I recently bought some brushes from mapeffects.co and they have bundles with Photoshop ABR brushes, but when I go to try import them into Krita, they don’t show any brushes contained within them. I tried adding them through the Manage Resource Library, but after importing, it’ll show it was added on the Resource list, but it’ll be empty with no brushes.
On closer look into the log files it shows that when trying to import the brushes I get the following error;
krita.general: ERROR: unable to decode abr format version 10 (subver 0 )
From the looks of it, Krita is unable to import Photoshop .ABR brushes that are version 10 or higher.
As you already found out by yourself, Photoshop ABR’s can only be imported into Krita if they are in a certain format. But that is in most cases not a problem, because there is a tool out there that is able to convert the ABR’s made after CS6 into the PS7 format, what can be read by Krita. The only issue that can arise here are copy-protected ABR’s, and corrupted ABR’s, it is also said that so-called “artistic brushes” should be unconvertible.
But over all the years I’m using these tools and Krita, I had about 5 or 6 ABRs that couldn’t be converted, from several hundreds I own.
So I would also like to recommend the two programs “abrViewer.NET” and “abrMate” for handling ABR files. Although Windows programs, both run via Wine under Linux and (very) probably also via WineBottler under macOS.
Both do almost the same thing, display ABR files and extract their contents to single PNG files if required. However, “abrViewer.NET” is significantly faster, especially when extracting and displaying, and extracting is done automatically in the background, BUT “abrViewer.NET” cannot handle all ABR files AND THE ABRs THAT “abrViewer.NET” CANNOT READ, KRITA CANNOT READ THEM, and this is where “abrMate” comes into play, because “abrMate” can convert these ABR files into a format readable by Krita and “abrViewer.NET” and other programs that can’t read newer ABR’s (as said above, except copy-protected and corrupt ABRs and ABRs containing so-called artistic brushes (whatever that is in Photoshop)).
I use them in conjunction, “abrViewer.NET” for converting to PNG and for checking if it has to be converted by “abrMate” into a format Krita can use, “abrViewer.NET” views a error dialog if it has to be converted that it can’t handle the file. And “abrMate” I use only for conversion.
It is not clear to me if you are aware of the fact that Krita can only show the brush tips of ABR’s, converted or not doesn’t matter because it stays an ABR.
But you can use these brush tips to recreate the brushes from that. Usually a task for users that have experience in brush-creation, but in your special case of creating stamp like brushes that is no bigger problem.
You just need a brush preset of a stamp brush from Krita and can assign the brush tips from your ABR’s to this brush preset in Krita’s brush editor, that can be opened via the toolbar or F5. This allows an easy recreation of stamp like brushes.
And if you want, you should take a look at the following topic, where a user has the exactly same issue with the exactly same resource - AND there you can find my recreation of the sample brush-set offered from mapeffects.co, so some work already done. In case you will use that set with a mouse, you won’t have the issues the OP of that topic had, but I did not have issues with my graphics tablet either:
Furthermore, you can find links to tons of resources like those you just bought, and the best thing is far more than 10k brush tips from about 30+ ABR’s for free!
I hope you realize the links in your post link to malware domains. And linking to Softpedia too is hardly a trustworthy site, which often propagate malware repackaged software.
AT FIRST, I THOUGHT YOU ONLY COMPLAIN ABOUT abrMate, BEFORE I REALIZED WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO abrViewer.NET. AND IT HAD HAPPENED.
SORRY THAT I DON’T THINK LIKE A CRIMINAL AND CHECKED THAT FORMER PSEUDO-LINK AGAIN!
FROM NOW ON, ALL LINKS ON THIS TOPIC TO abrViewer.NET LEAD TO ITS CORRECT DOWNLOAD-LOCATION AT SOURCEFORGE. BUT BE AWARE AND INFORM ME OF ANY SINGLE LINK OF THESE NOW MISLEADING LINKS YOU FIND IN THE FORUM, SO THEY CAN BE CORRECTED, AND PLEASE ONLY REPORT THOSE LINKS NOT LEADING TO SOURCEFORGE.NET! You can check this by hoovering the link, the correct address will usually be shown in one corner of your browser-window.
So, and now, please get down off your high horse, it’s not my fault that some criminals suddenly register the name of the software abrViewer.NET, which has, as long as I know it, always been distributed via Sourceforge, as a domain and use it to do evil.
And it is also not my fault, that you instead of clicking the first link to the correct download-location at Sourceforge have chosen to click one, or probably ALL of those former pseudo-links, as my screenshot from this page before I corrected the CRIMINALLY ABUSED PSEUDO-LINKS PROOFS.³
You can’t always think of everything, at least I can’t, because I’m human, and because I’m not a criminal and I don’t think like one, and since this name was never registered as a domain when I checked it sporadically in the past, I didn’t check it today. Because I assumed that this previously pseudo-link would continue to lead nowhere! As you can see here, this domain was only registered in September last year and would expire this year if the owner does not renew it.
On the topic of facts and arguments, I have linked here to the latest reports on the security/reputation of www.softpedia.com, including downloadable screenshots of the reports at the time they were compiled. These proof that your accusations against that site are wrong!:
It may be that www.softpedia.com has had problems with malware in the past, but as far as I know the site has been clean for a very long time and free of your kind of allegations, otherwise I wouldn’t have put a link to www.softpedia.com. I am usually very thorough and take such things very seriously.
On the day the links to abrMate and abrViewer.NET were created by me, well over a year ago, if not two years, “abrViewer.NET” WAS A PSEUDO-LINK as it was only the name of that program, and www.softpedia.com was one of two clean sources on the web besides me, who offered abrMate via my cloud. The paragraph in my posting above with the links to both programs is an excerpt from an older post of mine, call it recycled.
By the way, nobody can rule out that a website like www.softpedia.com occasionally has the misfortune of offering software that turns out to be infected with malware afterward, because the malware placed in the software these sites offer was only discovered weeks, months or even years after it was put on the market and can then be discovered by scan engines after the malware scanner engines have been updated.² This is a problem, or risk, that every similar website faces and is due to the nature of the offer. And at www.softpedia.com, reported hits are then consistently removed from the site.
I have to admit, that I did not notice that in between an evil person or group registered that name of the software as domain to spread malware via that domain and I have now corrected these links on this site. Unfortunately, I now have to skim the whole forum for links that lead to that before not existent domain, but since I’m a human I can do this not before tomorrow, humans have to sleep from time to time.
Michelist
² “Well-programmed malware” has already managed to remain undetected for years, and every comparable platform also has this risk. In addition, even the most renowned software providers have had the misfortune of delivering millions of infected programs to their customers. And computer magazines have also distributed malware on a large scale with their magazine CDs/DVDs/disks, despite the most careful scans before production, but rarely with intent.
As I once read in a security blog, the malware that has remained undetected for the longest time is said to have spent over 13 years in the wild.
³ Links to screenshot and PDF copy of this page before I renewed the HI-JACKED LINKS into the correct ones leading to Sourceforge:
Hello 
