How I Organize Brushes and Textures

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

This started life in the "How I Use Textures and Brushes" post I'm working on for elfcat255 but that sucker is getting WAY too long and so this is now its own post.

Organization
This is a major headache for me because I'm a resource addict. Don't believe me? Check out my resources some time. It became clear early on that I needed to organize to be able to find anything.

I discovered brushes first and so those were the first to be downloaded and organized. I spent hours and hours carefully sorting brushes into files based on type of brush so I now have "consolidated_border.abr" and "consolidated_hearts.abr" and so on.

I was SUCH a newbie because there is no indication of WHO made the brushes; each file contains brushes from probably 5 or 6 makers. I didn't care at the time because I'd commented on the maker's entry and credited her in my resources post. I never dreamed I'd ever be telling someone else how I made something. This would have been recoverable except that my external graphics hard drive crashed and ate all of my source files. :|

With very few exceptions, I can't tell you who made any particular brush I use. The only clue as to their identity is in my ultra-long resource post.

==

However, I do learn from my errors. When it came time to organize my textures, I am happy to report that I (mostly) avoided that fate.

- Useful, frequently used, icon-sized texture sets get turned into pattern files. -- The single most important and time-saving thing that I learned was to turn sets of icon-sized textures into PATTERN FILES. This can be laborious to do by hand; the useful tutorial by grrliz shows an easy way to create a Photoshop action that automates creation of the patterns for you!

I grouped the patterns first by maker's name and then by type. Typically, I download lots of texture packs from the same maker and I often mix and match for my own purposes. I have pattern files with names like, "aesc_BluesCyans.pat" and "cdg_DirtyPaper.pat" and "so_spiffed_GraysBlacks" and so on. I've made another file, "_PersonalFaves.pat" that has the textures I reach for time and again and it is a compilation of many makers. Unlike the brushes, though, the same textures are also in the files with a file with the original maker's name so that I'll always be able to figure out who made it.

I have no idea if this will work for GIMP or PSP. I hope so because it was a great tool for making texture work fun. These are the textures I use over and over and over. The disadvantage of this system is that I can't resize a pattern or turn it. Yes, I can work around it but 99 times out of 100, I'll just find a different texture to use.

- Infrequently used, icon-sized textures sets are sorted by type -- This was my first attempt at organization and it mirrors my brushes in that I didn't include any maker's credits. Fortunately, many texture makers include their names in the file names so they defeated my newbie self. :) I have them sorted into rough categories:

- Black & White
- Cool
- Dark
- Grungey
- Lights (these are my light textures)
- Neon
- Neutral
- Pastel
- Retro
- Warm

- Larger textures are in their own file and include maker's name. -- I've downloaded far fewer of these, maybe 150 or so, and so I just keep them in a single folder. If I had collected more, I'd have sorted them in the same rough categories I did with the icon-sized textures above.

Hope that helps. If anyone has agood idea or a different way of organization, I'd love to hear it!

Comments

[elfcat255.livejournal.com]

sounds about like what I do...since I had to start over collecting stuff again in December when my hard drive crashed I try to keep stuff in either the maker's folders(cause I find one person, fall in love with their stuff and go crazy with it) or group like stuff together. No clue if GIMP has the ability to do that Pattern File thing but I could try and see, it would be nice.

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

I really hope the pattern file thing works for you because that liberated me from the hassle of textures. I can pull up a texture, any texture really, erase the parts I want to, and then very quickly cycle through any number as I try out colors, patterns, etc.

The need to find a texture, open it, copy it, paste it, add mask to it, erase the parts I didn't want, decide it wasn't really what I wanted, delete it, find another texture, open it... Well, the return for the effort wasn't enough to make it worth my while. I'm WAAAAAAY too lazy and impatient. :)

[elfcat255.livejournal.com]

*sigh*..now I wish I was at home so I could play around with GIMP..grr..damn work

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

oops! Sorry for that. And it's mighty thoughtless of jobs to require doing something other than what we want to do, isn't it?

[avidrosette.livejournal.com]

Great post. Thanks for pointing to the instructions for making textures into patterns, which is a nifty idea. Here's a crazy question: would it be possible to save textures as gradients, too/instead? Because then you'd be able to get the "angle" option and have some flexibility about the orientation of the texture. When you use the paintbucket tool to pour a texture into a selected area, how does the program decide which portion of the texture to use? Would it just take the section that corresponds to the selected location on the 100 x 100 grid? Or does it use some other principle? (I guess I should just try it out, rather than bugging you about it. :-)) Anyway, thanks for the good ideas!

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

I don't think they'd save as gradients because the way they're defined in the program is different. You can save an image as either a pattern or a brush, but I haven't seen an option to save it as a gradient. That would be too cool, though. I like the idea of it. And you could do some really freaky stuff with some textures used as gradient maps. *thinks* Too bad I don't think it's an option.

The way I get around the inability to manipulate a pattern is to add the texture-as-pattern I want to use as a new layer on top, set to Normal 100%. I then "Stamp Visible" to get a layer that's the texture, turn off the pattern's visibility, and then mess with my texture layer as desired. It's a bit awkward and I tend to just experiment around until I find a texture that will work as-is. But sometimes, I just have to have THAT texture but rotated 90 degrees and so bother with the Stamp Visible option. Even that is faster than finding it on my external HD, opening, copying, pasting, and then manipulating.

The real downside is that with my ancient CPU, loading all of those pattern packs (and my really large font collection) means that I can go for a nice cup of coffee while Photoshop starts itself. ;)

[avidrosette.livejournal.com]

I don't think they'd save as gradients because the way they're defined in the program is different.

Ah, that makes sense. I've tried to save some things as gradients that are actually called gradients and it hasn't worked, so I guess the parameters are very specific.

I then "Stamp Visible" to get a layer that's the texture, turn off the pattern's visibility, and then mess with my texture layer as desired.

Nifty! I didn't think of that. Thank you for all the information!

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I've only tried *.grd files so I haven't run into the problem but I know it's possible to make your own gradients. I haven't messed with it myself beyond tweaking b/w gradients for making an occasional b/w icon.

Nifty! I didn't think of that.

:) :) :)