Why struggle trying to paint a little bush in a canvas landscape with a single camel's hair when you can take a fan brush and make the same bush in a fraction the time Ack! Because you ruin your fan brush and the result looks like crap! People can tell when you spend your time to do a piece well. The Photoshop analog of a fan brush is not an image-brush, the Photoshop equivalent of a Fan brush is Gaussian Blur. That's wha t afan brush is for. I'm all in favour of using your tools as they are available, but don't go using the blatantly wrong tool for the blatantly wrong thing! EricofSD: the science/art thing is why I really wish I had some sort of browser plugin that would automatically blank out all fractals. I like pictures made by a person -- I can't stand swirly moss made by an equation.