Hello guys !
I'm a digital painter, using photoshop for about 10 years now and I was wondering if there was any improvements planned for the brush engine that is getting a bit old. The mixer brush added a few years back was a big improvement, but I'm thinking about something else : If you take Clip studio or paintstorm, they both come with extremely good brush engine and has features like multi shape sampling : for example if you want to create a foliage bush, you can create a brush with multiple leaf shape alpha samples, and when you make a stroke it will pick randomly among all these shapes and lay down a nice effect (you can create super realistic brushes). Maybe you will tell me, yeah well in photoshop you can randomly invert shape symetry, distort it and that will do the trick, etc ; but it doesn't look good enought in my opinion. You can see it looks kinda fake, funky, same shape squished and rotated over and over again. When creating comics of paintings, having complex bush/plant/tree/rock... brushes is a plus that can save lots of time and look awesome, like it was done by hand.
Another improvement that would be great is adding a modifiable custom curve graph behavior altering the tablet inputs (pressure, rotation etc) for every brush function (spacing, angle, opacity, etc) ; also brush stroke correction/control (starting and ending correction, ribbon brush, special effect brush like the firework or comet tail brush in paintstorm (a brush that starts super thin, then at 2/3 of the way suddenly spreads wide, and fades out))
Photoshop is way superior in a lot of ways, is much faster and stable, and has tons of unique features ; and swiching between softwares is troublesome, has compatibility problems, and in some cases corrupts the file (which can be reeeeeeally annoying). So I really look forward to see something similar in photoshop (and I'm sure a lot of artists are longing for this too) ; hence my question : Is there any improvement planned in a short or long term for the brush engine ?
Also, multi-layer transform/warp could be great too 
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Not exactly what you asked about, but the recently changed brush and preset management system was a step in the right direction, but still a work in progress. It has made it a lot easier to set up new presets. IM only recently realised that using the 'Save Tool Presets' option lets you save presets for the Dodge & Burn tools that store opacity and tonal range. That could be quite a time saver.
People like John Derry and Kyle Webster have created their Impasto 'thick' paint presets, and I have not quite worked out how to do that, but I am sure the answer is just a Google away if I really needed to.
A few years ago we discussed Coral's Particleshop, and specifically if we could reverse engineer them. We came up with a few interesting ideas.
Corel ParticalShop — Brush plugin for Photoshop
Other long threads pleaded with the Development team to improve the brush engine (as opposed to brush management). The thread I am thinking of was a good few years ago, but nothing has happened. In a recent thread I asked Pete Green, who is the forum's link man with the Photoshop Development Team, to pass on our request, and he said they were already aware, but not what, if anything, is happening.
I don't know the apps you mentioned, but I use Krita, and love its brush engine. It's this sort of competitive pressure that might make things happen, but user pressure is also important, so if you start yet another request on the feedback site, post the link here, and we'll back you up.
This will teach me to read thread starters properly, because I missed the reference to Paintstorm. However I saw another reference to it from someone I know, and checked it out. After watching the video I was thinking I HAD to have this app, and wondering how much I would have to pay for it.
It was quite a shock when I found out. I like Krita for painting, but I am totally in love with Paintstorm.
FYI it is not a Photoshop alternative. Not even close. But if you like to paint, it is outstanding from an initial look and play.
Hi Trevor, thanks for your answers !
I indeed noticed the changes in the brush manager and how you can save tool presets, set groups etc. It's a good step forward but I'm expecting more !
I tried painter several times but in my opinion it lacks ergonomy quite a lot. One day thought I will really put myself into it cause I've seen great paintings made with this software that makes me wanna do a piece with it from start to finish.
Concerning paintstorm, I'm also in love with it ! I've been using it since v1 and it has improved a lot over time. Its brush engine is almost perfect and I wish photshop had the same ; but like you said I also think it's not an alternative for a bunch of reasons, yet
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