Digital artist is never enough with the default brushes offered by GIMP. By default, GIMP offers only brushes in a small amount of types. If you need a new brush to be applied to the image you are working on, you can install it yourself.

Installing new brushes in GIMP is straightforward. All you need to do is to copy the file of brushes you want to install to the installation folder of GIMP. The problem is that the installation folder of GIMP is different on each operating system. If you use Windows, you can find it under the “Program Files” folder on the drive C:.

If you already have GIMP installed on your system, you should see a folder named “GIMP 2”. This folder contains several sub-folders. So, to which folder you have to copy the brush files? Following is the full path.

Program Files\GIMP 2\share\gimp\2.0\brushes

In case you didn’t know, the file of GIMP brush is available with format of GBR. But, GIMP also recognizes an ABR file (file format of Photoshop brush). So, if you copy an ABR file to the folder of “Program Files\GIMP 2\share\gimp\2.0\brushes”, you will be able to use it on GIMP. There is a little difference between ABR and GBR. An ABR file can contain several brushes, while GBR only represent itself. That is why you will find several folders under the “Program Files\GIMP 2\share\gimp\2.0\brushes”. Each folder is used to store GIMP brushes with the same type.

Since GIMP is not as popular as Photoshop, it can be a bit hard task to look for GIMP brushes. To save you time, you can use the Photoshop brushes (ABR files), in which there are several websites you can go-to to get one.