What's the point of custom brushes?

[l33t fl33t]

Yes, stupid question, I know. Still, what's the point of using them? Why not just use regular brushes that come with Photoshop/Painter/whatever?

And how does that tie into texture?

[Aphotic Phoenix]

I know Whit Brachna talks a fair bit about the value of creating your own brushes in his Environment Speedpaints vol. 1 Some of his brushes that come with the download are really quite awesome, but in the end it all comes down to your personal tastes and how YOU work. Photoshop is first and foremost designed as photo editing software, so the brush packs they include don't always equate to the most painterly effects. Creating your own brushes is really so simple there is almost no reason not to anyway.

I know that doesn't completely answer your questions, but hopefully helps.

[cmalidore]

What's the point in doing anything in Photoshop? It all gets you a step closer to what you see the final product being.

Sometimes it takes less time to create a custom and apply that, than to work with the default to achieve the same look..... which is not to say that the defaults suck - I do 3/4 of my work with those and I'm quite happy with the results. A large part of my custom brush use is for atmospheric particles in the air or something, lil bits of flavor that would be hard to create otherwise. Sometimes it's just the concept of getting a random shape and seeing where your creativity takes that, like a randomizer for "hey that looks cool".

No matter the medium though we should be willing to use it to its fullest potential - be it oil paints, acrylic, sculpture, or digital.... and I guess that would involve modifying your tools if you feel it will get you where you need to be.

[vardoburrito]

Custom brush settings are there to serve the curious, and to make some
brushes less CPU intensive. (Especially the 'spacing setting' in Photoshop)

The textures are what you see yourself and how you observe real textures
in real life. Custom brushes won't tell you it's 'fur looking' unless you see
it and render it out if need be.

[Baron Impossible]

Why would you prefer brushes that someone else has customised to those you customise yourself? Even if a suitable brush does exist its probably quicker to create one yourself than search for a suitable one amongst the thousands of pre-configured brushes. Plus, you can't possibly know what the potentials of the brushes are unless you get in amongst the config yourself, so how do you know you're getting the best out of your s/w?