Comments on: Brush locking (aka “Huh?”)

By: David

David — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:33:04 +0000

Yes, and isn’t clicking the “lock” icon next to the “Texture” option the same effect as clicking the “Protect Texture” option? Isn’t this redundant? And why is there a “lock” icon next to “Protect Texture”? (sort of like locking a lock, which seems redundant.) If these “lock” icons should be kept, then ditch the “Protect Texture” option, or make “Protect Texture” into a shortcut for “lock” “Texture” options, so when you check the box, the “lock” icon next to “Texture” automatically locks.

By: Jim Dittmer

Jim Dittmer — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:52:04 +0000

Hi John, I'm just starting to use a tablet. Having used a mouse for retouching for some 14 years and a SciTex puck for 10 years prior to that, it's been an exciting learning challenge. I'd never noticed the lock function, so whether it's there or not wouldn't effect me. Much of my work involves masking using QuickMask and a frustration for me is that so many of the brushes have pen pressure turned on forcing me to stop, go to the Brush menu, select the proper menu and turn it off. Then going back to reverse the process when the feature is needed a couple minutes later! How about a checkbox on the cntl-click Brush menu that could quickly turn it on and off? Or perhaps some masking presets that would take whatever brush you were using and apply certain attributes (Soft, Medium, or Hard edge; no pen pressure. etc.) [Jim, a couple of things: It sounds like brush locking might help you. Set up pressure the way you like it, then lock down those settings. You may want to switch among brush tips, not brush presets (the latter of which affect pressure settings). We plan to put top-level (Options Bar) checkboxes in the app that'll apply pressure settings globally, without regard to what's set in the Brushes panel/applied by presets. --J.]

By: Lisa Sage

Lisa Sage — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:05:36 +0000

Hi Jerry, sorry for coming on so strong. I really dread the idea of setting as I go if the locks are being ditched! There are just too many settings for that.
On the follow-up questions; I usually end up with more than a dozen presets loaded whether I like it or not. I’m not sure if a custom tip would help but on the other hand it can’t hurt. It’s very hard to tell the difference just by the tip. It’s also not unusual to have different settings using the same tip. I’ve noticed that tips for brushes that work like stamps are easier to distinguish than the tips for my high res. custom brushes that work like real brushes. I hope that makes sense?
I do sometimes wish the Preset Manager would allow previews of the ABR files or let us color code brushes once they are loaded. But anything you could do to make managing Presets a little easier would be fantastic.

By: Avery

Avery — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:41:52 +0000

Won’t miss it, John. And thanks for asking :-)

By: Jerry Harris

Jerry Harris — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:31:20 +0000

We hear you, a tune I heard in the early 70′s is now ringing in my head..”Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset up…” This is not a tug o war contest where larger numbers on one side of an issue will pull the rest of you in the mud;-)
We, like everyone out there have to fight our brains tendency to want generalize, and categorize. This brain trait is both a blessing and a curse. It is the only way we make it through this world. We need to be vigil in insuring it is not dumbing down reality (as it does in almost every aspect of our lives).
A few followups.. Are there cases where you do want more than a dozen custom tool/brush presets visible at once? One thing we have heard is when such connoisseurs of brushes have so many tips they would like to add their own custom graphic to represent them in the palette. Would that be helpful?
I want to thank those that participate, and for those that don’t feel free to speak up. Clearly, I am setting an example for someone that does not let a lack of grammar skills impede interaction.

By: Marky

Marky — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:43:12 +0000

Well said Twitter. “I’ve never understood why software developers remove features in upgrades.” – well if they are going to REPLACE the feature with something better maybe. But in this case what we are talking about are tiny unobrusive “lock” icons. They are obviously trying to revamp the brushes interface in some way – but hardly worth removing things.

By: Twitter Fail

Twitter Fail — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:22:57 +0000

I use the locks. I’ve never understood why software developers remove features in upgrades. I would rather see more options, rather than dumbing down the software just because some people don’t take the time to learn how to use all the features.

By: Lisa Sage

Lisa Sage — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:59:24 +0000

Thinsoldier you make some very good points that have long been overlooked by Adobe! On the larger monitors the left (brush presets) to right (brush palette) stretch is a little ridiculous especially since CS3 took away the ability to dock palettes in the Options bar (the thing is 30 inches long and I can’t even use it-what’s with that?).
Having absolutely no way of viewing Presets to selectively load is costing way too much time and yet, loading all of them turns start-up time into an endurance test. Sure I could spend the $50 bucks for a third party preset viewer on the Mac but it’ll end up being a waste just like the NuLooq and every other third party ‘fix’ that was abandoned instead of updated. Shoot, I had to wait two months for Wacom to come up to speed with Mac OSX on update 10.4.6! Just setting Angle jitter to ‘Direction’ would crash Photoshop and the system within 5 strokes. The only ‘answer’ I got from Wacom was ‘don’t upgrade until we have the fix’. But I needed the latest version of Xcode for my coursework. It seems like everyone wants to hop on the Adobe money-train but they suck at keeping pace. Realistically how long are we supposed to wait for a decent Preset viewer?
Well, anyway the point is there are things you could do that would be wonderfully constructive instead of taking away a feature that the majority never knew about but is HUGELY important to those that paint in Photoshop. There are just too many short comings in the painting workflow as it is.
Oh, thinsoldier, I don’t know if this will help but ‘flow’ is like using a dry brush in the real world. If you mess around with the Rough Round Bristle brush that PS ships with you’ll see the difference. As you lower the flow the brush becomes more ‘scratchy’ not more transparent.

By: Doug Nelson

Doug Nelson — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:55:04 +0000

Jerry:
Ideally, it would know the state the brush was created in, and indicate if anything within that group had changed since then. Kind of like the little asterisk in the document titlebar, only for each separate control group.

By: thinsoldier

thinsoldier — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:32:10 +0000

I use the locks but I should admit that I still have no clue what the real difference between opacity and flow is. All I know for sure is I hate painting in photoshop because I fell like I have no control. If it weren’t for Sketchbook pro I’d be regretting all the money I spent on my wacom (although I still suck at “painting”.)
Here’s why I use the locks.
1) Currently my Brush Presets view shows 6 columns and 12 rows of brushes. I have 72 items to choose from. If I switch to Brush Tip Shape I have 6 columns and 7 rows. I can only see 42. With Brush Presets view I have more room to see, imagine, pick at random, experiment with brushes. In the Tip Shape view I do a lot of scrolling. So I just prefer to just pick a brush with who-knows-what crazy settings, play with it, lock down the aspects of the settings I like and switch to other brushes for their tip shape rather than actually using the “tip shape” tab.
2) I was under the false impression that even if I “Replace Brushes” with a custom .abr the “tip shapes” would remain as the defaults. Don’t know why I thought that. Only realized just now when I tested it that I was wrong.
I would like to see Brush Tool Presets listed over in the Brushes panel though. Having it over there in the upper left is like out-of-sight, out-of-mind for me. I don’t think I’ve used a tool preset since… whatever year they were first added.
–Do you every use the lock to do anything besides lock pressure == size? Are there other subpanels you use those locks for on a consistent basis (other than texture?).–
Other dynamics, scattering, airbrush, noise, dual brush, smoothing. In that order.
Did I mention that the entire interface for working with brushes needs a user friendly and “custom brush Community friendly” TOTAL overhaul. Not talking about brush/paining functionality (I’ll talk about that later!) but actually management of vast collections of brushes downloaded from the internet over the last 9+ years.
P.S.
I could really use a lengthy post about opacity vs flow with lots of visual aids that a six-year-old could comprehend.
Also, ditch the cheesy, low quality default brushes like scattered maple leaves and hypno lines, or at least increase their resolution. Remember, photoshop defaults DEFINE the look of a whole generation of crap uploaded to the internet. You should at least try to have attractive defaults. Same goes for the awful default patterns.

By: Peter Witham

Peter Witham — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:18:33 +0000

Darn it! I just started using this feature on my new tablet!

By: Lisa Sage

Lisa Sage — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:44:26 +0000

Hi Jerry, I actually love the locks!! I started experimenting with painting and drawing in Photoshop before my wrist forced me to buy a Wacom. Many of my favorite brushes were developed for the mouse but they got so much better with options like Other dynamics (two sliders), Color dynamics (4 sliders) and scattering (2 sliders) locked down. This way ‘pen pressure’ now applies to all of my made-for-the-mouse brushes. I’m sure you’re now thinking ‘why the hey doesn’t she just remake them or save them as a preset’?
I could. After all it shouldn’t take that long to remake 5Gb of custom brushes . . . well, except for the two days I lost trying to nail the perfect ‘veil’ brush so I didn’t have to agonize over replacing the background of another bridal shot, or the 14 hours I lost to perfecting a smoke brush that lets me swirl smoke where ever I want it and not just ‘stamp’ it.
Even so with my newest brushes I wouldn’t want to be without the locks. The best example I can give you would be a set of brushes I created for feathers. Because of their structure and perspective issues, I couldn’t get just one brush to handle the feathers of both left and right wings as well as tail feathers. It’s not difficult to navigate between the three brushes as long as I can keep my hue (+10), saturation(+7) and brightness(+7) and purity(+15) settings by locking down color dynamics. Without this I’d have to reset each time I switched brushes, which happens very often.
Shape dynamics comes into play anytime I’m working on a structural drawing. I shouldn’t admit it but I love taking advantage of Photoshop’s click/shift-click feature for straight lines. As someone has already said, accidentally tripping over shape dynamics will frustrate the workflow something fierce. Before starting a structural drawing I know to immediately lock Shape dynamics off.
Peter, I actually I do create my color blends in a new file but new files do not float and stay open in front after you have sampled and gone back to work. I can’t count how many times I’ve crashed Photoshop only to find out I had a ridiculous number of new files abandoned behind the document I was painting on.

By: Jp Cooper

Jp Cooper — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:29:42 +0000

John -
I know of these options. I think I used them when PS6 first hit – haven’t used them much since.
I like your thoughts for the evolution in the Options Bar.
TOAST THEM!

By: Marky

Marky — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:37:41 +0000

I like the idea of the tabs in the Option bar – again designed I suppose for people without the basic time, and initiative to learn the functions of Photoshop (a group increasingly catered for it seems).
But – WHY remove things? – the tiny lock icon takes practically no space. Seriously I don’t see much value in removing things that are potentially useful.
I also think that increasing the number of panels is generally not a good idea – UNLESS these panels improve existing functionality, or make features available that were absent before. Now a CUSTOMIZABLE single brushes panel on the other hand – I could see the value in that

By: Mike Morales

Mike Morales — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:28:21 +0000

I never use brush locking. I’ve always vaguely known the option was there since CS, but I can’t remember a time when its ever come in handy for me. I either set my brushes as I go, or create a new preset. If they go away I won’t miss them.