How to Use Photoshop Brushes in Procreate

You may be thinking of swapping out Photoshop for Procreate to make digital drawings. But you may be wondering if your brushes will work in Procreate. The good news is, you can take all your Photoshop .abr brushes and move them into Procreate. Awesome right? In this tutorial, we will be importing Photoshop brushes into Procreate.

This will be a similar method to importing Procreate brushes. We need to make sure before we get started that the brushes are .abr files. We have a bunch of great Photoshop brushes that are in .abr format, so check them out. We will be using these Photoshop smoke brushes to show you the steps.

Please note: we are using the latest version of Procreate 5X. This feature is only available in Procreate 5 and not earlier versions. Ensure your Procreate is up to date before continuing.

Step 1 - Download the Brushes to your iPad

We are going to take you through the process of downloading your Photoshop brushes from Design Bundles. Once you have purchased a brush, go to your “Purchases” page in your Design Bundles account.

We will find the Cloudy Smoke Photoshop brushes with a green “Download Files” button. Tapping on the button shows a dropdown tab of all files that we can download. We are going to tap on the .zip file to start downloading it.

Your iPad may have a program for unzipping files. If not you can use online file-sharing software such as iCloud, Drive, OneDrive to name a few. Use whichever method is the most convenient for you to access your .abr files on your iPad.

Step 2 - Share and Import to Procreate

Next, we are going to bring the Photoshop brushes into Procreate using two methods. You can either share the .abr file to Procreate or import it from Procreate. Each method is pretty straight forward and you can use whichever is best for you.

Share brushes from file

The Share brushes from file method can be the fastest way to get your Photoshop brushes imported into Procreate. The first thing we will do is head on over to our files and locate where the download was saved.

As the download was a .zip file we will need to extract its contents first. To do this simply tap on the .zip file. You will now see your Photoshop .abr file. Tap on this file.

Next, you are going to tap on the share icon in the top right corner. From the dropdown options select Procreate.

This will automatically take you to Procreate and display an “Importing” screen. Once done your brushes will have been added to your brush Library.

Import from Procreate

The second method is to import from Procreate. To get started, open Procreate and create a custom canvas or open an existing one. Go to your “Brush Library” (Brush icon) and tap on the (+) symbol to create a new brush.

You will see the Brush Studio open, from here simply tap on “Import” and select your .abr file. The .abr brushes will automatically import.

Step 3 - View and use Brushes

Now for the exciting part, viewing and using your imported Photoshop brushes in Procreate. The .abr file would have been imported as a brush collection so they’ll be easy to spot in the Brush Library.

Locate new brushes

Tap on your Brush Library to open it. The brush collections are located on the left side. Scroll to the top to see the newly imported brush collection. Tap on it to view the individual brushes.

Test your new brushes

Go and select a brush you want to test. Now start using the Photoshop brushes as you would normally use Procreate brushes.

You now know that you can easily import your Photoshop brushes into Procreate. It is especially great if you have a large selection of Photoshop brushes you would like to use.

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Check out our other Procreate tutorials such as how to make a rainbow brush and how to make planner stickers in Procreate.