You may have been using Photoshop for a while now, but you may have not noticed all the possibilities hidden behind one of Photoshop’s most powerful tools: the brush.

Brushes in Photoshop are much more than just a tool to draw. They can be used to create decorative frames, add pre-made shapes and customize your images in many different ways. But if you want to make use of all the potential in this tool, you need to know how to configure and use it properly.

Like all other tools in Photoshop, brushes have their own settings in the top toolbar: Size, Mode, Opacity and Flow.

But there’s much more to Photoshop brushes than just those four options. Try clicking the little black arrow beside Size and you’ll see the brush preset – that is, the collection of brushes currently loaded in Photoshop.

Clicking the small arrow button on the top right corner of this window will open a context menu where you can tweak the way brushes are displayed and see a list of available presets. The default list of brush presets should look similar to this one:

To add a new brush preset, simply click its name. You’ll be given the choice of using it to replace the current preset altogether, or simply append it to the brush list. From that moment on, the new brushes will be ready to work.

Besides the brush presets bundled with Photoshop, you can also download tons of extra brushes from the web. A quick search in Google will return dozens of results with all sorts of brush presets. To install a brush preset you’ve downloaded into Photoshop, copy the ABR file into the Brush preset folder of your Photoshop installation – usually C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CSX\Presets\Brushes.

Another great feature is the ability to create custom Photoshop brushes. All you need to do is open an appropriate image, select it all with Ctrl+A and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset.

Enter a name for the brush, and from that moment on, you’ll be able to use your custom brush anywhere!