Just stumbled upon some free sets of Photoshop Brushes...might be useful

StormyStudio

Whilst I was searching for an oil paint photoshop brush I found this...might be handy...

http://www.youthedesigner.com/2010/07/08/31-sets-of-free-photoshop-paint-brushes/

QuinnZoneStudios

Actually Stormystudio brings up a good point.
I'm using PS brushes more and more, not only for game assets but for a movie poster I'm working on.
There are some great ones out there on the web for clouds, dirt and grunge, sparkles, trees, almost anything you can think of. If you go into the brush settings you can use them as a texture by scattering the position, rotation and opacity as you paint.
This really is an underused tool and worth learning about. I still want people to know about Photoshop Elements for Mac which you can get for under $100. pretty well does all you need.

SlickZero

Here's some cool cloud brushes that come in handy.

http://qbrushes.net/nature/cloud-brushes-high-resolution/

And some tree brushes

http://www.geeksucks.com/freebies/36-free-photoshop-tree-brushes.htm

StormyStudio

Wow some of those tree ones would be great if you were making up a specific background...

insight

on qbrushes what does "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0" mean...can we use n product?

StormyStudio

looks like you cant use the cloud brushes....http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

SlickZero

Yeah, looks like the clouds aren't open for commercial use, but the tree ones are. I have another link for more cloud brushes somewhere, I'll post it. Shoot, I have several dozen links for Photoshop brushes if anyone is interested.

insight

i am