Hello.
I am fairly new to Photoshop so my question may sound a bit ridiculous but here goes.  Recently I made a 3d digital image from which I wanted to add a fire to.  I saw an advertisement for a Photoshop brush that said it could be used to paint fire onto images so I bought it, installed it, and used it.  But when I used it all it did was make patterns on my screen of fire shapes that were a flat color; the color I currently had selected.  What I had hoped was that the brush would not only paint the shape of a flame but the acutal photorealistic colors of the flame like I saw in the advertisement; but it did not.  I am not closer now to adding that piece of fire to my scene now.

I had a similar repeat of this event when I purchased a set of Photoshop brushes advertised to create many mystical special effects.  The advertisement looked very impressive of glittering speckles and magical swirls of fantasic colors.  Unfortunately, I bought this set of brushes and ran into the same situation; I could paint patterns or shapes of the mystical things in the advertisement but the cool neon colors, radiant effects of light, etc. were not coming out like the advertisment that came with the brushes. 

Am I doing something wrong here?  Are there such things as brushes that all you do is paint with them and the colors and effects that are on the advertisments with them also automatically appear?  Or am I supposed to create on my own all the lighting, neons, speckles, etc and then use the brushes to apply my creations?  If so then what books or places of information can I access that will show me how to make such effects for post reneder work in 3d digital art?

Some of the products I am not able to make work due to my limited Photoshop knowledge are:

50 Photoshop Brushes Of Fire & Flames
55 Photoshop Brushes Of Energy Spheres

Brushes will only show the current foreground color when you use them.  In order to create the effects you're looking for you need to use a color close to what you want and then use the filters to enhance the layer.  Brushes as best applied to a blank layer over the background for just this reason.  Otherwise, you end up using the filter on the entire image and not just the brush.

PS has a great collection of native filters.  You can use these to create the neon, glow, sparkle effects you're looking for.

Yes, this is the problem with sampled brushes (and I can't resist downloading or buying them!). They really give you only a basic shape. You need to work on the result to get the best effects. Here's a small example:

This is a flame brush with foreground colour set to a bright pink-red on a black background. It has three added layer styles and a cheesy lens flare effect, but no other work than that. Incidentally, if you download Apophysis (free) you can make your own fractal flame brushes.

Thanks Victoria and Speedler for the info.  Now if i could just find some good PS CS2 training DVD's or books that show step by step how to use filters to get the effects and colors I want.  There are so many options and settings that it looks like it will take quite a while to get what I am looking for.  What would be cool is a gallery book of impressive visual effects images like the ones I'm looking for with each image accompanied by the step by step process taken to reproduce each one.  Something that would show every setting, dial, slider, brush, layer, etc. used to recreate the image.

There are whole bookshelves of books on how to obtain various effects in PS. I could recommend 'Photoshop Classic Effects' by Scott Kelby - it does exactly what the title says; 'Photoshop CS Down and Dirty Tricks' (also by Kelby - there might be a CS2 version by now); and my favourite 'How to cheat in Photoshop' (3rd edn, by Steve Caplin - though it's less about effects and more about compositing and making montages).

You'll probably find most of the effects and tricks in these books on the net somewhere, there are numerous PS tutorial sites, but I always think you can't beat a good book for this :-)

I think I have a similar brush.  it was basic.  but I set the brush preferences to duel brush, set the scattter to a high range, then made the opacity set to pen pressure. I gave one brush a red colour and decreased its size and gave the other a yellow tone and increased its size, finally I changed the colour settings and luminocity of the brush to make it "glow"  all of this can be done in the brushes tab.  have a play, see what you come up with, the results might not be what you want but they will be fun ;)  I dont have time to write more so if this isnt enough sorry...

hope this helps

steve