I strongly urge you to resist the temptation
to just tell Photoshop to load the brushes or other resources from the folder you downloaded them tp.
Instead I reccomend the following steps.
Save the brush, action etc in a known location and the copy it to the default Photoshop folder for that resourse. Organige your downloads so that you can move them to your next machine or hard drive.
To locate the default location for the resouce you want to load.
Go to it's panel, the brushes panel, the actions panel, etc.
Select Load Resoucre from the panel's menu.
You will them get a dialog box showing your the presets that came with Photoshop as well as any you have added.
In Windows there is a drop down box next to the file location that will show the path fromn the base folder on the drive.
Write this "path" down you are going to need it.
Now you must locate this folder on your hard drive. If anyone writes up Mac instructions I will be glad to post them.
In Windows Vista and abovego to your hard drive and look in a folder call User
or
In Windows XP and look in a folder called documents and settings.
There you should find a folder with the user name of your account. This example user "Laura".
The folder AppData is a hidden folder under the folder called Laura.
In roder to see you you must::
- Go into the Tools menu and
- Select Folder Options
- Then go to the View tab
- Turn on Show Hidden Files and FIlders.
Now follow the path several levels down until you see the folder called Presets.
Righ click on Presets and make a shortcut to Presets.
Then cut and paste that shortcut to your desktop.
Now you have a shortcut on your desktop to the folders you need access to if you want to load actions brushes, etc. into Photoshop.