Clone Stamp brush preset glitches to Brush Tool

[Peter James Zielinski]

Hi there,

I'm having an issue where whenever I go to my Brush Presets window, I will click on a saved Clone Stamp preset and it will force itself on to a Brush preset instead. No matter how many times I click on the Clone Stamp prest, it will revert to the brush. I have to then choose the Clone preset I wanted, let it force itself back to the Brush tool, leave the Brush Presets, and hit "S" to go back to the Clone Stamp. Please see attached video.

This issue is present in both Photoshop 26.4.1 and Photoshop Beta 26.5

Yes, "Include size" and "Include tool" were checked when creating the Clone all presets.

What I have tried thus far:

Resetting both the Brush tool and Clone Stamp.

Resetting Preferences

Reinstalling Saved Preferences
Deleted both version of Photoshop and reinstalled them.

Downloaded earlier versions of Photoshop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZndz0METAY

If anyone has any insight, it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[jane-e]

@Peter James Zielinski 

Note the small icons, and the upper right of each brush. It appears that the first four brushes in your screenshot are assigned to the Clone tool and the remainder are assigned to the Brush tool.

You have two choices:

• Hold down Ctrl+Alt (Cmd+Opt on Mac) to load a brush without its tool preset.
• Duplicate the brush and either assign a different tool or leave that box blank so it works with any tool.

Jane

[Peter James Zielinski]

Hi @jane-e , thanks so much for replying.

That is correct and by design. The 4 brushes on the left are Clone Stamp tool presets with specific sizes, shapes, opacities and flows.  The same goes for the 5 brushes on the right. 

My workflow, as I've had it for years now, was to press a button on my pen (which is a right click to bring up the Brush Preset menu) and be able to quickly switch between different specifically created clone stamps and brushes without having to go back and change any settings manually.   Not having the specifc clone stamp attributes right as I need it slows the process down considerably.

I realize this might sound excessive but I retouch images for large live events (e.g. the Oscars last night). The turnaround time to retouch an entire image will sometimes range from 3 to 5 minutes total before it gets published so shaving off every second in the workflow counts.  If you think of anything else, please let me know...and thank you again!

[jane-e]

Hi @Peter James Zielinski 

I've watched your video a half that dozen times — it moves very fast! What I see is you clicking on various presets but I don't see you using one of the brushes or showing us the settings for any brush. 

To clarify what I think you are saying:

You have defined each of these brushes yourself. When you click on a specific brush (such as the second on in your screenshot), it should be assigned to the clone tool, should be 70 px soft, plus some other settings we can't see, but it fails to do that. Is that your issue or is it something else?

You have a very cool, albeit stressful, job!

Jane

[Peter James Zielinski]

Oh @jane-e I apologize!   I forget muscle memory makes me go a bit too fast. Yes, please let me explain.

So, for example I have specific Clone Stamp presets  in this order:
- "Hard Round" 70px - Hardness 100% - Opacity 100% - Flow 100%
- "Soft Round" 70px - Hardness 0% - Opacity 100% - Flow 100%
- "Softer Build Up" 70px - Hardness 0% - Opacity 100% - Flow 10%
-  "Soft Chaos" 160px - Hardness 30% - Opacity 100% - Flow 25%

The brushes are a mirror image of these.  That way instead of hitting keyboard shortcuts to bring up the clone stamp/brush tools and number keys+shift/alt to change the flow and opacity and manually clicking and dragging on the hardness slider.....I can just right click my pen, click the exact tool and keep painting on my tablet.

The problem I'm having is ...if i click on any tool presets that are NOT the brush tool...Photoshop will automatically force itself back to a Brush Tool preset....stopping me from choosing my desired Clone Stamp with saved settings.  I tried to create new brush presets with the Blur Tool, History Brush, etc besides recreating the Clone Stamp presets from scratch... I've tried everything from full removing all Adobe products from my machine starting fresh, resetting tools, etc etc.  Nothing seems to work.  Please let me know if that all makes sense.

Definitely a cool/stressful job. Any repetative tasks I have mapped to my tablet's pen buttons, three devices called Stream Decks where I can assign hundreds of actions / keyboard shortcuts / scripts at a press of a button and even 2 USB foot pedals so I can Save with my left foot and open/run a file prep action with my right foot without moving my fingers from the keyboard/tablet.  I realize that sounds a little crazy but the general sentiment in the Entertainment industry is "we needed it 3 hours ago."  🙂

(there's most of my Stream Deck buttons, though they have nested folders so you can make as many shortcuts as you want.  It was taking me 7 taps to go back a few menus tochange Spotify playlists/podcasts so I mapped the buttons to the smaller deck at the bottom to be able to change them with my pinky without leaving all the Photoshop buttons above.)