P: Mirror Paint/Symmetric/Seamless Tile Paint Function

We might as well give up. Adobe and Photoshop are so industry standard that it allows them the wiggle room and laziness to not make any real changes to their program for years. They've switched to a subscription service because they understand that they arn't making enough changes to the program that people want to upgrade to the newest version like in the old days (when PS had a max of 3 undos)

It is ridiculous that Photoshop does not have this function yet.

Thank you all for the more complete answers. It helps me to understand just what you're asking for. I agree the offset filter is pretty lame and not productive. I think the Oil Filter is pretty lame, but I know others swear by it.  '-} What I didn't know from reading the recent posts was that an entire industry needs something more immediate than a free 3rd party tool.

I don't know why Adobe got our hopes up for better painting tools inside PS, gave us some natural media, then dropped the ball. I do know that I'm still wasting a LOT of time trying to create, organize, load, and unload brushes, though. It is extremely difficult to be creative when searching for your tools, and I have no doubt the same is true when you're fighting daily with a feature as lame as the Offset filter and nothing else substitutes well for it.

And despite the natural media, there is no good way to clone as there is in Painter, so Adobe's no Painter-killer.  When Adobe drops the ball on our workspace functions, we all do suffer. When it did so much to fix to the Layers panel, we all could be more productive, and naturally I'd like to see more of that.

But if there's an entire industry that doesn't have an excellent substitute for a function they use all the time, I agree that that's when Adobe should step in and provide it. I try to keep my blood pressure down, though. Real bugs raise it high enough. Lack of features and I will keep asking. I'll pester. I'll nag. I've even gotten a couple of things I asked for. It took a few years, but I got them.

But it's a business, not a friend.  Individuals in the business care, however, and while threatening to take your business elsewhere works, I think the caring individuals in the corporation probably don't like to hear they just don't care.

And since it's been so well explained to me why there's a need for this feature, you've now got my vote. For a corporation, it IS all a numbers game.<G>

"I'm curious as to why you all think Photoshop proper needs a tiling function so badly."

tl;dr: Photoshop is a key part to a multi billion dollar industry that wastes hours using the offset filter. Hours=Money. Multi Billion dollar industries like saving money.  

Speaking for the industry(video games) that I am a part of, Photoshop is a staple of the industry. The offset filter is probably the most commonly used tool when it comes to texture creation.

When creating a texture, we are now working with something called Physically Based Rendering or PBR for short. PBR Requires the use of multiple images to define things like color, Glossiness/Roughness and Metallic(These are the most common but there are more). Each of these images can require a large amount of layers(for organization). If one is to create a tileable PBR material, they could be spending countless hours using the offset filter on each one of the layers for each of the images. Here is an example of how the workflow goes: 

Create image in layer>Use offset>Use Clone/Healing>Use Offset>Next Layer

This may seem a small amount of work but now understand that this is one layer. There can be a massive amount of layers when working with PBR. Let's just say there are 5 layers each for Color, Metallic and Glossiness/Roughness. Also, let's imagine that the offset and Clone/healing process takes 5 minutes. 5 layers for 3 PBR textures(Color,Roughness,Metallic) at 5 minutes a piece is one hour fifteen minutes and that is not counting the time spent creating the image in each layer.   That's a sizeable chunk of work there for one texture.

Now here is how the workflow would look with a tiling/symmetry function:

Create image in layer> Next Layer.

Simple. No more offset, no more clone tool or healing.

Amazing how a few lines of code can speed things up.

The other option is for Adobe to completely ignore this and have a multi billion dollar industry find another(more efficient program) to do this with. These programs do exist and I see companies already switching over but I will not list them because that may be grounds to remove my post.

To the joined frustration and joy of digital painters/illustrators/texture/concept artists Photoshop is also the far and away industry leader for digital painting combined with quick and easy image adjustment. There are programs that are beginning to close the gap, but Photoshop is still the leader for that segment.

I agree that Adobe should capitalize on the program's strengths. I'm totally with you on Presets. However, I've watched requests for things like a better stroke smoothing engine, this tiling request and even a basic fix for the broken smudge tool that happened 3 or 4 versions back all get more or less panned or backlogged to the point that I really have no clue whether Adobe cares about them or not.

Case in point, the request to be able to stroke a bezier path manually that we both took time to weigh in on was summarily ignored. Lazy Nezumi has since built an implementation for it.

I love Adobe products, but I do feel like the way they are managing this segment of users sometimes sends the message that they don't care.

It's more valuable for the game and film industry which use PS heavily, and more valuable for digital texture painting.  It's very hard to convince someone to learn another application just to use one piece of it.  There is no argument against having this feature, it will speed up workflows 2x as fast.  And you cannot argue that there isn't a need for this, it's just facts man.

Adobe's Photoshop team has had a mind of their own for some time.  I doubt this feature will ever see the light of day - but just let us use this place for it's purpose, stop trying to rant about how this feature isn't worth their time because you waste everyone's time when you put your 2 cents in like that.

I'm curious as to why you all think Photoshop proper needs a tiling function so badly. You've pointed to Krita, which looks interesting. It's free, it's open source, and it has PSD support. You can create 1000 tiles, convert them to patterns in PS, and now you've still got to organize and preview your .pat files better than Photoshop currently can. If Photoshop concentrated first on making it easier to work with our presets/assets, gave us the ability to preview our preset asset files before we load them, gave us the ability to keep them organized in separate sets, that would be a boon to everyone.

I was very underwhelmed by the Oil Paint filter, but Adobe did respond by putting it back in. So they obviously care about what enough people say they want that if the resources aren't too great to provide it, they will.

Unfortunately for me, I think it's Adobe's primary function to provide us with the best interface for working with our assets and presets possible, and to provide us with editing features that no one else provides at both a reasonable price and Photoshop compatibility. However, those features take a LOT of resources and time, so to me, adding a better tiling feature or the Oil Paint filter, easy as it may be to do, only takes away resources from them improving the workspace and adding more functions like Shake Reduction, improving a lighting effects filter, making Content Aware more aware—functions that aren't readily available out there for a reasonable price.

A bit of a rant, I know, but there's no "No" vote button, and apparently it IS under consideration, so I'm hoping Adobe reads this message, too.

Another idea I've been waiting for that is similar to some of the other ideas below (but I didn't see it explicitly stated) is kind of a duel purpose option. Someone may have said it but it's worth restating I think. There should be a simple setting to chose that allows to set the entire document to "wrap around mode" which would allow you to both move an object past the edge and it comes out on the other side and/or corners (perfect for tiling) and also works for drawing tools like the brush, pencil, paths etc. That would be an extremely simple solution for making custom tiled images. Likewise being able to set a pattern overlay should have a simple button that sets it to match up at edges evenly, and it would lock the scale settings to preset intervals that would only include scales where they would match up at the edges.

I've been designing fabric prints for a client and I'm getting really tired of having to rely on multiple layers and guides to force this effect.

I do also love the idea of a mirrored drawing option, or at least one that actually works in real time other than the object oriented "work around" that's floating around online. It isn't very often that I need a perfectly symmetrical drawing but I would still consider it as being a necessary option for the kind of programs adobe is offering.

I am starting to wonder if the right people are seeing these threads.

I like using krita too. Im just so familiar with photoshop I just wish they put that function in. I just dont get it.