On sale: great Brush Manager for Mac

[hoodsmom]

For Mac users (sorry Windoze ppl) who have a lot of Photoshop (Elements) brushes - Brush Pilot (written by the fellow who runs Bittbox) is on sale (for a week) for $12 (normally $25). I was happy to pay $20 on a Black Friday sale a few years ago.

http://www.mydesigndeals.com/deal/b...-photoshop-brush-collection-with-ease-only-12

When I didn't have that many brushes, the free quicklook plugin Brush ViewQL was fine
http://brushviewer.sourceforge.net/ (and I still use it when I just need a quick look at a particular .abr file whose location I know).

But (thanks to digiscrapping) I've now got a bazillion brushes scattered across multiple folders on two drives, so I can't do without Brush Pilot. It works very well and my only complaints are that 1) it doesn't quickly tell you the brush size (the info is there, but not quickly available) and 2) if you, like me, run as a nonadmin, permissions issues can keep you from using the program's built-in "install in Photoshop" command (definitely not a deal breaker - I just use Brush Pilot's "reveal in Finder" feature and install by double clicking the abr file).

System requirements 10.5.8 - Mavericks

 

[Tamsin]

Thank you! I'll take a look. Do you know if it works with Elements. I only saw mention of photoshop.

 

[val]

I am not quite sure it is the right place to advertise :/
But I amnot the one to juge, and I want to tell people that there are many brush viewer and extractor free, and quite good on the web

I am on windows, and I use ( again and again, ABR Mate)
it is doing a FAB job.

find it here.

http://www.texturemate.com/abrMate

v

 

[ourmisadventures]

THANK YOUUUU!!! I was just thinking yesterday that I needed to finally splurge for this. I wonder if it works for EHD's and NAS drives? That's where I keep all my brushes, but I could move them over...

 

[val]

yes it does work where ever your brushes are, and you can class them in folder too!

 

[ourmisadventures]

Hmmm so I bought the deal, and the version they included to download wouldn't even open... so I went to the website for Brush Pilot and downloaded it again there, and that opened but wont accept the license key the site gave me when I bought it. Emailing them now :-\

 

[ourmisadventures]

Wow! Awesome customer service, they already fixed it for me!!!

 

[Bush Girl]

Anyone know if this will work with PSE - I'm still on baby software, but on a monster Mac!!

 

[ourmisadventures]

The app website says it does!

http://www.brushpilotapp.com/features/

 

[hoodsmom]

Brush Pilot is a standalone app. You don't even need Photoshop installed for it to find and show your brushes. It "works" with Photoshop in that if you use its "install in Photoshop" command, it's supposed to load the brushes you just found into PS. However, that feature doesn't work for me b/c I'm usually running as a nonadmin and apparently I need to be an admin for this feature to work. (I won't go into a long-winded explanation, but it has to do with folder permissions). It isn't a big deal, b/c there's a "reveal in Finder" contextual menu item and I just reveal the .abr file in the Finder and double-click it. For reasons known only to the computer gods, that loads the brush - as it should - even though I am a non-admin.

This is a long-winded way of saying that if you are a PSE user, you can still use the program to find and view brushes. I haven't used PSE in a long time, but if you can normally load your brushes by double-clicking, you can do what I do to load brushes in PS as a nonadmin.

And, while there are indeed excellent free brush viewers for Windows users, the same cannot be said for Mac users.

If you have only a few brushes and/or already know where the abr files you want are, the free quicklook plugin I mentioned in the original post is actually better - faster, don't have to launch anything and it shows the brush size immediately. But if you're searching for a particular brush whose location you don't know, Brush Pilot is great.
Here's the FAQ from the Brush Pilot website: http://www.brushpilotapp.com/support/

 

[Bush Girl]

Thanks for the feedback - it sounds like a brilliant product. I have the Brush ViewQL, which I do use but it does require me to remember where my brushes are! At this price I might have to check this out!

 

[Romy]

I still have it, it's a good product. But when I started designing, I re-organized my brushes through Preset Manager in Photoshop into groups like: my distress tools, my stitches, dry media, wet media, textures... and load them from the brush palette quick menu. I only use CU brushes now so I have just a couple of groups. I also put in use the Tools presets where I have my favorite brushes in my preferred sizes and color (which varies from the default settings)