P: Image Hose - Extend Clone Stamp tool

[tomaugerdotcom]

Nearly all other serious digital paint programs have some kind of randomized image "stamp" feature (Painter calls it Image Hose). This is seriously lacking in Photoshop. I can see a very sooth implementation by extending the Clone Stamp tool. You already have multiple clone sources - in its simplest implementation, it should be fairly straightforward to allow the user to define multiple clone sources and then randomize which one is being used each time the brush is "stamped" onto the layer. Add angle and size jitter and other randomization features like we find in the brushes palette and we're off to the races.

A better user experience would be to define "stamp sets". This would require a new palette which would open into a kind of "tree view". For each Stamp Set you could add multiple pixel-based images, similar to the way you define brush presets. Their thumbnails would then be visible, indented under the Stamp Set in the "tree view".

When a particular Stamp Set is selected, you have your jitter controls and other behavioural controls which get saved with that stamp set. Stamp sets can be saved like Brushes and other Preset Manager items. You could even offer a nice automation tool for importing a sequence of PSDs into a single stamp set.

You could extend this even further by exposing the same Layer Effects to your Stamp Sets. Unlike a layer effect, which applies, for example, a Drop Shadow to all the pixels of the layer at once; the Stamp Set effects would apply the effect(s) to each instance of a stamp. As an example, the difference would be that if you apply a drop shadow to your Stamp Set, if you stamped one item over top of another, its drop shadow would overlap the previous item, whereas if you just applied the Drop Shadow to the entire layer, there would be no "depth" between two "stamp" instances on the same layer.

Note that I'm not suggesting that each instance of a stamp would be an editable object or a smart object instance. Just like when you use the Brush tool, the results are "merged" into the active layer's pixels more-or-less instantly (or at least, once the mouse button is released to terminate the brush stroke).

[Brett N]

Sounds kinda like Content-Aware Fill with some manual controls...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Um, no. Brett - go take a look at Painter or PaintShopPro.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Brett - go take a look at Painter or PaintShopPro.

[tomaugerdotcom]

brett@future, no, I don't think the functionality I'm describing maps to the Content Aware suite. I think it fits squarely under either Clone Stamp, or the Brush tool.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Again, no. Please take a look at the functionality he described in Painter or PaintShopPro.

[tomaugerdotcom]

It's not even close to Content Aware fill. They have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. Please re-read my (rather detailed) post and let me know how you see this mapping to the content aware suite.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Content aware is only based on the information already available in an image. An image hose is more like.... differen't versions of say a leaf sprayed onto a canvas with a specific layer affect applied as well. In Painter there was a default dropshadow and bevel/emboss effect I believe you could adjust a bit. Hoses are created with a series of frames in which are placed the hose images. As these are sprayed, the layer like effects are applied to each image as it is applied. You can have sharp cut out or faded edge images in each frame, denoted using an alpha layer mask for each frame. This is nothing like Content Aware fills like using the patching/mending tools in photoshop.

I agree with Tom, it is a long time coming in Photoshop. Didn't PsP have an image hose function?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Here are some examples of image hose:
http://www.digitalimagemagazine.com/b...

Ad for DuPont - http://www.simontuckett.com/_Gotm/Got...

[tomaugerdotcom]

Hey thanks for taking up the torch. I seriously doubt anyone from Adobe who has influence over the Photoshop product roadmap actually reads these posts, but it's nice to know that at least one other user is familiar with the concept.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Well, if I’m not mistaken (one of) the purpose(s) of this Forum is evaluating customer opinions – while maintaing the site may not incur a lot of costs setting it up just to ignore it might take Dilbert’s-pointy-haired-boss’-levels of mis-management.

Furthermore at least one frequent contributor from Adobe has their name featured on the Photoshop splash screen and other Adobe employees who contribute on this Forum seem to be listed further along in the credits, so I think Feature Requests on this Forum may not be wholly useless.

Naturally I have no idea (if and) how the information gathered here is utilized in Adobe’s development process/decisions in the end.

[tomaugerdotcom]

Well, that's encouraging at any rate. Though to your Dilbert boss comment, one conceivable reason Adobe might put these forums up and then not really use them is that the very act of putting up a forum is to keep users occupied and engaged. By giving the sense that there's a community and active interest from the manufacturer in that community, you are providing an area for users to vent, to gripe or to make suggestions. You don't have to do a single thing other than put the site up, and you have already achieved your marketing objectives. Customer perceived satisfaction has gone up by 2 or 3%, and you've just made a few more hundred million.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Considering the time and effort Adobe employees invest in this and the u2u-Fora I would hope your theory does not apply here.
But whatever they take away from these Fora and however they may try to incorporate users’ input the final decisions about the allocation of resources and release dates will probably be subject to considerations that might seem peculiar to us.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

This subject of Image Hose has been a peeve of mine since I first saw it in Painter, then Paint Shop Pro, and Gimp (opensource). I was fully expecting to see it show up in my favorite, Photoshop. Adobe still hasn't added this super feature. Along with them dumping the Acrobat suite recently and distiller a few years ago...where it was once included in the Master Collection. Even add it as a filter widget would be workable if they didn't want to add it to the cloning tool set.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Full color picture brush support that enables scattering of several pictures in the style of Paint Shop Pro's picture tube tool.
Together with the current features of the photoshop brush engine this could be a really powerful tool for painting vegetation for example. A single one color brush only goes so far, regardless of all the currently available brush dynamics.

[tomaugerdotcom]

Right on - that's exactly what I'm talking about (and precisely the application I had in mind). As far as speedpainting techniques, image hose is a powerful tool like no other.

And believe me, I've tried to replicate this behaviour using scripting and it's not possible unfortunately. Needs to be coded into the app, or via a plugin.

[Lomacar]

+1 !!!!!

This is a no-brainer for greatly increasing the power of Photoshop. Just think of all the brush collections that could be designed for this. Sure you can use Painter or Gimp but we want it in Photoshop where all our other stuff is and where there is already a wealth of brushes and patterns and so on available online. And while they are at it they should provide some actual good and useful patterns, shapes, styles etc. in PS and eliminate the crap.

[Lomacar]

It shouldn't be an extension to the clone tool. Basically you just need to add two new capabilities to the existing brush tool: the ability to use a collection of "brush tip shapes" on one brush and those "shapes" should actually be allowed to be full color images with transparency. As long as there are a few options on how the brush tips are selected (random, sequential, pressure...) that should be everything you need.

Another cool addition would be a tube brush like Painter has that stretches an image along a stroke, but I don't think that is as important.

[tomaugerdotcom]

@iomacar right on, thanks for the support. Make sure you promote this thread to your social network! Maybe something will eventually get done.

I tend to agree with you that it could easily fit within just the regular Brushes tool. Except that you will need some way to select multiple brush tips - but then again, if you just SHIFT-click or CTRL-click the brush tips and create a "set", or if they provide a way to organize Brush Tips into folders or sets within the Brushes Manager, that would do the trick.

[tomaugerdotcom]

Also, note that this post: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh... is also relevant to this discussion because it deals with revamping the way Brush Presets are saved / stored / managed.

[tomaugerdotcom]

Except for the fact that Brushes are monochromatic by design. This is a really important point. For an Image Hose to work, it really needs to be RGBa, whereas Brush Tips are designed to be painted in the colour selected in the Foreground Colour swatch.

From a UI perspective, the Clone Tool is still the closest to the feature set we're looking for because it is a brush that copies full-colour pixel data onto the canvas.

Besides, think of the additional possibilities for randomization if you have a library of Image Hose "stamps" which you can then apply using a Brush! You get the random selection of image stamp pixels PLUS when it gets applied it gets filtered through a Brush preset, with all the randomization that's possible with Brushes on top of that.

Which actually makes me think that a new Brush Tip shape would need to be created that would allow the image stamp pixels to pass through unfiltered - otherwise they would always be stamped in the shape of the brush tip (imagine if you used a standard circular brush tip shape, but your image stamp shape were square - it would have its corners rounded by the roundness of the Brush Tip. Not so cool.)

[c.pfaffenbichler]

»it really needs to be RGBa«
»Full-color-brushes« would indeed be a great addition to Photoshop’s features in my opinion.

[tomaugerdotcom]

I just discovered that ArtRage Pro (not the iPad version, but the desktop version) has a pretty decent Image Hose implementation (I think they call it decals or stickers or something). For $60, basically the cost of a PS plugin, you get Image Hose, and a darned fine natural media drawing app that exports to PS format. Do yourself a favour! Pick it up. http://www.artrage.com/

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I was hoping someone would point out that it should be a type of brush, not part of the clone tool. 🙂 I actually thought this existed in photoshop - until I tried to make one.

[tomaugerdotcom]

See my comment below on why it's probably a better match to the Clone tool, but you're right - it FEELS like it should just be a Brush option. In fact, it probably merits its own tool in the toolbox altogether. Seriously, does anyone use the History Paintbrush?? And yet it gets its own tool...

Please Tweet and otherwise share this whole thread to your social network so it can get some votes. That's the only way it will get on Adobe's radar...

[Thomas Luth]

Here is a simple feature request: I notice that Manga Studio 5's scatter brush allows for multiple tips, rather than one. I'd love to see this in Photoshop. For example, If I create a custom brush shape in Photoshop, I get a single image, scattered, scaled and rotated, such as a single number, or an image of a cluster of numbers. With multiple tips, one could have a brush that randomly paints from a set of numbers 0-9. More importantly, this would be great for organic shapes, like spatters, etc., adding yet another dimension of randomness. Thanks.