Loading additional brushes, or replacing brush sets entirely, is a very simple process in Elements 2. There are a couple of ways to go about it: I’m going to show you what is effectively the long way in this quick tutorial.

First select the Brush tool in the toolbar.

The Options bar at the top of the screen will display settings that you can change regarding your brushes. You will see a small window displaying the currently loaded brush, or rather a representation of what it would look like if you painted a short stroke with that brush. To the immediate right of this window is a small arrow. Click this to open a palette displaying the loaded brushes. In this instance the brushes are displayed as small icons (this can be changed also).

In the upper right of this palette is another small arrow. Click on this arrow to open the Brushes Menu. This menu allows you to change the appearance of the previous palette, load save and replace brush sets. You can also access the Presets Manager for this menu.

To load additional brushes, or rather an additional brush set (which may contain a single brush or many brushes), select Load Brushes from the menu.

Navigate your computer to find the brush set you would like to load. Select it with the mouse and click the Load button.

Now the Brushes Palette will have the brush set you just loaded installed, in addition to the brushes that were already installed.

You can now select the brushes and paint as you like.

If you find having too many brush sets installed is confusing, select Replace Brushes from the menu instead of Load Brushes.

Now only that set that you select and load will be resident and available for use.

To get the Default Brushes back, open the menu again and select Reset Brushes.

The original brushes that were in place when you installed Elements will return and the others will disappear.

You may also load, replace, save and otherwise edit you brush set configurations via the Preset Manager, but that is another tutorial. You should now have a handle on working with Brush Sets the hard way.