Photoshop Tip: Delete Brush Shortcut

By pure accident I found out how to quickly delete a Photoshop brush from the preset list. This comes in very handy when you’re trying to save a custom brush set and don’t want any superfluous brushes to be in your .abr file. There’s a tedious way, which means right-clicking on each brush and selecting delete. There’s the obvious one by clicking the thrash icon in the brush palette. Finally there’s a hidden, much simpler, quicker way: hold the Alt-Key while clicking on the brushes you don’t want. A little pair of scissors should appear which indicates that you’re about to remove that particular brush. So simply Alt-click through your brush palette to delete them one by one. That’ll save you precious seconds and we all know that time-saving is very important when designing. FYI I am running Photoshop CS3 on a Mac so I’m not sure how compatible this shortcut is with other versions. Unfortunaltely I couldn’t produce a screenshot of the technique. It should be fairly straightforward though.

*Update*: The shortcut works on Windows running Photoshop CS3. Thanks to Mr.Ju!-ce for the info.

Written by Franz Jeitz

Franz Jeitz is a freelance designer and owner of Fudgegraphics. Originally from Luxembourg he now lives in London. Franz loves design, music and is a tea enthusiast. Follow him on Twitter.

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26 Awesome Responses so far
  1. Mr.Ju!-ce

    It’s the same shortcut on PC & CS3. Nice tip !
    And I’m not sure that a screenshot is necessary ^^
    Thanks ;)

  2. ohsilv3r

    Wow nice tip!! Helped me soooo much!

  3. the artist

    THanx……

  4. :D

    very nice works on cs4 too:D:D

  5. Savzz

    Thanks alot! The best tip ever! you are so cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I needed this for ages! Thanks thanks thanks and more thanks xD! :D Thanks sooooooooo Much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  6. fudgegraphics

    @Savzz:

    You are very welcome. I’m really glad I could help you out!

  7. mike

    What an easy solution to something that has been driving me crazy! Thanks so much. – Mike Lowery

  8. Pred

    Nice tip. Saved me time. I always have a cluster of brushes. Thank you ^-^

  9. MelodyA.

    Yep, thanks so much. Yours was the first link I clicked on and that was all I needed.

    MelodyA.´s last blog post..Beautiful

  10. foxio

    Thanks bro. That helps me so much

  11. Gerry

    I’ve tried it and it works like a magic… but I was wondering, how about the set instead of individual brush?

    I have a lot of list of custom brush listed on the fly out menu and I can’t find a way to get rid of them. I tried to deleted the physical .abr file even uninstalling the photoshop cs3 and reset the preferences into the factory default but all the custom brushes was still listed on the menu.

    HELP!

  12. OksanbI4

    Thanks a lot!!!!!
    I’ve been trying to remove unwanted set brushes by deleting them one by one… your method is much easier than even to go to the PS’s files….
    =)

  13. Krys

    Thank you! I often find myself with far too many brushes, even download the same brushes because I didn’t realize I already had them lol.
    This makes it 100 times easier to clean them up!

    I cannot thank you enough for sharing, really ^_^

  14. daffyd k jones

    Thanks so much, just what I was looking for :)

  15. sabine

    You saved my day! Thanks for posting this!!!

    Does anyone know how to organize the brushes within the palette?

  16. june

    OMG! You saved me…
    .-= june´s last blog post: My n97 experience =-.

  17. justina

    Works in CS too!

  18. Provo Dentist

    Ahahaha. I didn’t know about that. I just keep clicking on the trash icon. This should save me a lot more time.

  19. Mallory

    Holy shit, this saved me literally hours of time — Thank you so much to whoever posted/came up with this! W00t.
    .-= Mallory´s last blog post: 4 November 2009 =-.

  20. Eric

    Wow! This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!!!

  21. Ken-e

    Love shortcut tips! Thank You for saving time.

  22. jerseydevil9x

    WOW!~ great.. thanks a lot mate! cheers~

  23. sean23uk

    er! hello??

    what not just use the PRESET MANAGER in the brush menu?

    this loads up the thumbnails and you can multi select and hit delete!

  24. Franz Jeitz

    @sean23uk: Of course that works too. I believe that in certain cases this shortcut is quicker though. Thanks for your comment.

  25. daphoux

    OMG! Thanks!

    you can’t imagine how much time it saved me!
    Thanks seriously!

  26. asta

    thanks nice tip!

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