Brush Opacity and Flow not Resetting

[Abi P.]

Recently I have been having a peculiar issue with some Photoshop brushes with the Opacity and Flow settings not reverting to their original levels when changing between brushes. While this isn't a major issue, it is incredibly frustrating!

Example: I'm using a hard brush to do some outlining, both opacity and flow are at 100%. I change to another brush, an imported one, where the flow and opacity are at 25% and the airbrush-style is on. But when I go back to the hard brush, the airbrush-style is the only setting that changes, the opacity and flow don't revert to 100%.

This seemed to only be an issue when using the General Brushes under the PS default brush set, with all the brushes being stuck at 100% despite the preset being low opacity/flow.

I have tried a number of things to solve this issue, but as of yet, none of them have worked:

• Removing all imported brushes and appending default brushes (the General Brushes all remain at 100% Opactiy/Flow)
• Resetting all locked Settings under Brush Settings (which did remove an error with the Pen Pressure, but the Opacity/Flow issue remains)
• Duplicating and remaking the General Brushes I use the most as new brushes - these brushes keep their Opacity and Flow settings when I switch between brushes, but other brushes now refuse to revert where they had done so before
• Resetting Photoshop preferences

I am using Photoshop 2020 on a macOS High Sierra (version 10.13.6) and am unable to update my version of Photoshop due to incompatability. I hope I have made things clear here, and I hope someone might be able to help! Thanks!

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Did you check »Include Tool Settings« when creating the affected Brushes? 

[Abi P.]

Yep - was that right to do? 

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Then the Opacity should be stored in the Brush Setting. 

The Opacity and Flow you want to reinstate are the ones stored in the Brush, not ones you just set on the fly, right? 

Could you please post screenshots with the pertinent Panels (Toolbar, Layers, Brush Settings, Options Bar, …) visible? 

[Abi P.]

Yep, that's exactly it. Here are a couple of screenshots - one with the brush panel open and one without. I believe these are the panels you want to see?

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Your screenshots seems to indicate that those brushes were created WITHOUT »Include Tool Settings«. 

[Abi P.]

Sorry, I think I misled you with an earlier reply. These brushes I am having issues with are ones I didn't make. These are the default brushes from Photoshop. I have since duplicated them with the Include Tool Settings, but I feel like I shouldn't have had to do that. I would often use these same brushes as erasers, but since remaking them with the tool settings, they are only usable as Brushes (which I understand is because of creating with Including the Tool Settings which were set to Brush).

[c.pfaffenbichler]

If I recall correctly you can use any Brush from the Brushes Panel with other Brush Tools (Clone Stamp, Eraser, …) by cmd-alt-clicking instead of clicking it in the Brushes Panel. 

[Abi P.]

While I haven't exactly "solved" the issue, for other reasons I ended up getting a new computer that can run the most recent version of Photoshop so this issue is no longer a concern. Thank you so much for your efforts to help in this though! It has been greatly appreciated.