It's too weak. It needs to be more versatile. Maybe even allow airbrush to be enabled so the blur effect can build-up like water on a watercolor painting.
"since it apparently wasn't intended to be one they should call it something else"
That makes about as much sense as demanding cars that don’t go over 120km/h be called something other than cars.
I too have been baffled, for many years now, as to why the blur tool is so weak. The justification for keeping it so weak is even less sensible. Adding the option of increasing it's strength, would not prevent people from using it at a low setting, and enabling stronger settings would let the tool be able to achieve so much more.
I'm a graphic artist so I use Photoshop for digital painting, and I do a lot of color blending. I've tried several programs but so far Photoshop has won in the end, because it has offered the best overall selection of tools. Not necessarily the best tool for all situations, but good enough for most. Since I really dislike juggling several different programs while working, Photoshop has been my go to choice for over 15 years.
There is a lot to like in Photoshop, and along the years many tools have been expanded and new options have been added and thus made more versatile. But the Blur tool has stubbornly remained the same, and lately I've been thinking: Does Photoshop really offer me the best overall selection of tools, or am I using it simply because I'm used to it, and am accustomed to dancing around it's flaws.
The weak Blur tool is a good example. Other programs offer so much better options for controlled blurring with pressure sensitive brush tool, that not having anything even close to it in Photoshop has become really jarring. Using layer masks and blur filters to achieve the effect is so tedious and fiddly that it's actually less of a hassle to just port the work into a program that has a decent blur tool. Even for just one phase of the work.
But the things is: If I am going to have to do that step in another program, then I might as well do the rest of it in that program as well. That is, if it's easier to live without the things I like about Photoshop, than it is to work around the bits I don't like about Photoshop. So far that hasn't been the case, but there are some pretty neat programs out there, and lately I've seriously started to think about whether Photoshop is the program for me. A decent Blur tool would certainly go a long way towards maintaining Photoshops image as the king of the hill. Insisting on limiting it's utility is just keeping on shooting at it's own foot.
My experience with the Blur tool, as it relates to your car speed analogy, is that the top speed of the Blur tool is more like 10km/h when other Blur tools are capable of 200km/h. I don't think we'd be having this discussion if the existing Blur tool were actually capable of the equivalent of 120km/h in a car.
There is an additional function (beyond the ability to vary the strength of the blur tool so that it would be stronger) that would make the blur tool and a few of the other tools (Dodge, Burn, Blur, Sharpen, etc.) MUCH more valuable and useful in my opinion.
The tools are all set to keep adding more adjustment on EVERY pass at whatever degree you have initially set them to. So if you overlap your strokes you will get double the adjustment where the strokes overlap which creates an uneven effect if you attempt to build up the adjustment by multiple passes. In fact even if you want only a single pass of the adjustment you will have uneven application where the strokes overlap unless your brush size is large enough to cover in one pass, and who is so good they can perfectly match the edge of one stroke up against the next stroke you put beside it?
In Aperture if you select any one of the tools - say the Dodge tool - it doesn't matter how many times you go over the area back and forth or how often your strokes overlap - the final STRENGTH of the effect on the photo is the same, and perfectly even over the entire application area because it maxes out at whatever STRENGTH (from 0 to 100) that you choose. It would be great if Photoshop were to increase the strength potential of the Blur tool and also add a toggle switch for each adjustment tool that toggles between a variable but set LIMIT to the maximum effect of the adjustment (as Aperture does) and the CUMULATIVE effect that they have now. Having both would increase our creative choice and efficiency as well - not to mention keeping Photoshop at the top of the heap.
That is because Aperture is doing something closer to "blur and use a layer mask" method.
Lightroom and ACR use the same method for many of their painted adjustments.
Chris - Thank you for the explanation, which I find helpful in understanding the process that Aperture uses. I've got 3 questions, if you wouldn't mind helping me get a little clearer.
1) Would it be accurate to interpret your description "blur and use a layer mask" as describing a process where the "Strength" slider that Aperture uses for the Blur tool sets the density of a layer mask. The mask is fixed at the % it will allow the Blur tool to react with the photo, and the Blur tool is functioning at full power at all times?
2) Is there any reason the existing Blur tool in Photoshop couldn't be made more powerful to have a higher, and variable degree of effect on the photo?
3) Can yo think of any reason the system that Aperture and Lightroom use that create a mask could not coexist with a more powerful blur tool?
1) Yes, their "strength" looks like it just sets the opacity/density of a mask painting operation.
2) Yes. That is not what the tool is designed for, not what it is good at, and would be a lot slower...
3) that method already exists in Photoshop, plus there are many other methods that can achieve the same basic result, without trying to modify the existing tool (which is already useful for what it is intended for).
What is was intended for is not necessarily what consumers need and want? Then what is wrong with modifying it so it provides both, or creating a tool that allows the sort of quick spot blurring we want?
I see no reason at all why allowing more flexibility in blurring tool strength would make it "a lot slower." It would make my work a lot faster.
What the tool is intended for is useful.
But there are other things that some people need beyond that tool, which are already available.
Modifying a useful tool to do something already available by other methods , for a small subset of users, seems like a waste of development time.
It would be slower because the tool will have to do more calculations from a larger area, and more math + more memory access = more time taken = slower.
Corin, you state yourself clearly, but some do not read as clearly, or are so wedded to the status quo that they throw up walls against change.
While the subject of change is at hand, how much have Adobe's own filters changed over the years? Yes, the app has changed significantly in some ways, but in others it has changed shockingly little. That's why products like those of Macphun do so well in the marketplace. I'm always on the lookout for an app that does more of what I want and less of what Adobe engineers think I should be limited to wanting. It's almost as though the company is allergic to make its products fun: the Microsoft Disease. Lack of major competition is likely the problem, but that won't last forever.
Proof that users who would find a stronger blur tool useful is a "small subset" comes from what sampling? A survey was taken? Published? Where?
Your equation could apply to any modification of software, and, if assumed, would lead to an end to innovation, which almost always assumes more math, more memory access, and more time IF there is no corresponding increase in hardware speed. But there have been corresponding increases in hardware speed for decades, and software developers, including Adobe, have anticipated and exploited those increases.
Apple knows very well the key rule of computer innovation: publishers lead and consumers follow.
Now, I'm so disgusted by this atavistic Adobe "scientist" that I want no more of this discussion, and no more of Adobe.
As it turns out, apparently the same Chris Cox has made a hobby of ticking off Adobe users, which seems entirely insensible but not unexpectedly arrogant.
For this purpose I'd like to borrow an apparent Chris Cox quote from 2005:
"Please, don't lie to the users - let them see the new features and
decide whether they need them or not for THEMSELVES." Indeed.
As for whether the users who would benefit from a more powerful blur tool constitute a "small subset," I'll borrow another Cox quote:
"And you know this... how?"
Cox is apparently employed by Adobe not merely for software development, but to show how arrogant the company is and how little it cares about consumers.
1) The argument that the blur tool is good for what it was designed for (which I have yet to hear described) does not seem sufficient to negate the benefits that could be realized by making it better and more versatile - especially since adding more power and making it more versatile would not compromise it's ability to do whatever it is that it was designed to do - it just adds more functionality.
2) The argument that there are other ways to get the effect that strengthening the Blur tool would provide, which are already built into Photoshop, is not consistent with what Photoshops philosophy has been over the years
When almost anyone associated with Photoshop development (J. Kost, etc., etc.) does a video on aspects of Photoshop they almost always mention, with pride, that Photoshop builds numerous layers of redundancy into the things that PS can do. They seem to think there is an advantage to having multiple ways to approach the same thing and I agree. I've never heard them argue that they see an advantage in limiting whatever PS can do to only one way to approach it.
3) What about new users to PS? The Blur tool is very convenient and handy and the suggestion to apply the gallery of blur options with masks and additional layers to achieve a similar end result is much more intimidating - especially to your new customers.
There are advantages to having a very simple way to help new operators of Photoshop make the transition to using Photoshop and be able to blur things simply and easily with the blur tool and allow them the time to learn all the more complex and convoluted options that will eventually give them more control over more situations.
4) One of the most salient lessons that many developers could learn from the genius of Steve Jobs, in my humble opinion, was his innate sense that there was immense value in making the complex SIMPLE to use. Less is more. It's easier for someone to learn to drive a car with an automatic transmission when they are already overloaded with new information they must absorb and they can eventually learn to drive a stick shift at a later time when they are more comfortable with the basic driving techniques.
5) PS has called it a Blur tool and it's apparently not - it's some sort of specialty tool designed for a purpose that has been kept vague and mysterious. Having a Blur gallery, with lots of complex options, is all very well but to have a tool that is called a Blur tool and doesn't function as a Blur tool (when compared to other blur tools in other programs out there) is confusing at best and, if my experience is at all typical, eventually irritating.
6) The argument that making it stronger and more flexible would slow down the program is hard to consider seriously when I look at the unbelievable depth and complexity that has been continually developed and designed into new versions of Photoshop. PS can do 3D calculations and you would have us believe the reason for not simply making the blur tool stronger is that it will waste developers time and slow down the program? This is the point at which I feel that I've been wasting my time here, I'm sorry to say.
The real Problem is not that it's not strong enough. Try blurring an Image of 300x400 pixels, and you will find it has a pretty strong effect. The true problem we face here is that the effect is actually depending upon image resolution, so the bigger the image the weaker the result. Having images at resolutions of 3000x4000px and the tool hardly has any effect at all.
This is NOT (as fanboys claim) by design, this is sloppy programming! For the tool to be useable the strength of the effect should be automaticly adjusted to give the same visible result depending on the size of the brush NOT the resolution of the image. If you want "subtle" blurring it should be adjusted by the strength-parameter.
I'm sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but are you talking about the blur tool? Scattering doesn't seem to increase the blurring effect beyond what it normally is.
The smudge tool, on the other hand, does have a blurring effect when using scattering. Is that what you're referring to?
Yes, the post is about the blur tool. There's a huge amount of blur strengthening when i adjust these. This will vary depending on the size and resolution of your image though. You need to make sure you have done scattering plus transfer plus shape dynamics settings
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