Soft brush in photoshop not working properly

[margaretw65488533]

I have recently begun to have an issue with my soft brush in Photoshop. When masking, it shows jagged edges like torn paper. When used as a brush, it looks like it has a dark, bleeding center, instead of a nice fuzzy ball or line, both with my mouse and my wacom stylus. I have tried resetting the brushes, resetting my preferences, and tweaking Nvidia. I have updated Windows (10), Geforce and photoshop. This is happening in 24 and in Beta. This has never happened before. No, I am not accidently using the pencil tool.  I can't find anything on the internet to help. Can you put your big brains to work to help me figure this out, please? I'm quite frustrated. I can share a psd file, if you need it.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Please post screenshots with a white background. 

Have you tried working in 16bit? 

[davescm]

Artifacts displayed against the transparency grid are not new and do not affect the image itself. Just put a temporary plain layer underneath and you will see the real brush softness. 

As c.pfaffenbichler suggests, working in 16 bit will reduce stepping but does not resolve that display only artifact with the transparency grid.

Dave

[D Fosse]

Against a background, this is controlled by the Blend Gamma setting in Color Settings. The default setting is unchecked, in which case it's blended in the document color space.

Blend gamma is the the "transparency curve" from fully opaque to fully transparent, similar to a tone curve.

Without a background, there's nothing to blend to, so I don't know what happens there. Seems to be similar to 1.00.

All that said, the extreme black clipping evident in your screenshot indicates a broken/defective monitor profile.