My pencil is hosed—1px size is taking up 4px no matter what I do.

[Boodlums _]

My pencil is hosed—1px is taking up 4px no matter what I do. Issue followed me over an OS update and Ps update. At first it was L-shaped, then I noticed it had an angle of 74°, so I edited the angle and it became a 2x2 square. If it's larger size, then it's an amorphous blob shape, yet everything in the Photoshop UI still tells me it's a 1px pencil.

What went wrong? Can it be fixed without losing my entire customized workspace?

I use the pencil a lot, and so now I'm reduced to selecting a single pixel with the marquee and moving it around the screen, which is a terribly inefficient way to paint.

I would have taken a screenshot but my Mac refuses to record the mouse pointer so you'll have to take my word that 1px takes up 4px.

[Jeff Arola]

Does the pencil tool actually paint a 4 px size or the cursor is just bigger than the actual area that is painted?

In Preview if you go to File>Take Screenshot that will show the cursor.

[Boodlums _]

It was PAINTING 4px! Nothing was the right size. It acted like it was on drugs, a total mess.

I just went through all the other brushes and found a 1px hard mechanical pencil, and that's working normally for me. I can't seem to delete the, idk what to call them, "recent" brushes? Hopefully this new pencil won't get hosed like the previous pencil.

[Boodlums _]

It's the "single pixel" pencil that's hosed. So the "hard mechanical pencil" is my workaround for now, but I still wonder why the single pixel pencil became a complete mess.

[Jeff Arola]

You can try resetting the Pencil Tool by right clicking on the Pencil icon, then clicking Reset Tool

[Boodlums _]

That reset didn't help; I even tried going into the Preferences > Adobe Photoshop 2024 Settings folder and deleting the Brushes.psp file, but the "single pixel" is still a 37px blotch:

[Jeff Arola]

You can reset the Photoshop preferences and save your custom workspace before the reset by following the

Backup preferences on this page

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html

Then after the reset copy or move any custom workspaces from the

Adobe Photoshop 2024 Settings/WorkSpaces in the backup on your desktop to

/Users/YourName/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop 2024 Settings/WorkSpaces

[Boodlums _]

I backed up my workspace, took screenshots of my preferences (that's a lot o' panes), and reset preferences.

However, that had absolutely no effect on the brushes.
How do I vanquish the 37px blotch and restore the original "single pixel" pencil to normal functioning?

[Jeff Arola]

You might have to resort a more complete reset of the Photoshop preferences by deleting the whole

Adobe Photoshop 2024 Settings folder in /Users/YourName/Library/Preferences

[Boodlums _]

OK, that worked! I've added back in my swatches and patterns, but it looks like my MRU fonts are nowhere to be found. Oh well, at least I've got things to 90–95% of where they were. Thank you!