Description: Photoshop will currently draw a straight line if you click in one place and then hold the Shift key and click in another location. However, if you change the brush size or color after clicking in the first place, it forgets that location. You then have to go back, click there again, and then Shift-click in the new location.
I want Photoshop to never forget the first clicked location while the current tool is active, except when clicking without Shift, or choosing Undo, or maybe a few other cases.
Why it’s valuable to me: I do a lot of precise masking around architectural subjects using the Brush or Pencil tools. This involves drawing many straight lines. Often, when I get to the other end of the intended line, I realize that the brush size needs to be tweaked slightly in order to do what I want. (It's usually when masking a thin object in front of a window view, such as a pane divider or blind tilt rod.) In Capture One, I just change the brush size on the fly and then Shift-click in the final location. In Photoshop, I have to resize the brush, click again in the first location, and then click in the second location. Because these clicks have to be precise, it does take a few seconds each time, which add up to a fair bit of time in some cases.
This also applies to color changes, which include swapping foreground and background colors. In my case, I often swap between white and black while editing masks. This also resets the initial click location, when in my opinion it shouldn't.
I previously posted this as a bug report, and Chad Rolfs said:
“We would also need to specify what happens to that line if this worked; would it be a gradient from foreground to background of that straight line or just a solid line using the current foreground color? Should there be options to specify what happens and if so, where do those options live and what's the UI/UX?”
I'm proposing that Photoshop draw a solid line, as normal, from the previously clicked location to the Shift-clicked location, using the new brush size and color (this is what Capture One does with brush size changes; it used to actually taper from the old size to the new size, but doesn't anymore). A gradient would not be good in my case. I suppose it will have to draw over the top of the previous line end (as usual). If someone doesn't like the result, they can Undo and proceed as usual. Maybe Undo should also reset the clicked location.
As for UI/UX, I suppose it could go in the Tools preferences pane. Something like “Reset Constrained Draw when Changing Brush Size or Color,” enabled by default. I assume that very few users will even notice if the new behavior became default, but maybe someone has an action that would be screwed up by the change—hence the the reason to make it an option.
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