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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
    February 25, 2014
    This is not a minor area - you just seem to think that this is a much simpler problem than it really is. "Go to moon, pick up rock. How hard can that be?"
    Someone who does know the details and has spent a lot of time thinking through the issues and dealing with the presets is telling you that it is not so simple and that your proposal is not a good idea.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 25, 2014
    This has nothing to do with the defaults (not sure where you got that). Again, you really seem to be missing quite a bit of the functionality and details about how presets work in Photoshop.

    No, you cannot change a brush preset. You can create a new preset with new settings, but you cannot change a preset after it has been created. Again, that is by design.
    P
    Plognark
    Participating Frequently
    February 24, 2014
    Are those the only concerns?

    Saving or loading brushes doesn't seem to be that big of an issue to code around. It already does all of this, it just gives a variation on current behavior.

    The actions issue seems legitimate, but even then I think I'd prefer to get a warning message if I'm modifying a tool that's part of a recorded action and be given the option to proceed. Any actions I use are global in nature; I can't even think of a scenario (as an illustrator) where I would script actual brush behavior.
    G
    genshoku
    Known Participant
    February 24, 2014
    But still, again, we can already change the contents of the brush preset ( it's just that it is much harder than what it should be ) so your logical reason is irrelevant.
    I'm still waiting for a true reason.
    T
    tomaugerdotcomAuthor
    Known Participant
    February 24, 2014
    What scripts or actions or other automation exists that refers to a brush preset? Most actions deal with global operations, not stroke-based operations - heck, I'm not even sure whether the actions engine can record brush strokes! At any rate, like I mention in an earlier comment, if you're worried about default brushes getting modified, lock them. But allow user-created brushes to be modified.

    Further, I'm curious as to how a script or action might fail as a result of a brush preset change. You say "fail" as in program error, or abort script, right? I can't imagine a scenario where the script fails outright - to the point where it would be problematic from a programming and/or UX perspective. I could see the script or action not producing the visual results it was originally created to produce, but as in failing, I really don't see it.

    Why so much negativity anyway? Is it really hard to acknowledge that this is a minor area of the Photoshop user experience that could be improved and is long overdue.
    T
    tomaugerdotcomAuthor
    Known Participant
    February 24, 2014
    No, it would be like changing a Paragraph Style or Character Style definition, which is an extremely common use case. Users understand that changing a preset will likely affect any other function or tool that leverages that preset. If I have an action which uses a preset brush that I created and then I run that action after modifying the preset, I should bloody well hope that the action changes its behaviour as a result.

    If you're really concerned about preserving the integrity of some of the "default" actions, then you can "lock" some of the default brushes as well. But user-created brushes should be allowed to be modified.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 23, 2014
    The most obvious problem is that actions, scripts and other automation that refer to that brush would not work as expected (if they didn't fail outright). The less obvious is that your brush and tool preferences wouldn't get saved and loaded correctly (not sure if this would cause error messages, or just not work).
    P
    Plognark
    Participating Frequently
    February 23, 2014
    Could you give us an actual example of what would happen if a preset were modified in the way we're asking? What would/could be broken by this?

    Suppose we were starting with a basic round brush and wanted to change one setting and save over it.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 22, 2014
    Again, logical reasons - like the brush identity would not longer be accurate, unique, or useful if you could change the contents of the brush preset after creating it. (it would be like changing out the house at a given address every 30 minutes)
    G
    genshoku
    Known Participant
    February 22, 2014
    Then, which reasons? I'm curious now.
    You mean it's programming reasons, right? Something like it's hard because the code has not been done that way? Cause I can't see anything else logical.
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