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tomaugerdotcom
Known Participant
June 30, 2011
Open for Voting

P: Ability to update/edit brush presets [2011]

  • June 30, 2011
  • 65 replies
  • 3396 views

This is a no-brainer that should make its way ASAP into 13.

Provide users with a way of tweaking their brush settings and then SAVING OVER an existing brush preset, rather than having to create a new one.

The brush preset system that has been in place since 5 is a broken user experience. You always create a "throwaway" brush (tip) when you Define Brush Preset, and then you customize its settings and create a New Brush. Then, if you don't like those settings and want to improve them, you are stuck having to create yet another brush preset, and eventually deleting the others.

Come on guys, we need something just a little more polished. It's been over ten years now. Fix some basic stuff before launching into crazy new directions like 3D.

For the most intuitive user experience, the workflow should be revised.

Creating brushes should be a two-step process:
1. create a "brush tip" - these are the sampled pixels only, with no Brush configuration data attached
2. create a "brush" - by selecting a brush tip and then setting your options.

If you then want to edit an existing preset and save over it, why not present us with familiar options like Save and Save As? Put a little "save" icon and a "clone" icon in the Brushes palette. Let us know when we're editing an existing brush preset, and put the title of the brush preset in the palette. Basic basic stuff.

    65 replies

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    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    November 2, 2016


    Sometimes I have to change a preset. It would be nice to be able to just overwrite an existing preset. Right now it just says "Preset already exists" with no option to overwrite. And if I create a new preset, i can't change the order, and I need order in my list! : ) Thanks.
    M
    Mdentonetc
    Known Participant
    December 15, 2015
    I'd take the fix Tom suggestion over a complete overhaul, but it really does need a complete overhaul. It's barely improved from how it worked a decade ago.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    December 15, 2015
    @1907153 Denton It's because Chris is the head computer engineer at Adobe, but if you look below at the defense it's basically, a "it's too hard." argument and you don't understand, even to other programmers. It'll become a problem when other programs outshine Photoshop, and then they'll do it. Like GIMP to Photoshop.

    Chris spends a lot of time saying no to UX, but yes to new features. His PR skills aren't that great. Old features for programmers are boring to fix because just functional is usually how programmers tend to work.

    Still can't see why you can't copy the architecture of brush presets to when you save the brush because technically the brush ID has yet to be created, so it's not constantly changing, it's changing in one instance. That would cut the middle as a compromise and at least save some time.

    Plus the whole preset organization has to be redone from the ground up in many ways, so I can't see why you can't do a complete overhaul.
    M
    Mdentonetc
    Known Participant
    December 15, 2015
    Just want to add to the chorus that this should very much be a feature. It can't possibly be that complicated to code. It's a dumb system and should be improved. I'm amazed that it was brought up 4 years ago and has yet to get any response. I'm also amazed that anyone would defend Adobe not fixing this issue.

    AH well.. Off to go create a new brush preset that slightly modifies an existing brush and then deleting the old brush and then going into preset manager so that I can drag and drop the brush where I usually keep it on the grid.

    Because obviously who would want to be able to just move the brushes whenever we want? That extra preset manager is so handy!
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 26, 2014
    Well, we're constantly trying to improve the workflow (including brushes). But sometimes what we do is more complex than users realize - and we just cannot do things the way they imagine.
    P
    Plognark
    Participating Frequently
    February 26, 2014
    Thanks for taking the time to explain that Chris, that's pretty much what I imagined the issue would be. I wonder if using transitional versions of presets under the hood would be a way to do this, but without knowing the code I'm just guessing at high level ways to do this.

    I don't think there's much more to say, but I do think that Adobe may be underestimating the value of a smoother workflow, especially given some of the new market competition out there.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 26, 2014
    It was built a certain way for good reasons, that have not changed.
    You've already gotten the truth, even if you don't like the answer.
    T
    tomaugerdotcomAuthor
    Known Participant
    February 26, 2014
    that's an interesting perspective. However, I can't imagine a scenario where you might be running an action or a script while simultaneously updating the brush preset - in fact, I'm not even sure that the current implementation allows this sort of activity. Maybe in a "droplet" scenario (not sure PS still supports droplets, but anyway I'm reaching here).

    Anyway, and you are welcome to differ, but I think that particular technical line of reasoning is a wash. it's much more likely that the underlying architecture of the Presets (or at least the Brushes presets) was simply not built in a way that would allow this kind of modification, and it would be too much work to completely refactor that code. In all likelihood, the developer(s) responsible for the original implementation of Presets is no longer available to work on that component, and it's just not economically viable to ramp up someone else to refactor that section. That may feel like it's a less attractive answer from a marketing and PR perspective, but my guess is that's closer to the truth. Truth is good. Trying to baffle brains with BS, not so good, at least from where I'm sitting.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 26, 2014
    Imagine you had an object referenced by pointer, and some other process was constantly changing the contents of that object at the same time that several other threads were using that pointer, or deleting the object while others were using it - bad things would happen, or at least unexpected and very difficult to explain things.

    It would take days to explain all the details.

    The brushes (and most other presets) have a unique ID for a reason. They are immutable for a reason. You shouldn't go changing out the contents of them for a reason.
    P
    Plognark
    Participating Frequently
    February 26, 2014
    I'm a C# .NET programmer. That's my day job. Please assume that I'll understand deeper technical speak.

    I'm not trying to be combative, I'm genuinely curious what the technical and logical limitations are.

    Could you go into more detail, from a programmer's perspective, about why this isn't feasible?
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