Adding brushes/patterns to PSE 5?

[DanielCoffey]

Wendy - I have seen your instructions on how to add styles (.asl) to PSE5.0/WinXP and I found shapes (.csr) nearby in the directory tree but I am not sure where to add brushes (.abr) and patterns (.pat) (I have just had a download binge in the Subscriber section).

I put the styles in a sub-folder in C: Documents and Settings>All Users>Application Data>Adobe>Photoshop Elements>5.0>Photo Creations>Special Effects>Layer Styles but have no idea where to put the other two file types I have listed above...

Could you help me please?

==
Daniel

[Wendy]

Hi Daniel ...

I often have download binges ... sometime I just go into overload

Did you find my brushes in the Subscriber area ?? ... they are in the Downloads section (some are at the top but also some of my stuff is right down at the bottom of the page too )

Now .pat & .brs files ... they go in your Elements software folder under Presets.

Here is a list:

Go to your Adobe software folder and look in the folder marked presets.
Inside there you will find a whole series of folders and these are the ones that most (but not all) freebies go into.

Files ending in .abr go in the Brushes folder
.aco in the Colour Swatches folder
.csh in Custom Shapes
.grd in Gradients
.pat in Patterns

Hope this helps

Wendy

[DanielCoffey]

Thanks for the help, and yes, of course I downloaded "Aunty Wendy's Freebie Goodies"!

Before making my post asking for help, I had tried putting various types of files in subdirectories under the program directories as you suggested above. I used the shift-open application trick to get PSE to reload its files and then chickened out and removed them and re-did the shift-open. I noticed that the brushes stayed listed in the brushes dropdown even though they were no longer present. Selecting a brush set of course failed with a polite message but the names of the files the brushes were in were still listed. Is there a way to force that to tidy itself up?

In the Preset Manager I see that you can load sets of Patterns but if you decide you don't like the set, you have to delete the individual patterns that came in it one at a time. This can be awkward if you don't know which patterns came in that set since they don't display grouped by pattern file. Is there an easier way of managing loading and deleting your patterns?

Thanks.

[Wendy]

hi Daniel ...

If you have removed the files from the incorrect places then simply closing down Elements and restartting it again should sort it out ... holding down Shift whilst starting up only rebuilds the Artwork and Effects I don't think that it does anything else.

So close down and restart ... let me know how that goes on.

To remove a pattern set you can just go into Presets>Patterns and remove it ... the restat Elements and the whole thing will be removed. The presets Manager is more for managing the individual items within a set ... so you can remove individual ones you donlt want or you can also use it to saves ones into sets that you made yourself

Wendy

[DanielCoffey]

Everything is happy now - I had originally put the subscriber downloaded brushes and patterns into their own subdirectory but since they all have unique names and are loaded and displayed as sets, I moved them into the same directory as the original PSE5 ones. It's perfectly happy now.

Now to play with all the downloads! I spy a tutorial-frenzy this week...

[Wendy]

Hi Daniel ...

So glad that you have sorted it all out ...

Enjoy playing with the tutorials ...

Wendy