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

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

Once again we have here some good amount of free Photoshop shapes. All 1,102 mix complex shapes of stars, grids, swirls, bursts, radials, rings, plus many more… in fact, too many to describe the intricacy of each group of shapes.

I am currently more in love with vector Photoshop shapes right now than brushes. They are so handy to have around when you are doing your designs. The way that you can stretch and distort their vector shapes without creating jaggy edges, makes them incredibly useful. Most of the time I just ended up modifying and breaking them apart to use certain corners or spots that I like.

I already collected a huge selection of free custom Photoshop shapes and I want to share all of the useful ones here in this site. They’d probably amount a hundred to two hundred thousand shapes, so I’m sharing them set by set. In the meantime, enjoy this set  of mix complex Photoshop brushes… more to come.

Download link:
Free Photoshop Shapes: 1,102 Mix Complex – 2.7MB

Graphic designers know that working with custom shapes in Photoshop can be a big time-saver. Instead of churning it out with the path tool or using Adobe Illustrator, you have instant access to different kinds of custom shapes that you can also modify if you want.

While free brushes get a lot of attention, custom shapes probably get less. Do you know that you can easily convert shapes to brushes? Here’s how. Create a shape on a layer then “rasterize” it by right clicking on the layer and selecting “Rasterize Layer”. Then select from the top menu, Edit > Define Brush Preset. The brush name prompt will apper. Type the name of your brush then click “ok”. Done. You now created your first custom Photoshop brush from a custom shape.

Here are some nice free custom shapes of circles and swirls that you can add on to your custom shapes library. All 600 of them. Six shape files (.csh) containing 100 shapes each. Download and enjoy.

Download link:
Free Photoshop Shapes: 600 Circles and Swirls Set 2 – 1.41MB