Kyle Webster Brushes

[smceccarelli]

I am happy for Kyle that he is now part of Adobe and for all to now have access to his awesome brushes. On the other hand, this brings one of the most useful independent resources in the hands of the “big mum” Adobe, who is known to do awesome updates but also updates that screw up the processes of people and make them decidedly worse (the change in Photoshop mask management system three updates ago has been a major blow for anybody working in photo-editing and photo-montage) - that worries me.
Also, at the same time as Kyle Webster announced his Adobe deal, Derrick Bart announced that the new CC release does not really support BrushBox - not with all functionalities at least. This is for me now a reason enough not to update right now. Kyle´s brushes without BrushBox would slow down my process significantly. Does anybody know if, in their new update, Adobe has finally a usable brush management system? The native one has been pitiful throughout - update after update after update.

[evilrobot]

@smceccarelli I was wondering if anyone else was having trouble with the CC updates....I still use 2015 version. They messed with the lasso tool and a few other things that just drive me crazy in the newer versions.

[smceccarelli]

@evilrobot I did not update at home (and I am not going to do it until I am finished with the current project), but we are updating in the office today and it's a mess at the moment - like logins not working anymore. Maybe it is just a matter of volume of updates at the moment and it will sort itself out, but now is crisis time!!

[Chip Valecek]

I have not run into any issues with updates since CC has come out. Sorry to hear everyone else is having a bad experience with it. I got to spend a little time last night working on the new version, and the smoothing option is AMAZING! You can now have all your brushes and presets right in the same brush window and you can organize the brushes by creating folders!! LOVE IT

[Andyg]

I asked Kyle a while back if his watercolour brush could end up having adobe sketch air drying fan properties...he said he would ask. Maybe now it will?

[smceccarelli]

@chip-valecek Oh that is good news! Maybe I do not need BrushBox in the end then...

[DOTTYP]

Thanks for the information Chip I resubscribed to Photoshop,as i dont have any Kyles brushes I thought it was worth it.The new brush organizer is much better.

[Andy Gray]

UK people....there is an issue getting the brushes. You american folks get all the good stuff. However, do a quick search for the problem, and there was a link i followed which got me to the american download pages

[mattsmith_makes]

I think it's really great that he's able to expand his business and really go 'legit' by going to Adobe. However, I think there are some points that a lot of people are missing. For one thing, Kyle's brushes were accessible to everyone- if you were just starting out and using a dubious copy of Photoshop to see if you can make something happen you could use Kyle's brushes for very cheap. You could make work that looked on par with the 'big boys' of illustration. People who were running older versions of PS could still get updates to the brushes and everything was compatible. There are a lot of people that still can't afford that big monthly bill for Adobe CC - for them if they have CS5 or CS6 and they accidentally delete their brushes - those files are no longer available for download. Those pages are just dead now. For the people just starting out Kyle's brushes opened a lot of doors and now they're in the hands of Adobe. Adobe is a lot like Electronic Arts - companies that get absorbed always die.

[A Former User]

I suppose I'm indifferent. I bought a few brush packs in the past and liked them, but I'm not a Photoshop guy (I do have CS5 though) and going forward am probably not going to be much of a digital guy either.

As for Adobe, they're adding value yes, but they have competitors which they've not had in the past. Affinity Photo is $50. I use it and I love it. The brush engine needs work, but they can leap to Adobe's level in the next two years. Clip Studio Paint is great. Procreate is $5 and I personally like it better than Photoshop. Can it do everything Photoshop can? No, but every 6-8 months they release an update and add substantial new features. At the end of the day, 90% of digital work could probably be done to a high degree with a soft round, a hard round and a general texture brush. Everything else is convenience and speed. Most people never use most of the features or brushes anyway.

[Lee White]

We are interviewing Kyle soon so we can ask him questions about it.

[Stephanie Leonard]

@mattsmith_makes that's a good point. I'd already bought most of Kyle's brushes, so I'll have to make sure not to delete those downloads. Thanks for pointing that out!

[smceccarelli]

I live outside of the US and was able to download all brushes with no issues. Also the new brush management in PS is much better than it used to be, so at least Adobe heard that cry in the end. Still, it is not match for BrushBox, so I hope Derrick Barth will release a CC18 compatible version of BrushBox soon.
As for people not being able to access Kyle´s brushes if they do not have a subscription...I only started using Kyle´s brushes about 8 months ago and have been working for years without - like many many other digital artists, who still do (one famous one that only works with a handful of standard brushes is Lois Van Barle).
I am not totally comfortable with Adobe having a near monopoly on graphical software either - as deserved as it might be. Yet as a heavy user of the whole CC suite in my day job, I do not see the competition even coming close yet, not for all the demands of professional design work. Just thinking of color management and file synchronization between multiple applications - nobody is really endengearing Adobe´s monopoly, so I hope they will keep the focus on the users, as they have been able to do, more or less, so far.