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FeedbackCommunityMember
Inspiring
September 10, 2012
Open for Voting

P: Inverting Pressure Input/Custom Pressure Curves for Painting

  • September 10, 2012
  • 16 replies
  • 2954 views

It would be great to be able to invert pressure input from wacom tablets for brush parameters. The most basic implementation would be an "invert" checkbox next to each parameter. A more powerful idea would be to have customizable pressure input curves for each parameter. This could be done with the "contour editor" used to control various layer style falloff options.

In particular, I found that the pressure input for the Mixer brush's "mix" slider was the reverse of what I thought it should be, but the ability to customize the input curves for all parameters would create many new ways to use the brush tool. These curves could also be used to control exactly how much force on the pen is needed, allowing artists to work at a comfortable level of pressure and still enjoy the full range of input. This would greatly enhance the entire painting experience! Thanks!

    16 replies

    PECourtejoie
    Community Expert
    PECourtejoieCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 9, 2024

    Bumping for @Earth Oliver 

    PECourtejoie
    Community Expert
    PECourtejoieCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    March 23, 2022

    I would have to test on a machine with a stylus, but IIRC, the airbrush used to spray under the stylus if it was lowered, instead of outwards, the opposite of the action of a real life airbrush, another spot where "invert" might be useful.

    I love the idea of pressure curves too!

      Earth Oliver
      Earth Oliver
      Legend
      February 2, 2020
      This would be a very significant update for Ps workflows and i consider it to be absolutely essential for most artists. I think we all need to push as hard as we can until Adobe finally implements. 
      I've submitted an official request elsewhere and i'll continue to bump this thread every week until we get a response.

      Here's also a quick mockup for how to add this tool to the options bar. The curve could be simply changed in the smaller thumbnail with an up/down mouse move or a right-click would open the larger curve overlay for end-point adjustments.

        O
        Oonlu
        Participant
        April 14, 2019
        Options like these would be life-changing for any professional that uses Photoshop - especially digital artists. Please allow pressure curve control, with adjustable nodes - also for the Pencil tool. Brush and Pencil tool both. Pencil tool allows for the removal of anti-aliased edges.. but has poor opacity and missing texture controls. The standard pressure-controlled opacity that comes with Photoshop is too strong, the soft end of the spectrum is too harsh, not subtle enough, and the hard end of the spectrum is too soft, leading the user to use excessive force on the tablet to gain full opacity, that can lead to wrist problems. Adjustable pressure graphs for all aspects of brush settings would be a huge step forward for Photoshop. This is such a fantastic program... lacking this very basic function that would raise its value. This would be a welcome addition to Photoshop by all users. Especially artists.
        F
        FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
        Inspiring
        April 4, 2019
        This is still missing. Would love for that functionality! I want a small line to be opaque while the wider it gets, the more transparent. Can't do that with the current settings. Extremely frustrating.
        F
        FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
        Inspiring
        July 8, 2018

        Gosh, unbelievable. 6 years ago, Matthew very precisely pointed out the mayor deficiencies of the mixer-brush tool. Specifically, the inverted mix-pressure response is making me move away from photoshop. I’ve had enough.
        I quite often found myself puzzled at how I couldn’t make it work the way I needed it to. A revelation for me: CloverPaint, a neat drawing App for Android which works fantastically on a dated Cintiq Companion Hybrid and has a fantastic brush engine working smoothly on a tablet with only 2 GB of RAM. How can this be? A very sad situation.
        Adobe doesn't seem to see the incentive to improving Photoshop for digital painters. How annoying. From a professional’s viewpoint: Adobe makes money by selling tools to enable efficiency. By not solving this problem Adobe has cost me hours upon hours trying to find a workaround and in the end working with tools which do not behave like I’d want them to and thus taking longer in the completion of those projects. Adobe thus is costing me money.
        Matthew, thanks for the great original post. Wish I'd found it much earlier.

        F
        FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
        Inspiring
        June 1, 2018
        6 years. Now that pen tablets/2-in-1s are abundant, this is more needed than ever. Adobe, please.
        K
        katet62469464
        Participant
        April 18, 2018
        6 Years and the mixer brush is still unusable because of this.  Good job Adobe.
        C
        Coby Randal
        Participating Frequently
        October 30, 2017
        Nice graphic! This will be a great addition as the new brush smoothing options are awesome and pressure input smoothing (preferably with curves like you have shown) is the only logical next step. Thinking about posting this to FB / Twitter so other PS artists can up-vote this; I'm pretty sure they would be VERY happy to see this implemented.
        vachuty
        vachuty
        Participating Frequently
        August 23, 2017
        5 years.
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