Atom,
Photoshop's "Brushes" open up a whole new range of possibilities when it comes to creating artistic effects to your renderings. You can create imagery that looks as if it was painted using natural media. They can be used to create realistic grass or leaves, add stitching to cloth, create realistic highlights and shadows, you can even create some smoke or clouds for that matter.

They are VERY timesaving and worth the time invested in experminting with them. If you get to Borders or Barnes & Noble (or Amazon.com), there is a great book on this subject by Bert Monroy, called Photoshop Studio.

:)
retrocity