 So you don't quite understand alphas. Not a problem. Simply put an alpha is just a black and white image. You can find them by clicking here in the libraries. Now the reason they're useful is because they can control the shape of your brush and are great whenever you need a specific design. And a lot of these alphas have their own parameters that let you have crazy control over their attributes. For example if you use barcode decreasing threshold makes the square more full. The higher the width the more squished the bars become and height makes it taller. If you want a more round rectangle band half has great parameters that you can adjust to get that specific shape just right. Circle inverted gradient and circle crosshair are great anytime you need to make a ring or just need a round design with tick marks. And shape circle squeezes your go to when you need to make an oval. Medieval is great for making magic fantasy spell circles and there are hundreds of other cool alphas here that come with substance by default. So I highly recommend you spend a little bit of time to just pick the ones you like and play with the parameters to see what extra control you can have over them. And one last cool thing is these are excellent when combined with stencils. So if you are using a particle brush and you have all your color and normal and height settings just the way you like. If you go down to stencil pick a shape and then left click you will apply the particle effect in the exact same shape as your stencil. So hope that helps Zen as always. Hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.