Help a newbie - optimizing workflow with brush settings

[lawrencehagm]

I spend most of my time adjusting the brush sizes for the brush tool and the eraser tool and would love to find a way to make this more efficient. I've put the brush settings to the right of my workspace and click on the brush setting directly instead of trying to adjust the size by value. As with most tools with photoshop it works ok but it's clunky and is constantly getting in the way. Firstly the brush settings panel takes up a huge amount of space when all I want is the ability to access 3 or more settings (5% of the space the panel takes up). I'd also like to be able to display the brush settings for the eraser tool along with the brush since I'm using the eraser and brush hand in hand. I'd also like to display this panel along with my custom swatches in the same tab. Currently I can only display one panel in each tab.  This all seems incredibly inefficient and there must be a better way. 

I'd like to just display the 3 eraser brush settings, the 3 brush tool brush settings and the 4 color swatches that I'm currenlty working with without all the other stuff in one panel that I can quickly click AND is always visible. 

Is there such a way?

Thank you.

[George_F]

Is it just the size of the brush you want good access to?  Which other settings do you change often.  There is a keyboard shortcut for brush size, and you can also right click + drag with the mouse to adjust brush size and hardness.

If you are the type who dabbles in programming, there are ways to make your own Photoshop plugin panel, but that may be more effort than you are looking to put in.

[lawrencehagm]

Brush size, eraser size,  brush color. These are the things I change the most often. 

[George_F]

Do keyboard shortcuts or Alt + right mouse click + drag work well for changing brush size?  Or are you still hoping for another solution?

This also works with many of the other tools with adjustable sizes like Eraser and Clome Stamp as well.

[lawrencehagm]

alt rmb click doesn't work for me. Thanks though.

[Bojan Živković]

Can you post some screenshot to illustrate your problem?

[lawrencehagm]

As you can see, half of my screen is covered with color and brush settings when I just need 5 colors and 2 brushes. Seems inefficient to me but being new to photohop I'm making some assumptions that aren't correct. The biggest one is I don't want to have to resize the brush and the eraser constantly I just want to save the size in the brush settings which doesn't seem to work. It boggles my mind how ineffiecient this workflow is. I guess I just need to get used to it.

[George_F]

Perhaps not exactly what you are looking for, but I work with multiple monitors and often put Photoshop panels on another monitor to free up space.  Not sure if that helps at all.

[PECourtejoie]

HEllo, maybe the Brusherator panel is what you need: https://kritskiy.gumroad.com/l/brusherator

[George_F]

This looks very interesting.  I'm excited to look more into it.

[mark@headTrix]

There are a few ways that you can work. First of all instead of dragging those panels down, when using the Brush tool OR the Eraser tool you can simple Right-Click wherever you are and Voila, the brushes panel will be there! 
Inside that panel you can also create Brush Presets. And while using Brush or Eraser at the top in the options area, there is also a little folder with a brush, where you can click to open up the Brush settings panel. 

If you learn about and use Masking, you can JUST use the brush to paint, add color, composite, and erase parts you dont need. In masking you paint with black and white, black hides, white reveals, so you use the same brush by toggling between foreground and background colors (x). 

What makes it even easier is pressing down Option + Control on a Mac (maybe alt+ control on PC?) and if I click and drag to the right I increase my brush size, and if I drag to the left I decrease my brush size, and if I scroll up and down I can increase and/or descrease the brush hardness.

And lastly the method I personally use the most is just tapping the bracket keys to the right of the "P" key on your keyboard, tap right bracket to increase the brush size and left bracket to decrease the brush size. I feel like I have to constantly change my brush size, making it bigger and smaller as I work. I also like to use the brush with airbrush checked, and a low flow so I can go over it again and again to slowly, gradually create a nice blend. 

Hope this helps!

Cheers!
mark

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, on Windows, the dynamic brush resizing shortcut it is ALT+Right-click and drag.

[mark@headTrix]

perfect! Thanks for adding that. Hoping these tips help!

best,

mark

[lawrencehagm]

Thanks for the suggestion. This would work well if I could save the brush size in the preset. Can't seem to get that to work.

[lawrencehagm]

I see now, I can save brush sive in the preset. Sorry I missed that. 

[mark@headTrix]

Yes, you can also just right-click as I mentioned above anytime you are using the brush or the eraser tools. Anywhere on the canvas if you right-click you will see all the brush options, and the many presets that already come packagaed with Photoshop. If the workspace gets too busy, you can easily configure the panels as you want or at anytime go to Window>Workspace to reset any workspace (puts all the panels back to original settting) or you can change workspaces to see if any of the others work better for you.

Hope that helps!
mark

[barbara_a]

Has anyone mentioned the bracket key shortcut?

Press the right straight bracket key to enlarge the brush or the left straight bracket key to decrease it. (to the right of the P key on the keyboard.)

[mark@headTrix]

Yep, that was written in my long winded reply!

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, did any of the suggestions here help you? Were you able to take a look a the panel suggested? 

[lawrencehagm]

Not exactly. I'm going to work with the tools a bit more. I took a look at the panel but don't understand how to install it so going to pass for now.

[GraphikJules]

.

To save space… instead of having 2 columns of panels as shown in your screenshot… combine them into 1 column. Add, delete, move panels as needed... save as workspace if you use this setup a lot.

If you just need certain colors and don’t want Swatches or Libraries panel open… create layer with colors as circles/some shape, then with brush tool selected, ALT Click on circles to switch colors., release and keep painting.

You can use a brush as an eraser to save going back and forth between brush and eraser tools. To temporarily turn a brush into an eraser (except mixer brushes)...

BEFORE CC 2020 v21.0 (Nov19 release) - change brush mode to clear

• in the toolbar, or
• SHIFT + ALT + R

AFTER CC 2020 v21.0 (Nov19 release) - use ‘before’ methods or… press/hold

• 'tilde' key on North American keyboards
• "<" key on QWERTZ keyboard for German version of Photoshop
• If anyone is using other keyboards/software versions, please add info in the comments