We report our results on nonlinear optical properties of 2(3), 9(10), 16(17), 23(24) tetra tert-butyl phthalocyanine and 2(3), 9(10), 16(17), 23(24) tetra tert-butyl Zinc phthalocyanine studied using Z-scan technique with 800 nm femtosecond and 532 nm nanosecond pulses. Nonlinear absorption behavior in both femtosecond and nanosecond domains was studied in detail. We observed three-photon absorption with femtosecond laser excitation and strong reverse saturable absorption with nanosecond pulse excitation. We have also evaluated the sign and magnitude of the third-order nonlinearity. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.