Install new shapes in Photoshop

Now let’s see how to install shapes in Photoshop, with references to get new shapes and to install them on our computer.

As previously mentioned, in the first article dedicated to , Photoshop comes with a basic package of shapes that can be very useful in many cases. With it we can do all the tests we want to learn the tool and for elementary designs. However, as we take advantage of the program, we will see that we have many other needs for shapes that help to enrich the designs.

Our library of shapes, which we have available in Photoshop, is installed by packages. Actually these packages can be accessed so that we see all the forms at the same time, but we can also only be seeing the forms of a given package.

We can select the shape packages that we want from the drop-down menu that we obtain by pressing the small arrow that is marked as 1) in the following image.

Then we can see the different packages installed on this computer in the list that is marked with point 2).

Various creators offer additional shape packages that we can easily install. With a simple search on the web we will find hundreds of pages that offer personalized forms for download. Many of them are paid, but there are many others that can be freely downloaded and used in both personal and commercial projects. The installation process is really simple, what may cost a little more is searching the Internet to find the type of shapes that fit well with what we are designing.

One place where it’s usually good to take a look is at devianART, which has a community of creatives who post lots of design materials and resources in a multitude of programs, including, of course, Photoshop. Specifically, we are going to put here a couple of links to shapes for Photoshop ready for free download and installation.

Another site that is undoubtedly interesting, since it is a directory specifically created to host Photoshop shapes is .

Once we download the shape packages, we will see that they are files with a .csh extension (if you downloaded a zip or any other compressed file format, you will have to unzip it to get the .csh). Now we just have to install it in Photoshop.

To install a pack of shapes in Photoshop you have to do it from the custom shapes tool panel. When you open the drop-down menu to select one of the available shapes, you will see a small arrowhead on the right, which if you click on it, a menu with many text options is displayed. You can see it more clearly in the following image.

From among the available options we have to select “Load shapes…”. A dialog box will then appear where you can choose the .csh file that contains the shapes you want to install, which you had previously downloaded. Once loaded they will be available to use and you can find them among all the shapes already installed in Photoshop.

As you can see, the use of shapes is a very quick and easy way to add elements to our designs that add a lot of creative touch. Combined with them we can obtain even more interesting and varied results.

Below we can see an image with some shapes made with different colors from the packages that we had proposed for download. It is a simple example that is not very creative, but where you can appreciate the variety of items that we can get to use in our Photoshop designs.