Fixed: Pixels option is greyed out for Line tool Photoshop 22.0

[seanp99402617]

I'm liking most of today's update for PShop, thanks Adobe. 

But, I went to use the Line Tool (part of the Shape Tools) and the option to draw with pixels is grayed out. I can draw lines with paths and as a shape, but no longer with pixels. The pixels option is available for all the other shapes (square, ellipse, the new triangle, polygon, custom shapes, etc.), so I don't know why it wouldn't work for lines. 

Does anyone know what happened? 

{Moderator Note: PS-57177}

[JJMack]

They are line tool layers. It would be different story if the line tool could make line shape  pattern fill, gradient fill, and color fill shape layers.  The tool has a problem besides the pixel option.

[SpoonNZ]

This creates a secondary issue too.

I use the Shift-U shortcut to rotate through Rectangle->Rounded Rectangle->...->Line->Shape->Rectangle etc.

If I'm drawing a Rounded Rectangle (in Pixels mode), then want to draw a Rectangle I'll Shift-U U U U U U until I get there. Thanks to this amazing new feature, Photoshop now puts me into Shape mode as it goes past the Line tool, so my workflow is now "Shift- U U U U U U U, move hand to mouse, navigate to tiny little dropdown up the corner of the screen, choose Pixels, continue as before". 

It's pretty impressive to add a new "feature" that not only takes away something that a heap of people use, but also screws with people who don't even use that tool...

[JJMack]

Adobe added a Trangle shape toot to the Shift+U shortcuts

[KazVorpal]

> Adobe added a Trangle shape toot to the Shift+U shortcuts

Oh, good, because we sometimes need triangles, and the polygon tool didn't already exist!

As another little "eff you" to the userbase, notice that we don't have any way to edit these posts after we make them? Any decent community board does, of course. But this isn't one of those. Or am I missing how to do it? The little "...More" link is empty. Just opens a blank line, as if someone started building a context menu and then forgot to write the control to populate it.

[bugtrot]

Chiming in with another voice here against this crap decision.
I work strictly in pixel/raster for web and HUD work within a niche workflow need. This is a needless complication into my work. Seriously adobe, you need to reverse this. This was a seriously DUMB decision.

[Untitled Image]

This is such a silly thing to omit. Why not just have stroke, shape AND pixels (like it always was), why get rid of the pixel option? Now its taking me 4 times as long to do some quick roughs. I never used stroke or shape for lines. Just pixels so I could make some quick guides for paintings. What were they thinking?? 

[michael_kay_]

Well, that's just the problem - they weren't thinking.  This clearly illustrates the disconnect between Adobe's high-and-mighty developers sitting in their cubicles, and its user base.  There is no dialogue, no feedback.  They think they know better than the millions of users they serve. They publish random upgrades (or, in this case, downgrade), force it upon us through their subscription model, and that's basically it - doors closed.  There is no discussion, feedback, none of the sort.  Even the process of reporting a bug is a maze of links, one going to another, to another, and in the end you end up in the user forum.  Nothing says that a company doesn't give 2 cents about its users than this type of delegative customer support.  Go and get lost in our user forums.  We know best.  Here is the latest version, auto-update, and be ready to have your credit card billed for another year of subscription.  

[KazVorpal]

I believe it's part of Adobe's simplistic obsession with vector drawing, which they imagine to be superior to raster art. They think forcing us to use the more scalable vector format is for our own good.

They're wrong, but insulated from the real world, therefore clueless about their ignorance. 

They don't comprehend how secondary old-fashioned print media has become in the modern graphic art/design world.

Remember that, at one time desktop publishing was really important. Pamphlets, posters, cards, magazine ads, fonts, furniture, that sort of thing was almost ALL of graphic design. That stuff was simply referred to as "design". As if the rest didn't even count. And in that kind of print media, the scalability of vector art was really important. 

But now the world has moved on. I'm a professional graphic artist/designer, for example and yet only a fraction of what I do is in that old-fashioned print format. The rest is for the net, or video, or something else where scalability is either secondary or irrelevant.

But they haven't learned. And seem incapable of learning. Ivory tower ignoramuses. Ignoramae. 

[Anti-Alias]

The line tool on pixel mode is absolutely important to my line of work. I am a jewelry retoucher and use the line tool on pixels mode for retouching thin reflections and cleaning up straight edges on metals and gems. This is a very bad decision to omit something like this all of a sudden when it's been part of my workflow for years.

I push pixels around all day, not vector shapes. I can make similar straight lines with brush + shift, but the line tool is the best and more accurate for some things.

Adobe, what are you doing? This is no feature to me. Are you going to one day remove the brush tool?

[AtDetroit]

HELLO?  ADOBE?  ANYBODY HOME? 

[[[crickets]]]

[[[crickets]]]

Can't you see from the above how many frustrating wasted hours you have created with this daft move?

Please... restore the ability for us snap out pixelated lines.

[Anti-Alias]

I see there is a response in the feedback forum. Looks like they might bring it back, but not for a while. The Adobe rep answered today that we may consider rolling back the update if we need the line tool that much. To me, it seems that they aren't staying true to the core of the program, a photo shop. I use it to edit photos, not vectors. I know lots of people are using it for vector things, but why eliminate core functionality that deals with pixels for those of us who retouch photos or other non-vector work. Is it because people don't like Illustrator? lol

Here's the link:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/photoshop/photoshop-220-where-is-line-weightwidth-and-p...

[Bobby0D44]

The tool that broke the camels back.....   Such a simple thing people use EVERYWHERE and they just decide, oh well, they don't need it, it does all thi stuff now, see.  NO.  We need SIMPLE TOOLS. Makes sraight pixel lines already rasterized and imbded into the layer, the rest of the tool could go way

What Adobe should do is bundle Photoshop & Illustrator in a package for 20 bucks a month instead of trying to shove Illustrator style tools into Photoshop but then they can't get the 50 bucks a month out of you for all the other bloat ware you don't need.  

And sadly this is the kind of crap Adobe is working on when they SHOULD be doing things like adding a perspective grid tool like Procreate has on ipad to photoshop.  A feature that's LONG over due, yet we get tools taken away.  smh.  

[AtDetroit]

The best work around I have found is to use the pen tool, draw dot to dot, drag the dots about, then stroke the vectors with the brush or pencil tool.  Doesn't solve the problem for the quick and hand creation of pixelated arrows, however, but does eliminate the new layer creation. 

[Anti-Alias]

AtDetroit, negative. I use the pixels tool quickly to retouch lines, edges, facets, in metals and gems in jewelry. It's a simple quick thing I do. There is a time for using that kind of path functionality, that you mentioned, in my retouching as well, but the line tool in pixels mode is best and fastest for some things. My work requires more speed. So I can use the brush + shift for now, which is not ideal for some things, or I might just roll back one version till they bring it back.

[Anti-Alias]

Bobby0D44 You're so right. We do need the simple tools that were in the foundation of the software. It's become not just a photo shop, but something else. The software is so bloated. Lately, with Photoshop it's been let down after let down. Taking things away, hearing people complain, then adding it back as "Legacy" or not fixing glitches on time. I'd rather they fix the glitches, and leave old tools alone, than add "new features".

It's so obnoxious that Adobe doesn't have some kind of system to ask users what they need to keep as is, what they would like to see in the future. With subscriptions they have all our emails, it could be as simple as sending out a poll (scale of 1-10 how likely...), or mini questionaire.

Adobe: "We are determining eliminating the pixels functionality of the line tool. Would anyone miss it?"

Community: "DON'T DO IT!"

[JemShaw]

Can I add my voice to the dissatisfaction with "legacy" add-backs? We now have legacy gradients and shapes, both of which now take far longer to pick up the tools we use every day. Then we have the excellent Save for Web tool that's unnecessarily marked "Legacy". Sure, moving it to Export and labelling it "Legacy" doesn't impact workflow, but I worry that this heralds its future deprecation. It's not Legacy, it's a vital component that aids efficient optimisation for web graphics - for which we then work around the shambles you've made of the once-superb DreamWeaver.

[KazVorpal]

Yes, I still use the "Legacy" web save, because with typical corporate arrogance they excluded some functionality from the "Export" feature. For example, the only meta data option is Copyright and Contact Data. What would make them think that I shouldn't be allowed to save all meta data in my image? I often want it to be searchable, for myself or a client. Many image upload websites use meta tags for searches, and so do search engines like Google.

I suppose, once again, that they're blindered by outdated DTP ideas that really don't matter for the vast majority of PS users, including the professional ones.

[Anti-Alias]

JemShaw With so many Legacy options, the next Photoshop version should be called "Legacy Photoshop" 😂 

Or how about in the new version, have a big checkbox that says "Legacy Everything" and leave it at that. I already go around checking all the legacy buttons, too, they may as well include a global button for it all.

[KazVorpal]

The work I'm doing right now reminded me of your comment. I need to make the corner of a white-painted room more obvious, after having reconstructed it by removing objects therein. Doing it as a shape that will only be stroked after I commit, and that will have to be rasterized afterward for further blending, is much slower and less accurate.

Actually, since I wrote that line I went back and did the same change in a completely different way, slower and more troublesome. This is not acceptable.

[Anti-Alias]

KazVorpal I tried to use the new line tool, too, and it was such a failure. The amount of steps you have to do to make a straight line with the new tool then rasterize, is such a long process when you have to do multiple little lines of varying thicknesses. And you can't resize the thickness with the shortcut key either?! I'm guessing you can somehow apply a shortcut key to that but I'm not even going to research that, I shouldn't have to spend so much time figuring out how to make a line work in Photoshop.

On top of everything it keeps creating new layers, even though the employee at the Ps feedback forum was like you can just hold down the shift key and it doesn't create a layer. Buddy, it either makes 45º angles that way, or shift + release only works to create other degrees IF you are not creating a line from the same point of origin or it picks up to edit a point from the previous line. Or you have to deselect the current line and try to hold shift but then it makes a new layer again.

As a retoucher, I'm trying to look at what I'm doing but that visible path is in the way. Ugh. Tedius. I don't think I've ever been this mad with the Ps team and I've been really disappointed by them before, there've been so many annoyances with them through the years, but this one for some reason wins all.

[rpietragalla]

Can you, please, consider adding this option BACK? 

It's one of the most useful uses of this tool, quick sketching straight lines during perspective measurements. It is way worse to make quick checks if, everytime you use, it create a new shape layer or having a properties dialog openning. 

I understand that having more control with the line tools has its advantages, but if I had to choose, one or another, i would go back right away. 

[Anti-Alias]

rpietragalla  Make sure to write this in the feedback forum as well, which seems to count more:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/photoshop/photoshop-220-where-is-line-weightwidth-and-p...

[Ciellchan]

This keeps being marked as "Solved" when it is not. Unbelievable

May people have stated that the line is needed for their workflows and all the answers we are getting from Adobe are extremely tone deaf.
Quoting here@CMJRoss_CRE " Photoshop's old lines were problematic to move around onscreen after you drew them, and the weight control was not interactive (after you drew the line, changing the value would not affect the line, but would control how the NEXT line would be drawn)".  

We really don't care about weight control, we don't need them to be interactive, no one want to change the value after the line is created. All we need are straight lines. Hear the people that actually use the software instead of pushing changes into us that we are not needing and is ruining our workflows, not improving them.
It's insulting to read time and time again why these changes are great while we are telling you this is affecting our work. 

If this is not fixed I'm moving to Clip Studio Paint. I can't stand a company that does not hear their users and push changes this way.

[seanp99402617]

Clip Studio Paint is pretty good! I've been using it since the summer and it has its advantages. 

The biggest is they seem to listen to their user base. 

[KazVorpal]

The closest I know of to Photoshop is GIMP. I've used it here and there over the years, and it can do everything that Photoshop does, but without some of the fancy automation that comprises most of Photoshop's new features for the last decade or two. So it can do everything, but sometimes you have to do it the way we did in Photoshop in the late nineties. Oh, and it does have a ton of plugins that probably take up that slack,  but I've never used it enough to get into those.

Mostly I've used GIMP when actually working on-site somewhere that didn't have Photoshop. But mostly I insist on working off-site (for the last fifteen years), ergo have my own PS.