What are the rules with downloaded brushes? I have hundreds of brushes and wondering am I even able to use them in things I would be selling, or doing for companies etc?

It probably depends on the brush pack. Some "authors" license things under the creative commons and others will want you to pay a nominal fee for using their brushes in commercial projects.. All in all, brushes are easy enough to make so unless you go overboard with a particular brush you should be fine

-austen

Most I see already have copyrights and laughable ones at that as majority are made from someone else's images. I could babble on and on but the easiest rule is if you didn't create it from scratch then its not yours to sell in the first place, but since we're in a recession go ahead lol sarcasm

All the brushes I download from DeviantArt which DON'T have any license or copyright messages, I assume they wasn't theres to "brush" anyway, so I just use them and occasionally credit the brush maker, unless I'm doing printed media like flyers etc and I just sell it all off as my own, who the hell is going to see a flyer I've made for a london nightclub and think "DUDE! HE STOLE THAT FROM dA!"

Probably don't want to take too much advice from me =]

Actually you'd be surprised who would see it, there's been many from DA that have seen their works in the strangest places. And if I could remember them all I'd post them but one site done an article on it was probably sitepoint but I cannot recall now.

Haha nice, hmm woops, young and naive

aah k cool,

Yea I heard about the horror story some author from like iceland stole this guys picture and used as their book cover for a local print, and they wouldn't remove it either even tho he told them he claimed copyright, I remember the article and he went thru hell and I think he didn't even win lol...

i saw a big event hall use one of mp0's images on their flyer once. that's actually the first time internet and real life kinda meet, and it was quite shocking to see it was copyright infringement right away.

be careful indeed, because there's a bigger audience than you'd expect.

Like the sgt. Pepper image in your sig Bluemage http://artgerm.deviantart.com/art/Pepper-Smile-73438385

The person who creates the brush can impose whatever terms he likes, but usually the terms are very loose: you do not have to credit the brush designer, nor do you have to worry about copyright issues. Copyrights generally do not extend to the *tools* used to create an original work.

If you saw a EULA (end user license agreement) when you downloaded or installed the brush, all the restrictions and terms should be listed there. If there was no EULA, and there are no restrictions listed on the site from which you downloaded the brush, then you should feel safe using the brush freely.

Yes you are right person who create photoshop brushes he have all the rights.

To be perfectly honest, using that Sgt. Pepper image in his sig image would fall under Fair Use terms I think, there's nothing wrong with him using it. Fair Use allows the use of copyright intellectual property for many personal uses... that's why you're allowed using songs for example in your youtube video for 30 seconds or less without risking them removing the sound.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_...rview/chapter9/