Organizing Brushes in PSE 7...creating your own abr file

How I organize my Custom Brushes

I save all my brushes under Photoshop Elements folder, because I want them to load automatically to see what I have. The problem I found was, even if I organized my brushes into folders, when I went to PSE they were all listed (and not organized into folders...like the default ones). So, I found that if I created my own .abr file with all the brushes located in each folder...I could then have a "organized" brush selection. So here is how I do it:


1. Organize your custom brushes in a folder that is NOT:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 7.0\Presets\Brushes

(I chose to do it on my EHD)

Here is a screen capture of what mine looks like:2. Then open up PSE go to Edit >Preset Manager
3. Load the brushes you want to be in your custom .abr file i.e. Folder/Collection
4. Hold down Cntrl Key and click on each one that you want in your new collection
(You will see that the ones selected now have a darker line around each one of them)
5. Now Click on Save set
6. Type in the name you want them to be (Don't use the name of an existing brush set)
7. You will not be able to see the brush set until you restart Elements so close it down and restart it.

This tutorial is based off of the instructions found here