Converting Photoshop Brushes to GIMP (with a Side Tutorial on Making Photoshop-style Dynamics for GIMP)

Things you'll need:
GIMP
Photoshop or its Demo


Hello everyone! Today I downloaded the Photoshop demo to figure out how to convert a video tutorial to something feasible with GIMP. I've always loved the look and 'feel' of Photoshop's leaf and grass brushes, so I figured, while I was at it, I'd play around with some things and make some of the PhoSho brushes/dynamics for GIMP. Here is how I did it... hopefully it will help all of you GIMPers out a bit.

This is, by far, the shortest, simplest instructable I've made yet!

Open Photoshop and, on a new layer, click and place a single image of your brush. Select and copy this.

Hint: Use a high resolution. the higher the resolution, (usually) the higher the quality. Mine was about 250 pixels.

Make a new image in GIMP, then make a new layer. Paste the selection onto the new layer, select it, invert the selection, feather the selection, and delete the excess. Deselect everything.

Use selective Gaussian blur to smooth out most of the pixelization. You can manually smudge out anything selective Gaussian blur missed. Next, sharpen the leaf, and duplicate it. Merge the duplicate with the original leaf layer.

Convert your picture to greyscale using image>mode>greyscale. Delete the blank or white background layer; then export it as a .gbr (GIMP brush) and put it in the brush folder. You can usually find this folder under local disc (C:) > Program Files> GIMP2> share> gimp> 2.0 .

To make the dynamics and preset, just copy the pictures above.

Done! It's not hard, but it's very rewarding! Enjoy your new Photoshop style brushes!