Photoshop custom shapes started with version 6 of Photoshop. With custom shapes, you’ll have the flexibility to use vector shapes or paths in Photoshop.

Once you have made and converted a path into a Custom Shape, you easily create a new copy of that shape with a simple click-drag, and adjust/edit it in any size, color, or layer style you want.

Photoshop already have some pre-built shapes that you can use. Select the Custom shape and then open the Custom Shape Picker and double-click a shape to use. Click the image and drag to draw your shape.

To find and use a custom shape, click the Custom Shape Picker on the tools menu (see figure below) and choose a collection of shapes to load from the list at the Shape palette dropdown located just below the top menu. Any of these shapes can be used to create a path, filled shape, or shape layer.

To load a new custom shape file, open the Styles palette, and from the palette drop down menu, select Preset Manager. The Preset Manager is also accessible from the Shape palette. The Preset Manager window will open (see figure below). Click load and choose your custom shape file (.csh) to load.

That easy! Now here’s a list of custom shapes we we selected from all around which you can download for free and use. There are a lot of free Photoshop custom shapes around but we only listed the best ones and those we think will be most useful for your designs. These are combination of  all kinds of shapes like basic polygon shapes, people, logos, arrows, buttons, crosses, curves, frames, flowers, grids, rings, scratches, stars, swirls and a lot of unique and different mix of shapes.

1. 33 Sunburst Photoshop Custom Shapes

2. 25 Wavy and Spiral Sunburst Photoshop Custom Shapes

3. 40 Free Photoshop Shapes – Sun, Clouds, Home, Keys

4. Custom Shapes Set Mix

5. Various Shapes Set 1

6. Free Custom Shapes – Basic Shapes

7. Free Frame and Border Custom Shapes

8. 30 Photoshop Shapes Collection

9. Unique Photoshop Custom Shapes

10. Ornamental Photoshop Custom Shapes

11. Huge Collection People Silhouttes

12. Businessmen Silhouettes

13. Business Girls Silhouettes

14. Mixed People Silhouettes Custom Shapes

15. Circles, Lines and Sunlights

16. Various Star Shapes

17. Foliage Shapes

18. Assorted Logos

19. Assorted Car Logos

20. Various Objects – Nate’s Shapes

21. Various Unique Circle Shapes

The last time I shared free Photoshop button styles was almost a year ago (Over 1,500 Free Photoshop Button Styles). Now I have here two sets of Photoshop button styles, fractal and abstract designs. Exactly 36 fractal and 130 abstract Photoshop button styles.

These are not just useful for creating buttons but for a wide variety of design elements as well like text and different kinds of shapes. And these Photoshop styles are very easy to use. Simply open the “styles” pallete then drag the Photoshop style file (.asl) to the palette, then your new styles will automatically be added to your style library. To apply, simply select the your layer and select the style you want to apply and it will instanstly apply the effects associated with that particular style.

Preview some samples of the Photoshop button styles below then select the download links provided further down to download both styles for free. I hope you like them all. Enjoy.

Fractal Photoshop Button Styles

Abstract Photoshop Button Styles

Download links:
Fractal Photoshop Button Styles – 10.71MB
Abstract Photoshop Button Styles – 42.49MB

Acrylic paint Photoshop brushes are some of my favorite Photoshop brushes. They are simply perfect as Photoshop brushes. You can use them for a wide variety of creative grunge effects adding some depth and coolness factor to your designs. And to help you achieve those bad-ass looking designs, here are 10 resources where you can download free Photoshop brushes of high-resolution Acrylic paint textures totalling 231 Photoshop brushes.

1. Free Hi-Res Acrylic Texture Brushes Set 1

An excellent collection from The Shoreways. Set 1 includes 15 brushes 2500px acrylic texture Photoshop brushes.

2. Free Hi-Res Photoshop Brushes: Acrylic Textures

Second set from The Shoreways exclusively for fudgegraphics. This set has a total of 9 Acrylic Texture Brushes all measuring at exactly 2500px. All brushes are free for personal and commercial use.

3. More Free Acrylic Photoshop Brushes from Shoreways

Third one from Shoreways consist of 25 high-resolution acrylic pain Photoshop brushes measuring as large as 2,500 pixels each.

4. Wet Paint Acrylic Photoshop Brushes

An excellent set done by Nick Pagano of Think Design Blog for Tutorial9. This Photoshop Brush Pack includes 16 High Quality, Wet Acrylic Paint strokes, all at super high resolution. Perfect for art projects, personal use, and commercial use.

5. 40 Free High-Res Acrylic Paint Photoshop Brushes

Here are 40 high-resolution photoshop acrylic paint brushes from Think Design Blog of blobish type with different strokes and sizes.

6. Acrylic Brush Strokes: 57 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

A set of 57 High Resolution Acrylic Brush Strokes Photoshop brushes from Colorburned.

7. Acrylic Brushes Set by ~doodle-lee-doo from devianART

A collection of 14 high-resolution acrylic brushes done by doodle-lee-doo at devianART.

8. Finger Paints by Juice Box Visual

Here are 20 free Photoshop brushes for commercial / non commercial use by Juice Box Visual from Brusheezy.

9. Splatter and Splash Acrylic Brushes by Flow Graphic

This set contains 5 splatter and splashes acrylic paint brushes done by Flow Graphic for Brushking.

10. Grunge Paint brushes by ~melemel

Another one from devianART. A set of 30 cool and grungy looking paint Photoshop brushes by Mel.

Halloween is fast approaching and there will be lots of Halloween themed events like parties, concerts, etc. Along with this special October celebration, you will need materials for posters, greeting cards, invitations, decorative items and many more halloween related stuff to make it more creepy and halloweenish. So to spice up your Halloween designs, I have created a one-stop-halloween-shop gathering some of the best free Halloween graphic design materials from various resources around the web.

This collection is jam packed with icons, fonts, vector cliparts, fonts, Photoshop brushes and many more. So put on your ghoulish face, download the materials of your choice for your designs and get your dark creative juices flowing.

Vector Clipart and Icons

1. Smashing Pumpkins: A Free Halloween Vector Icon Set

2. Vector Halloween Cliparts

3. Halloween Icons by Iconshock

4. Dia de Muertos Dock Icons by ~chicho21net

5. kearone’s Helloween icons

6. Happy Halloween Vector Freebies from Kawacoco Illustrator-labo

7. Sad Monkey Design Vector Skulls and Flowers

8. Skull Vector Images from Yaoyuan

9. Halloween Icons by Zeus Box

10. Trick or Treat Halloween Icons from Iconfactory

Fonts

1. You the Murderer

2. Haunting Attraction 1.0

3. Jack Lantern BB

4. Grunt Reaper

5. Melt Bad Manners ww, Regular

6. Blood Crow, Regular

7. Kiddie Halloween

8. Halloweenie Borders

9. Plasma Drip

10. Caracura

Photoshop Brushes

1. Blood SplatterisM

2. Ady’s Blood Splatter

3. The Real Shelob Halloween Photoshop Brushes

4. Skull Brushes by ~Synthexstock

5. Spooky Brush Set by by ~anodyne-stock

6. Bat Demon Wings Brushes by ~Falln-Brushes

7. Dark Places Brush Set by ~anodyne-stock

8. Spider Brushes Set 1 by ~Falln-Brushes

9. Halloween IV: Vintage by ~therealShelob

10. Dark -n- Gothic Photoshop & GIMP Brushes

11. Cobwebs Photoshop Brushes by *redheadstock

12. Arcane Circles-Symbols Brushes by *redheadstock

Images, Textures and backgrounds

1. Texture 026 by ~Synthetic-Textures

2. Seamless Spiderweb Texture by `FantasyStock

3. Spooky paper texture by ~ImAnUpstart

4. Halloween Texture Pack by ~asunder

5. Horror Masks PSD Pack by ~Pathfinder-Stock

5. Horror texture pack – rar by ~cichco

Tutorials

1. Halloween Pumpkin Wallpaper in Photoshop

2. Zombie Photoshop Tutorial

3. Texturing Basics in Photoshop

4. Grunge & Dark Art Tutorial

5. Blood Trail Method Photoshop Tutorial

I still have some stocks of old dry wall backgrounds I’d like to share. It’s a separate set from the one I previously featured in “Free Textures: 45 Grunge Concrete Plastered Walls” but similarly grungy. I was using some of these as background in some of my current projects when I chanced upon creating some into Photoshop brushes. And it came out good as Photoshop brushes. So I decided to share today ten old and grungy wall textured Photoshop brushes. All brushes are in high resolution 300 dpi measuring 1024 x 1024 pixels each.

Preview of all 10 old wall textured Photoshop brushes are shown below. Download link is provided for the archive file containing 1 set of Photoshop brushes. Enjoy.

Download link:
Free Photoshop Brushes: Old and Grungy Wall Textures – 7.95MB

We know that Photoshop has a smudge tool that you can conveniently use anytime. But most often it’s hard to create the kind of smudge paint effect we really want with the smudge tool. It’s a lot easier if we have a wide variety of ready-made smudge brushes to choose from that we can use to produce the kind of smudge effect we want.

So today I rounded-up over a hundred free Photoshop abstract paint smudge brushes that are perfect for creating stylish cool grunge backgrounds,  some cloudy or smoky texture images, or if you simply want to messly paint some cool abstract artworks. Armed with these smudge brushes and some creative imagination, the possibilities are endless.

1. Abstract Smudge Brushes by Fortune GFX (5 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #1

2. Pro Smudge Set 2 by Noiseless (9 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #2

3. Simple Smudges 1 by Pedzle dla Photoshop (14 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #3

4. Simple Smudges 2 by Pedzle dla Photoshop (32 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #4

5. Horizontal Smudges by Env1ro (18 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #5

6. Cloud Smudge Brushes by Noise-Less (2 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #6

7. Grunge Smudge Brushes 1 by Talei-stock (8 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #7

8. Grunge Smudge Brushes 2 by Talei-stock (6 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #8

9. Funky Smudges by KillerQueen23 (5 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #9

10. Pink Soda Abstract Smudge Brushes by xPinkSoda (4 brushes)

Download Smudge Brushes Set #10

Here are some radiantly splendid Photoshop brushes of light beams or ray of lights that you can freely download here in Graphic Design Free Resources. All five light beam brushes are so natural with smooth realistic streak of lights shining from above (you can also change light direction in the “Brush Preset” panel by changing the brush angle). These are high-resolution brushes measuring around 1600 to 2000 pixels.

Check out these two light beam brushes I used to demonstrate the effect on the sample images below. Download all brushes in Photoshop .abr format archived in a RAR file from the provided link below.

Original image No. 1:

Light beam Photoshop brush applied:

Original image no. 2:

Light beam Photoshop brush applied:

Download link:
Free Photoshop Brushes: Beam of Lights – 4.16MB

An action or set of actions are series of tasks that you can play back on a single file or a batch of files – tool actions, menu commands, palette options, and so on. For example, you can create an action that changes the size of an image, change its resolution, applies a filter effect, and then save the file in your desired format. Save that action and simpy play it to apply. Photoshop actions are absolutely great time-saving tools for designers and photographers.

Photoshop and Illustrator each have their own predefined actions installed that will help you perform common tasks. You can already use these actions as is, customize them, or create your own new actions. You can record, edit, customize, and batch-process actions, and you can manage groups of actions by working with action sets. If you don’t want to worry yourself creating your own actions, you can take advantage of the many that are freely available from the web. Today, let me make it easier for you if you’re particularly looking for photo enhancing Photoshop actions. Here are ten (more than 10 actually as some of them contain multiple actions per set) of the most useful photo enhancing Photoshop actions available for free.

1. Turning Turnip Soften Skin Effect
Turning Turnip Soften Skin produces a natural ‘clean’ appearance whilst retaining important skin textures.

2. Vintage Photo by Mutato Nomine on devianArt
This is an action that obviously make a photo look vintage.

3. Shutter Freaks: Hayes Island Variant
A variety of actions to make a photo look like a painting with a canvas finish.

4. Cross-processing Action by Mutato Nomine on devianArt
Cross-processing, briefly, is a photographic technique where (usually) slide film (E6) is processed in the set of chemicals usually used to process print film (C41).

5. Eye Color by Jean31 on devianART
A cool action to color some eyes.

6. Vivid Blur by AlenaJay on devianART
Action to give photos vividly blurring effect.

7. H.D.A. Soft Elegance by H-D-STOCK on devianART
Cool softening effect.

8. IR Effect Look by hanyasatu on devianART
IR filter and modified cam to IR effect.

9. Polaroid Generator V1 by rawimage on devianART
Rawimage from deviantart.com has made 10 great Polaroid Generator actions.

10. Action no.4 Spooky Portraits by bellalleb-stock on devianART
If you like scary looking effects, try this one.

Here we go, yet once more with another mega collection of free Photoshop custom vector shapes. This time we have 702 custom brush shapes. All sorts of brushed type of shapes. Swoosh, swirls, and some fractal looking shapes, all interesting and unique shapes.

I often use these kind of shapes before. Most of the time I’d draw them using Photoshop pen tool whenever I needed them or copy/paste from sets that I have in Illustrator format. That was before when I didn’t know anything about a cool Photoshop feature which is the Custom Shape Tool.

Photoshop’s  Custom Shape Tool can be located just below the Type Tool and the Path Selection Tool (it’s the star fish shape like button in the tool box). It’s a shape tool and it helps in drawing predefined shapes of any size. Users can also draw shapes with perfect dimensions using this tool.

Simply select a shape using the Custom Shape Tool, and click and drag any shape from the Custom Shape palette to your work area. You can then modify your shape using the Path Selection Tool and come up with a number of results like creating a new copy of that shape, in any color, style or size.

Vector shapes, whether in Illustrator and Photoshop are truly indispensible. As a designer it is always handy to have a collection of pre-made vector objects available to use in your designs. And these free Photoshop custom brush shapes are definitely worth adding to your Photoshop custom shape library. Enjoy!

Here are a few thumbs of these Photoshop custom brush shapes.

Download link:
702 Free Photoshop Custom Brush Shapes – 5.3MB

Today I’m featuring a set of free Photoshop brushes of web icons. This package comes in three .asl files containing 517 small web icons and symbols. They are well-crafted, simple and flat web icons that can easily fit in any web layout.

Photoshop brush icons are very handy if you use Photoshop to design your web layout. Although there are many ways you can start designing your website. Some may choose to start hand drawing their design concept and some like to start hard-coding right away. For me and most web designers I know, like to start using Photoshop in designing their website. it’s very convenient and more visual to start doodling your imaginary website using graphic design softwares like Photoshop. Here’s a rundown of the simple process using Photoshop in web design.

1. Using Photoshop, create an image of the general layout you’d like to use for your site.

2. Once you’re design or image is final, you’ll need to “slice” it up for use in your Website template. In this process, it helps to have a good working knowledge of HTML. You must know how tables work, so you can slice your image in tables, and work your way up adjusting and fixing the same HTML tables using Dreamweaver or similar web development application softwares.

3. Then it’s time to publish your web design to create an HTML document and sliced images. This will become the template you’ll use to create all the pages of your Website.

On to our freebie. Here’s a preview sampler of our free Photoshop web icon brushes. Download link is provided below.

Download link:
Free Photoshop Brushes: 517 Web Icons