Hello class well today i am gonna let out the big secret. Ok it isn’t that big!

Most of us at one point have seen a set of Photshop brushes and wished Gimp had some thing like it. Well now you can have it. Alll you need is a little time and when I say little I mean little.

Before i get started with this tutorial i would like to thank Fencepost from Gimptalk for orginaly showing me how to convert brushes and being pacent enuff to answer all my silly questions. The process has come quite a ways since he first showed me.

I would also like to thank Vnt87 from GBD for showing me the abrView program. Vnt87 did write a great tutorial covering the abrView program at GBD if you would like to read it here is the link

A huge THANK YOU goes out to Kward1979uk from Gimptalk with out his awesome scripting ability this whole process would still take a lot of time. I can’t thank him enuff for taking the time to write the scripts i have asked for and do it in very professional manner! All three of you are great Gimppers and major assets to the whole gimp community!

I would also like to thank fotocomics of gimptalk for providing the links for MS .Net Framework 2.0.

For this tutorial you are gonna need four things.
1: abrView - download here
2: Gimp Batch Brush Converter Script by kward1979uk - download here
*** For any questions reguarding the donwloading and installation of this script Read ME!!
3: Gimp 2.+
4: A PhotoShop ABR file

Ok now i shall explain what all of these are.

abrView is a sweet little program written in C# to view and export ABR files. ABR files if you didn’t already know are the default PhotoShop brush file format. AbrView only works in windows and you need the .net framework for it to run correctly.
Which for most of you who update your win box this shouldn’t be a problem. If you do not have the .net frame work installed already you can get it from here. I recommend .net 2.2
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package

Now i am not saying you can’t get abrView to run under diffrent OS’s I just don’ know how! If any one does please feel free to let me know. In fact if there are any Ubuntu users out there who know how to get it to run please let me know!!

Gimp Batch Brush Converter Script is a very awesome script written by kward1997uk. What it does is takes a group of images that are of a certain file type and converts them to a gbr file, or a gimp brush file.

By now all of should know what Gimp 2.+ is LOL. Finally an abr file or a PhotoShop brush set. These can be found all over the internet. Try looking on deviantART.com for some.

Now lets get started with the tutorial kids!
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The very first thing you should do is go to deviantART or any other site were you can download an abr file. Search untill you find a PhotoShop Brush set you really like and download it.

Just as a side not not all files you download are abr file some people compress them into zip, or rar archive files. All you need to do with these is just extract the abr file to anywere you want just reamber were!

Setting up the folder!


1: I find it alot easier to start out by setting up some folder. For the little amount of time it takes you to do this step it saves alot more. Go to My Document and create a new folder Call it Converted Brush Sets.

2: Now open your newly created folder create another folder named after the PhotoShop brush author you are converting. For example I am gonna Convert ThaSprot’s Keep Dreaming Vol 32 so my folder would be named ThaSprout.

3: Once again open the new folder and create two new folders one name after the brush set you are converting for example mine would be named Keep Dreaming Vol 32. Name the other folder PNG dump.

Setup is now complete. You can just repeat this every time you convert a new set, but if you convert more than one set from the same author you only need one PNG Dump folder. Just clear it out when you finish creating the gbr files.

4: Download and install abrView.
5: Once abrView is installed run the program you should see a screen like this.



You really don’t need to mess with any of the settings. The default settings when it installs will work just fine.

6: Click File> Open brush sets and find were you downloaded your PhotoShop abr file to and select it!

Once the brush set is open you will see a bunch of thumnails of each brush in the set. Pretty cool huh!

7: In the lower left hand corner there is a list of the brush sets you have open and you can select multiple sets if you wish. This is kinda handy when converting say 10 sets at a time, but i woun’t get into that! Right click on the open set and select export thumbnails.


8: Choose the folder you created in your documents called PNG Dump and click ok.

Now abrView is gonna convert all the thumbnails into png files. Once it is done you can close abrView. We are now one step closer to a gimp brush file.

9: Download and install the Gimp Batch Brush Converter Script by kward1979uk.

10: Run Gimp.
***** VERY IMPORTANAT STEP*******
Before you run the batch script make sure you have the foreground color set to black and background color set to white.


Click the reset to default button (in the glowing circle).

The reason is that the script flattens the image first.
When you flatten an image it gets rid of the transparent regions by filling it with your background color. Gimp sees the white part of a GBR file as transparent so if it is any other color your brush will end up looking like a big block.

Now click xtns>script-fu>gimp-talk.com>brush-batch.


11: Once it loads you should now have a screen like this.


Now let us go through the Numers

1: Load from - this is where your you are gonna load all the images you want to convert. For this tutorail we are useing the PNG Dump folder. Browse to it and select it!
2: File Type - This is the file type that is going to get converted. Since we used abrView to get all of our thumbnails they are all in PNG file format. Click the down arrow and select PNG
3: Brush Name - Pretty self explanatory it is the name of the brush. Do not put a numer at the end. kward was coolenuff to make the script auto number them.
4: File Name - This will be the name of every brush you convert. Once again no need to number them.
5: SAVE TO FOLDER - This is where all the gbr brush files are gonna be placed. I selected the folder i created call Keed Dreaming Vol 32
6: OK - Once the set up is complete click this for your brushes!


Well kids there you have it you have now converted a PS brush set. Goto the output folder select all the gbr files and copy them to your Gimp Brush folder.

This method beats the snot out of the old way of converting trust me!

One other thing if you want to post your converted sets please get the authors premisson before you do. I found that most authors at deviantART are very nice and will let you post them for the rest of the gimppers to use.

Nice. but,



Where do you get that? I have WinXP.

Than you should have it. If not you can get it from here Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package

Thanks Droz I told you that you would write a much clearer tutorial then i ever could whyen i get a chance i will add the lines into the code to automatically set the forground and background to the required colours

wow, ive been looking for something like this for a while, THANKS!

thats dum how do you download the brush batch if it's in script which is getting me frusrtated

you do a search about installing scripts in the GT forum. I bet you will find one in fact i know you will or you ask nice and some one will be very helpful and expalin how to do it!

Is it just me or is everybody getting bored of reading the same questions day in day out from people who cant be bothered to look for the answer themselves


YOU COULD TRY READING THE COMMENTS FROM THE SCRIPTS DEVIANTART PAGE WHERE I'VE ALREADY ADDRESSED A QUESTION ABOUT DOWNLOADING


AND IF YOUR STILL STUCK TRY READING THE FAQ'S ON THIS SITE

You have no idea!!!!!!

Thanks for the tutorial droz! I had already started doing this, but it will be helpful with those not familiar with it. Because of kward's script and the vbr viewer I'm more excited than ever before about converting (so much faster). If you plan on doing it long-term, we need to keep in touch so we're not converting the same ones. I plan on making contact with all of the authors I've already done brush conversions for and ask them about converting any of their new brushes.

Here's an idea too: Because abr viewer creates an image of each brush, I'm gonna offer a set of stamps to each author. That way if they want stamps for users that have older versions of PS, they won't have to go back and create them. I know they could do it themselves, but since I need the stamps for the conversion, I'll just save them time. Should be a win-win situation for everyone involved. Don't you think? :l:

Art

Fantastic tutorial!! Who needs photoshop when we have droz and kward :w:

AMEN!

Fence - i kinda figured once you saw Kw's script the light would go on in your head probly just as fast as it did in my head. I think your idea is super awesome. In fact I kinda have a improvement on that idea I will PM you the deatils.

I am in it for the laong haul now man. Expect to see lots of sets from me. I am trying to hold back and not go wild with realsing them. People get a little weird on DA when you realse 50 sets at a time LOL.

I am recompling my list of people i have already contacted and I will Pm you it so you can have it to. I just got two more brush makers on board so I should be kicking theirs out soon. We should make one huge list out of it.

When I asked these great people to convert their sets I pretty much ask to convert whatever set I wanted to. So i have full access to their entire brush gallery old and new.

manutd93 - Thank you very much for your comments but don't forget Fencepost. He is the man that started this project and still maintains this list. I jumped on board in the middle and KW was draged in by me. Kw deservies alot of credit for what he has done. Both of the brush creation scripts he has written are so awesome and have helped so much.

This whole process has become so much easier and faster thanks to Kward1979uk and to the people who wrote the abrView program. They are my heros!

i cant believe i forgot fencepost! :

when i clicked download to desktop it opened up in that window with the script do i just right click and select save page as?
nm i figured it out. i click save page as then select all types/files and type .scm at the end of "brush_batch" right?

WOW!!! very nice thanks droz928 this will come in handy I have 87MB of PS brushes saved on a backup cd
@The King
Yes your right gimp scripts end with .scm

yes that is how you save a script. Than place it in your gimp script dir.

Grrrr....Ok, I've downloaded the script oh say...maybe twenty times! I'm not sure, but I STILL can't get it to show up in GIMP....

@Terry16389
First copy the script then paste it to notebook and save as .scm after you do that place your new .scm file to gimp scripts and then start your gimp you will see it in the scriptfu it will be shown as gimptalk

thanks that really helped

I read the comments where the Converter was in DeviantART and i saw when it told me that to save the script information in a notepad as a .scm file. I did and saved it on desktop, but the icon didnt change into what a script file should chage into and the .scm I put behind the tittle was included into the title as well =l. something wrong here?
And if its not to much truble, can someone give me a download like to it instead? Because I find this confuising...

LOL!Its better this way then re-downloading an PS crap on my new computer and the Sunny Batch Converter :l:
Rating:10/10

I think you may find that it is saving it as brush-batch.scm.txt if so ensure windows is showing the full file names including extensions then rename it removing the .txt

@BR7
I did that, the only problem is, I have StarCraft: BroodWar on my comp. .scm is the extension for StarCraft maps & games, so it conflicts. I think it doesn't know which to classify it as, either a GIMP script, or a SC map.

Ok I downloafded the ABRViwer thing right and when i wanted to open it it said something like:
the application has failed. click OK to termainate the application (or something like that)
is this normal?

(Retorical Question!)

Terry - I have brood wars to and i get no conflicts. Make sure the script is saved in your Gimp Scripts directory. Don't just try to open it! Save it than open gimp

Pipper - Do you have MS .Net Frame work installed?