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Hi,
ever since Pshop 4.1 I have wanted a brush choice with a far greater spread of softness feather beyond the opaque dark centre., as if the hardness slider was twice as long.
Having just upgraded to 26.2 still we have the exact same limiting brush as 30 years ago.
Very dissapointing.
in 17.1.1. raw there is a brush with far greater soft area compared to centre dense area. Why cant we have that in photoshop ?
Why though in raw mode is the keyboard [ and ] keys control over brush size going from 2mm to 6mm in one click, no decent increments, unusable for painting into sharp corners. Even the slider for size goes 1 then 2 and a relatively massive difference in size.
Also the feather is back to front, in Pshop far left is soft, in raw converter far RIGHT is soft. Its called feather and in pshop hardness. Its as if raw converter and Pshop are designed by two totally separate organisations. No magic wand to help fill in drawn mask outlines, selections are not as channels work. zoom not possible when brush in use. Alt scroll is the way to scroll zoom but jumps to image centre.
I thought by now everything would be really useful and not clunky.
Merlin3
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You're right – the standard Photoshop approach for e.g. brushes existed long before the Camera Raw converter was developed (actually Lightroom's editing approach), and the interface was indeed designed by a different team, led by Andrei Herasimchuk. They were allowed to come up wiith new ideas for this application, even though it would break with Photoshop's (and even Adobe's) conventions.
Now, how to get more control over the brush ?
Maybe it helps to simply decrease the Brush tool's overall Opacity by using its slider or numerical keys from 1 to 0 (keys in compliance with setting a layer's opacity, when using the Move tool).
But if you really need an opaque center with a different 'fall-off' grade, you could consider creating your own brush shapes. Create a circular black to white blob, or any other cloud, spatter, or textural drawing. This image will control the brush density ranging from 100 to 0%. Its size depends on the largest size and smoothness you need. Maybe 200 x 200 pixels is already enough. Select it with the marquee and use Edit – Define Brush to create a custom brush out of it. You can see it appearung in the Brushes window.
Take a look at the very first settings category on the left side in the Brush Settings window, to decrease the Spacing, if the brush seems to be staggering a bit.
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I've tried creating super-soft brush presets in the past, and they do not work as well us I'd hoped. For a start, we do not have the option to adjust hardness. You have to use them as is, but they do work if you are OK with that. You need to allow lots of space when defining the preset, or you get the wierd cursor effect below.
I wonder if we should move this to Ideas? Any improvements to the brush engine will get my vote.
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Reading the OP again, I am wondering how @Merlin3 intends using this proposed soft brush? If you use a soft in a layer mask and feather the mask, you get a softer effect. Hmmm... You would not have a fully opaque core doing this.
If you define a brush from a black to white radial gradient, it does appear to be progressive .
This is the gradient
And this is the brush preset made from that gradient. Not an exact match — I used guides to mark the positions — but PD close, and it is still progressive with close to fully opaque centre and transparent edge.
If @Merlin3 tells us more about how he'd like to use his proposed preset, I wonder if we can come up with some sort of workaround.