Brushes: Photoshop vs PSP

I am a PSP user. Still use version 7, actually. If it ain't broke don't fix it, right? Not to mention that I'm not going to shell out hard earned coin of the realm for another version of a program that I've already paid for.

I really like my Paint Shop Pro and use it all the time, but from time to time, I get really frustrated when I see all these great brush sets that are out there for Photoshop. Now, I know that Photoshop is great and I'm certainly not going to knock it, but again, it's a question of why spend the money on a new program when you have one that works just fine.

So, after finding a set of Photoshop brushes on a graphics site that I belong to that really wanted, I decided to do some research. It turns out that there is this great little program called ABR Viewer that you can use to convert the brushes to png format.

Hallelujah! The heavens opened, the angels began to sing and my checking account was soon a few dollars lighter as I went and purchased these fabulous brushes.

I downloaded the free ABR Viewer from http://abrviewer.sourceforge.net/ I found it to be a tad temperamental, but I was also trying to open an abr file with more than 300 brushes in it, so that may have been part of the problem. Anyway, I was able to easily convert the files to png format. It did take a few minutes to complete, but it wasn't an unreasonable amount of time.

Now, I had read that you can then go and open Paint Shop Pro and open all the png files and then export them as PSP brushes, but for myself, I actually prefer to use them as png files - but that's just my preference.

My only problem now is to decide what to create first! Some new websets? New graphics for my tube site? New designs for my Zazzle and Cafe Press stores? Oh, decisions, decisions!

Thank you Mr. Luigi Bellanca for this wonderful and free software! I really appreciate it, and I'm sure a great many other PSP users do too.

I'm off to create!

Kerry