MShaw-Hello. I got far enough with the current tool and brush features to get the arrangement I want eventually. It wasn't easy, and was made more cumbersome by the distinction between Tool Presets and Brush Presets. It isn't very clear, and none of the tutorials I watched explicated it. Supposedly, the user can establish a tool preset that works for both brushes and other tools. But there are different ranges of variability between, say, brushes and the blur-sharpen-smudge tools. The only settings that work for more than one tool are size and edge-type (hard edge v. airbrush). Everything else-opacity, flow, smoothing, strength, range, exposure, tolerance, etc., is tool-specific. Even among tools with the same set of options, I had to create a set of options for each tool.
So, of necessity, I wind up with the same arrangement I had before: One panel showing the choices for size and edge, which works for all the brushes and tools, paired with a brush opacity series, and one panel for all the other variable editing tools: eraser, blur-sharpen-smudge, and clone stamp, each of which needs its own set of variables, aka current tool presets. There may be a way of doing this easier in CC 2018, but I've spent enough time on it and there's still work to do, and for the life of me I can't see what the "better way" might be from the tutorials. They are keeping the secrets.
In case it’s not clear, the view settings can be modified from the panel flyout menu or with the Brush Picker (option bar popup and context menu) via the gear icon. You can set whether you want the Tip (thumbnail) name and Stroke individually. The slider at the bottom of the panel changes the size of the selected items. Bry default we enable the Show additional Preset info option so that yo will have the Tool and color chip showing on the brush if there is Tool info included in the brush preset.
Yes, the Brushes panel now allows presets which include tool info, but you can still save and utilize brushes that are tool agnostic. It sounds like your particular workflow was to select a Tool Preset and then select a different Brush from the Brush Presets panel. This can still be done, and if you have presets without tool information the tool will not switch.
If you need to extract a tool agnostic brush from a Tool Preset, after selecting the tool create a new brush from either Brush panel and deselect Include Tool Settings.
If you are looking for the previous default Brushes, or the previous painting tool presets they can be loaded as Brush presets now from the panel flyout menu as well (Legacy Brushes and Converted Legacy Tool Presets)
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