Hi, i've downloaded brush that have already color in it, but when I started working with it on gimp they are only in grey and black. why is that. thank you for answering

Can you give us a link to the place where you got your brush? Is the brush colored or is it a gray scale brush that uses the foreground color?

Also, check to see if your image is RGB mode by clicking Image > Mode > RGB in the menu bar of the image you have open. If Grayscale is selected your brush will come out in shades of black and gray no matter what color brush is; make sure the mode is RGB.

Just on a hunch, it sounds as if the brush was saved as standard RGB and they won't work as a .gbr file. It should be .gih (animated)

A gbr as a colored brush (RGB) should work fine.

A gbr brush that is flattened and made grayscale will take on the foreground color.

A gih brush is an animated brush that has more than one layer and different views. A grayscale gih brush will take on the foreground color.

I've actually had this happen to me once (a color brush would paint as black), but I'm not explaining it correctly. Not sure where I posted about it before (perhaps GimpTalk?).

If a colored brush was saved in grayscale mode, it would convert to grayscale and not show in color.

This place is dragging its heels.

The gimp manual is pretty thorough about brushes.

I'm wondering if lamia has a grayscale image up and her colored brush is getting trashed that way - or maybe it's Indexed. If it's Index mode I think everything comes out black.

Yep, indeed, GimpChat is sloooooooow loading today.

It could have been indexed. I'll open a color brush and save it as indexed and see if that is it.

Actually, to test it out, just open a new transparent image and make it Indexed mode. Don't change your brush.

Yep, that's it. The image being brushed is in index mode and the brush is painting as black.

It gets even weirder. Open a new transparent image and fill it with a color. Then change it to indexed mode. It paints with the color you filled it with.

Lamia, I hope we haven't scared you away with all this side chat about brushes. We're learning too.

My first suggestion is to check the mode of your image by clicking Image > Mode > make it RGB. If that doesn't work, please post back to us.

No not at all ;D, the website is www.free-brushes.com and the thins is I don't have RGB, I have RVB? could that be the problem, and thank you so much for answering

It says RVB where the arrow is pointing in the image below? What version of gimp do you have and what language is it in?

by O!
maybe that is just a overzelous translation:
as example a italian translator may have the bad idea to translate RGB, Red,Green,Blue in RVG for Rosso. Verde ,Blu

i never noticed this on my gimp, but is also true i switched to english immediatly (because most of tuts are in english )

anyway if you go to Image> Image Mode you should see 3 options:
INDEX
GRAYSCALE
RGB

if instead then "greyscale" you see "Scala di grigi" or something else in another language don't worry,
same if RGB become RVG
....that may depend from computer language (and may be changed from gimp )

yes exactly I have gimp in french, but even when i do RGB I have always nothing it's still in black and gray

I would really like to know which brush you downloaded. You gave us a link but didn't say which brush.

ahh...once converted to grayscale the colors can't be recovered

but yes the brush link would help

http://free-brushes.com/2010/03/22/little_birdie.html this one and http://free-brushes.com/2009/05/06/vale ... ushes.html

I downloaded and looked at the Little Birdie brushes. They are all grayscale gbr brushes which means they will take on the foreground color or you can use a gradient to color them.

Unfortunately, it shows prettily colored birds but that's not what you get. The valentine brushes are the same way - grayscale and they take on either the foreground color or gradient colors.

Here's brush 10 which is an owl that I used with a gradient. You can see that they come out solid colored rather than various colors like it shows in the picture of them. It kind of ruined the brushes in my opinion.

Anyway, if your foreground color is black, either brush will come out in shades of black and gray. It's not your fault, it's the way the brushes were made.



You can use a single color (I used black) to paint the brush, then make a new transparent layer under the brush and paint in some of the empty spaces with color.

I was going to suggest that you may need to change the foreground color to suit your needs.
Wow i am glad it wasn't just me, i thought for sure i was never going to see Gimp Chat again!
Timed out on me several times.