Convert your existing brushes to use with ACDSee Photo Editor

In my last tutorial, we learned how to create a brush from simple image file.  In my examples I used some cookie cutter shapes that come with Photo Editor which are a great creative tool already at your fingertips.  But now you might be interested in utilizing the brush files you already own or plan to purchase.  ACDSee’s Photo Editor can convert any type of brush file that you can view using Photo Manager.  So let’s learn how to convert them in Photo Editor, your cross-platform creative tool for creating and using brushes!

First, let’s review the basic three steps you used to define a brush: double-click on the thumbnail, CTRL-A to select, then Saved Brushes|open the fly-out menu|Define Brush.  Now let’s open an ABR file as if it’s a regular image file.  You can use CTRL-E from Photo Manager or just browse to your file location using the Add Images button on the image basket.  I have Swish Two by Lori Wiley open in my Photo Editor.  (Important note: open it from the file menu, image basket or directly from PM.  Do not attempt to load brush in the brushes menu.)

1. When you open the file you’ll notice all the brushes are on separate object layers and the images are reversed so we need to invert them.  So select all of the objects in the object palette and go to Adjustments|Color|Invert.

2. Working one object at a time, do your three-steps to define each brush.  Double-click on the thumbnail, select all (CTRL-A), then choose Define Brush. 

3. Once each brush is defined you can click on the eye icon to hide that object (make it invisible) as you work your way through all the images.

4. Be sure to save the set when you are finished so you can load them from the Saved Brushes fly-out menu the next time you want to work with them.  (Important note: all brushes visible in the Saved Brushes menu will be saved in your new brush file so you may want to delete the default brushes from the list.  Just use that fly-out menu and choose Delete Brush from the menu.)  And don’t forget to tag your new PE brush file in Photo Manager!

This procedure works on any type of brush file that you can view using Photo Manager.  Simply open it from the image basket, convert each brush image, then save as a new brush file for easy loading later.  It’s important to recognize your photo editor brush files since they have the ABR file extension but are different from other program ABR files.  I like to name my converted brushes with the filename of the original and add ‘_PE’ at the end but any system you choose to designate your PE-type brush files will work fine.

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