The Brushes panel is the place to import, access, reset, export and delete brushes in Affinity Designer. In this tutorial, we will walk through the basic "maintenance" tasks.

Reset Brushes Panel

When you add and remove brushes as you work on a project, the Brushes panel gets a little messy. But it's easy to reset the panel back to the default settings.

1. Open Affinity Designer.


2. If the Brushes panel is not in the workspace, click View - Studio - Brushes from the Menubar.

We need to open the Preferences panel to reset the Brushes back to the defaults.


3. From the Menubar, click Affinity Designer - Preferences.


4. To open the pop-up menu, click the Grid icon on the top left. Click the Miscellaneous option (see screenshot).


5. On the Miscellaneous screen, click the Reset Brushes button (see screenshot).

You will get a pop-up message when the reset is complete. Close the message and Preferences windows.


6. From the Brushes panel, open the Category menu (see screenshot). You will see a list of the default categories. Each category contains several pre-designed brushes.

TIP: We are working in the Designer Persona workspace and the brushes are vector brushes. When working in the Pixel Persona, the brushes are pixel-based brushes.

Import a New Brush Set

There are many great designer brushes for free and purchase on the web. Check out Creative Market to get an idea of what's out there. After you purchase a brush set, you will need to unzip the download file and import the .afbrushes file. This .afbrushes file contains your new brushes.

1. From the top right corner of the Brushes panel (see screenshot), click the Panel Preferences icon.


2. From the menu, click Import Brushes.


3. When the window opens, locate and select your new .afbrushes file and click Open.


4. When you get the pop-up message indicating the import is complete, close the window.

You will see your new brushes listed in the Category list.

Export a Brush Set

People like to share and sell brushes. So here's how to export a brush set (category) as an .afbrushes file.

1. From the Category menu, select the brush category that you wish to export.


2. From the Panel Preferences menu, click Export Brushes (see screenshot).


3. When the window opens, go to your export location and click Save.

Delete a Brush Set

There will be times when you will want to remove a brush set (category) permanently. That's easy to do.

1. From the Category menu, select the brush category that you wish to remove.


2. From the Panel Preferences menu, click Delete Category (see screenshot).


3. When you get the alert message asking you to comfirm, click Delete (see screenshot).

You should see the category disappear from the Category list.

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Screenshots used by permission of Serif (Europe) Ltd. This article is not endorsed by Serif Ltd.