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Moving brushes between drawing programs

Yes, brushes move between drawing programs, but not by copying the file. Each program stores brushes in a format only it reads, so the brush has to be rewritten as the target program's own settings. What travels is the recipe: the tip image, the grain, the spacing and the pressure curves. What does not is anything the target has no equivalent for.

Convert a brush How fidelity is measured

What a brush actually is

A brush is not a picture of a stroke. It is a short recipe the program follows every time the stylus moves, and most of it is portable:

The tip. An image, or a computed shape, stamped along the stroke. When people picture a brush, they are picturing the tip.
The grain, or texture. A second image the tip is filtered through, with a scale and a blend mode, which is what makes a brush read as chalk rather than as ink.
Spacing and scatter. How far apart the stamps land, and how far they wander off the line you drew.
The dynamics. The curves mapping pressure, and sometimes tilt and speed, onto size, opacity and flow. This is what makes a brush feel responsive.
Blend behaviour. Whether the brush lays colour down, smudges it, or mixes with what is already there. This is the least portable part, because every program models it differently.

The first four travel between programs well. The fifth is where the limits are, and the fidelity report is where they are written down.

Why you cannot just copy the file

Every program locks brushes into a format of its own. Photoshop writes .abr, Procreate .brush and .brushset, Clip Studio Paint .sut, Krita .kpp, and GIMP .gbr, .gih and .vbr. MediBang has no brush file at all. Hand one program another program's brush file and it has no instructions it can read, which is why forums usually answer that the brush cannot be moved.

The recipe is still in there, though. The formats differ, the ingredients mostly do not. Reading one and writing another is work, but it is ordinary work, and none of it requires redrawing the brush.

The three ways people do this

Rebuild it by hand. Export the tip and the grain as images, load them into the new program, and set the spacing and the curves back up by eye. It works, it is what most forum answers recommend, and it takes about as long per brush as building one from scratch.
A community script. Open-source command-line converters exist for some directions, written by artists and developers. They cover the directions their authors needed, and they expect you to be comfortable running Python.
A converter. Upload the brush and download it in the other program's format. That is what this site does, in all 25 directions, and the result screen names anything that had to be adjusted, so you are not left guessing which brushes need a second look.

Common questions

Can you use brushes from one drawing program in another? Yes, but not by copying the file. Each program stores brushes in a format only it reads, so the brush has to be rewritten as the target program's own settings first. Once it is, the target treats it as one of its own.

Do converted brushes look the same? The stroke uses the same tip image, the same grain and the same pressure response, so it looks like the original wherever the target program has an equivalent setting. Where it does not, the difference is in behaviour rather than shape, and the result screen names it rather than leaving you to find it.

Which programs can brushes move between? Photoshop, Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, Krita and GIMP, in every direction between them, plus MediBang as a destination. That is 25 directions in all.

Is there a free way to convert brushes? Yes. A free Brushfactory account covers monthly conversions at no cost, and every one of the 25 directions is free to try.

Every direction

From \ To	Photoshop	Procreate	Clip Studio Paint	Krita	GIMP	MediBang
Photoshop	-	Photoshop → Procreate	Photoshop → Clip Studio Paint	Photoshop → Krita	Photoshop → GIMP	Photoshop → MediBang
Procreate	Procreate → Photoshop	-	Procreate → Clip Studio Paint	Procreate → Krita	Procreate → GIMP	Procreate → MediBang
Clip Studio Paint	Clip Studio Paint → Photoshop	Clip Studio Paint → Procreate	-	Clip Studio Paint → Krita	Clip Studio Paint → GIMP	Clip Studio Paint → MediBang
Krita	Krita → Photoshop	Krita → Procreate	Krita → Clip Studio Paint	-	Krita → GIMP	Krita → MediBang
GIMP	GIMP → Photoshop	GIMP → Procreate	GIMP → Clip Studio Paint	GIMP → Krita	-	GIMP → MediBang

Per-format detail, including what each format contributes and what it can receive, is on the converter hub and the fidelity report. What is physically inside each file is on the format pages: .abr (Photoshop), .brush (Procreate), .sut (Clip Studio Paint), .kpp (Krita), .gbr (GIMP).

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