brush.
If I want something with particles, I can go straight to it.
If I want something with texture, I can go straight to it.
And that way, I don't lose my time trying to figure out where are my brushes.
And those are the ones that I have. But as an example, you can also have some skin texture brushes,
or some wall texture brushes, or all the brushes that you use for specific things.
Make sure to group them, and that way, you'll have easier, faster access to them.
And to group them is the same thing. You simply have to go over here, click on the icon,
choose the Preset Manager, and you'll be able to move them at the right places that you need them.
The third trick is: categorize related brushes with lists.
So let's say I wanted to create a smaller list.
Right now I have all of the brushes that I use most of the time,
but maybe I want to create just the list.
For the first one here, maybe a list for the texture ones,
or maybe you have brushes on skin or texture, or specific to certain parts of your paintings, that you can have separately instead of having them all up here.
So here's how I would do this.
First of all, I would have to create a master list with all the brushes that I have.
And for this, I would simply go over here again, click on the icon, and then I would save the brushes.
I will find a place to save my brushes, and I'm going to call this, "Master List".
And I'm going to save it.
And from here, those brushes have been saved. So now, I can actually modify them.
So I'm gonna go back here and do Preset Manager.
And from here I'm going to decide, alright, I want to create a list but only the textures.
So I'm going to take all the first brushes here, and by SHIFT-clicking, I can select many of them.
And I'm gonna delete them.
And then I'll say, alright, all the brushes that I want are stopping here with texture,
so from here to there, I want to delete them.
And those brushes make up one list, and it's a list, and I want to call, "Texture".
So from here, I'm simply going to click done,
and I'm going to go back to my brushes, and that's all the brushes left.
And I'm going to go back here, and I'm gonna save those brushes,
and save them as a special list. So this one I'm going to call, "Texture Brushes".
And I'm gonna save it back here.
And now, if I want to create a new list that are in my master brushes, I have to upload them again.
So I'm going to go back here, and I'm gonna do Replace brushes,
and I'm gonna use my Master List.
And let's say I want to create a new list now, with only the one that I use 90% of the time, so my top one here,
I could go back again and do Preset Manager,
I would delete everything else,
just keep those one, click done. Go back to my brushes again,
and save these brushes, and give it another name.
And then again, save them.
The important thing here is to make sure that you save your Master List.
Because once you delete the brushes, you won't be able to find them. You need to save them.
So save all your brushes first, and then you can go ahead and create as many lists as you need.
So the fourth trick is: visualize your brushes with stroke thumbnails.
So when you go back here, and click on that icon, you can put the visual of your brushes as text only,
or small thumbnails,
or large thumbnails,
or list, large list, or stroke thumbnails.
And the stroke thumbnail is really the one that you want to have, because it shows exactly what is the effect of the brush you are using.
So sometimes if you look for a brush that does a specific effect, at least you'll be able to see it.
But some of you may prefer to have the name if you have special names.
So maybe you would prefer to have the large list, instead.
Having the name of it will be better for you.
Personally, I prefer to have the stroke thumbnails, as these ones.
But the trick is to make sure that you have the right setting for you
that will make you save time when you look through your brushes.
The fifth one is: create titles for brush categories.
As an example here, I placed one new brush,
and you can read what it is. So I put "TEX" for texture.
And to create a brush like this, you simply need to have a document like this one,
it's a document that is 500 pixels x 500 pixels,
and I put the word "TEX" on it,
and I simply created a new brush preset. So I went over my Edit here,
and I used Define Brush Preset, I clicked OK.
And therefore, when I came back to my brushes, I have the brush that I just created here,
and I can go over my Preset Manager,
and I can click on it, and just place it where the junction between the two sections--two groups of brushes are.
And here, I know that my texture are starting here.
And I can do the same for any kind of groups that I have for my brushes.
Six is: use a unique location on your computer to save your brushes.
So for me I have one document on my computer and it's called brushes.
And each time I'm saving brushes, I make sure that I save them at the same place.
This way, I make sure that I never lose my brushes, and I always know where they are.
And seven is: un-clutter your brush panel by archiving unused brushes.
Year per year, I always have new brushes, and I make sure to erase the ones that I don't use.
So if there are brushes that I don't use, I want to start deleting them as I go.
That way, I keep my brushes stack as minimal as possible,
so I don't have a million brushes to choose from.
That will make me save a lot of time when I paint.
And I make sure to actually archive them as well. So when I'm done with a set of brushes per year,
I always make one set of brushes per year,
and I go over my brushes and I save them,
and I call them, "Brushes 2016", for example.
And I make sure to archive them all the time.
That way, if I delete brushes that I want to use again, I can simply go back to the archived brushes that I used to have,
and add them to the list that I have today.
And that's it for this tutorial, guys!
If you want to learn about creating perfect brushes for any situation,
you can click below this video to watch the free tutorial on creating your own brushes,
and download our hundred professional brush tips.
And until next time, Happy Painting!