GIMP building brush problem.

[RevGunn]

I'm not certain if this is the correct place to post this, but...

I'm having a problem with custom or home made brushes in GIMP 2.6

Specifically I downloaded a bunch of PNG files from RPGMapShare. These are all buildings. What I want to do is make each of these PNG files in to a building brush in GIMP for making district scale city maps. I can make the brush, no problem, but.. its read only. Can't copy it. So I tried saving to a different folder. Read only. I tried the "documents and settings" brushes folder. Read only. I tried the "my documents" brushes folder. read only. All I want to do is rotate the damn things... No matter where I save them, read only. I've changed attributes on the files, the folders, in Windows XP and in GIMP and no matter what I do... read only!!!!

Gaaah!!! The time I've spent on this I could have drawn 12 maps with a pencil and I'd probably not be wanting to pull out my hair.... but this is for a VTT game.

I've googled "gimp brush making" "brush editing" ... I'm lost. I got no idea what to do now and I know its something easy that I'm over looking and.. help please.

[JefBT]

Can you share the brushes? I will take a look and see what I can do to help you.

For now, to make a brush, get the image you want to be the brush, open it in GIMP, and go through this steps:
(I will assume you want to use the brush as it is, with it's own colors)
1) Go to Image > Mode > RGB (If it akready is RGB, just skip this step)
2) Make any changes that you want on the brush
3) In new versions of GIMP (I am using 2.8.10), go to File > Export As, and save your file as .gbr (GiMP Brush) on the folder Users/<Your User>/.gimp-2.8/brushes
4) Close and open GIMP again, and it is done, your brush might be there.

You can make brushes that use the foreground color, just set the mode to Grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale), but doing so will remove the brush colors, with black being opaque and white will be totally transparent.

I hope this can help you a little.