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Known Participant
December 16, 2025
Question

How to set default gradient to foreground to background always? And black to white for masks?

  • December 16, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 217 views

My question's exactly as the subject - I'd like to be able to have fore to back as a default gradient and black to white as a default when masking, it used to work that way but now I can never be sure what gradient and why appears when I switch to gradient tool. Resetting tool does not really help - meaning it helps sometimes and I have to do it either every time I start the program or even for a new document, it's hindering and extremely inocvenient 😞

1 reply

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 16, 2025

All these settings are sticky, last setting is remembered. If you think about it, that is really the only way to do it, or there would be a flood of complaints.

 

What you need to do is use the keyboard shortcuts. D resets the swatches to default, which is black foreground and white background. X swaps them.

 

 

7x8Author
Known Participant
December 16, 2025

let me rephrase the question then - how do I make those settings sticky? In my case they aren't and tool reset behavior is erratic.

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 16, 2025

The only answer I can think of is a permissions issue in your Mac user account. Photoshop needs to both write and read these settings. It's sticky here, even over a restart of the application.