With a mediocre offering in variety of Photoshop brushes and site navigation that could use some improvement, Green Bulb Gang can hardly be called the best Photoshop brushes resource. However, the site's impressive features, as well as the speed and friendliness of responses to technical support inquiries, definitely make up for what this website lacks.
The number of available brush sets – just more than 50 – is about half of what higher-quality websites offer. Without any brush packs or collections to offer, bulk shoppers may feel a little left out. That is, until they check out the site's membership options. With the purchase of a gold or platinum membership, you get access to free, unlimited downloads of a special section of premium brushes for one year. You also get discounted prices on the rest of the brush sets. The free membership does not include this access.
There are a number of free brushes available for non-members to download, but the paid-for brushes are where the real value lies. You can use any of the brush sets on Green Bulb Gang for commercial or personal use, and you can even alter them after purchase, although you can't resell or redistribute altered versions.
The website has a blog for updates, as well as accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo, although some of these are the personal accounts of the website's creator.
Although Green Bulb Gang has better variety than some of the sites we reviewed, it is by no means comprehensive. The standard brush sets that anyone can purchase are what we based our review on; we did not include the membership-only or free download selection.
These offerings lack many of the key brush styles that we like to see represented, such as abstract and artistic elements, fire elements, people themes, textures and patterns, splatters, stains, stars, skulls, wings, tribal elements, arrows, buildings and more.
That being said, Green Bulb Gang does have decent offerings for the categories it does cover. You can find a handful of animal-themed PS brushes, and several different swirl styles. There are a couple holiday-themed custom brushes, including Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, New Year's and Valentine's Day.
The strongest category is definitely the frames and tags. With about 10 options, these sets are perfect if you like to scrapbook or do similar home projects. Plants and floral are comparatively well represented, with nearly a dozen abstract and concrete brushes.
Other categories that are represented, but less completely, include light effects, geometrics, hearts, grunge and heraldry. Miscellaneous elements are numerous, however, and include several calendar-themed sets, as well as tattoo designs, baby themes, paisley designs and more.
Green Bulb Gang's brush sets are fully compatible with Photoshop CS through CS 5.5, as well as the earlier Photoshop 7. This site truly goes above and beyond; these Photoshop brushes are also compatible with Photoshop Elements, GIMP, Paint.NET and Paint Shop Pro. This is the only website that offers brushes that are compatible with all of those applications.
Green Bulb Gang's search functions are a bit lacking; there is a simple search function so you can search brushes by keyword, but there is no way to sort brush sets by popularity, price, style, category or even alphabetically.
Navigation could use some work as well. We had a hard time finding the page that outlines membership prices and inclusions, and accessing the gold and platinum members-only download areas requires more clicks than it should. Finally, the pricing displays could use some design tweaks; with the different colors and varying text sizes, they are a little difficult to read.
We loved the fast and friendly response we received after submitting a question via the site's online help-request form. As it turns out, the site owner herself handles technical support, so her level of customer service is exceptional. If email forms aren't your thing, the contact page also provides an actual email address for you to use.
The website has a helpful FAQs section, but we particularly liked the tutorials. These videos give helpful walkthroughs for everything from using the site and installing your brush sets to using them for specific projects.
Overall, we only recommend this site if you're willing to invest in the gold or platinum memberships. The free membership, or none at all, doesn't offer enough on its own. However, the website does have solid features, and the added benefits and extra download areas provided by the memberships supplement the moderate variety. Regardless of which membership you choose, the help and support options Green Bulb Gang provides are solid.
