Plus, it satisfies my obsessive compulsive need for excess organization. Like I said, this step isn’t necessary, and it’s just fine if you want to put your new brushes in Photoshop’s default Brushes folder, but this what I do because it makes it easy to backup, restore and even share all my 3rd party stuff. To make Photoshop see the contents of this extra folder, all you have to do is create a shortcut to this additional folder in Photoshop’s default brushes folder and SHAZAM! the brushes from both folders will appear in the Preset Manager. I keep all my downloaded brush sets there. I keep a folder called Photoshop Extras in the Documents folder of my computer, and in that folder I have sub-folders for all the different kinds of add-ons that Photoshop can use. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending hours and hours searching for and downloading the perfect brushes only to loose them accidentally when upgrading or re-installing Photoshop. By default, Photoshop keeps it’s extras and plugins inside it’s program files folder structure, and although you could simply load everything into Photoshop’s default folders, I find it’s useful to create a folder set of my own to keep additional Brushes etc.

Adding brushes to photoshop