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!