Custom brushes access
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Hi everyone at photoshop.
My name is David and I have been a photoshop user since 1992. I have worked on many entertainment projects.
I have been using photoshop custom brushes as my main tool for creating paintings over these years, and I decided to finally write to you out of frustration for missing a very major much needed improvement. I have a pretty good understanding of how to use brushes and the preset manager so here it goes.
I believe I have the whole adobe painting community behind me when I tell you that we need a serious revamp of the "right click" to open custom brushes window in order to make it manageable and useable. I am currently using approximately thousands of brushes on a given project. Actually since I also use 3D softwares such as zbrush, I can tell you that this asset management situation and issue has already reached other softwares and has been brilliantly solved by these companies.
What we would maybe need is a "right click" opening multiple tabs choices with editable titles in order to decide which tab I want to navigate to (trees, rocks, clouds and so on).
Another idea that was mentioned by my friend Gavriil is a setup very similar to zbrush as to upon right clicking you can use customizable keyboard shortcuts (numbers and letter based) in order to speed up the selection process in a heart beat.
That would probably require a serious revamp of the preset manager, but the benefits would be hours of unnecessary navigating through barely visible brushes saved (and yes I know I can change their scale, but try to do that with a thousand brushes, it becomes instantly impossible to paint).
When painting, speed is of the essence, and selecting a brush should be done in a very intuitive and rapid way. The adobe painting community would love to participate and help you put something together rapidly, and since I own CC and pay a monthly fee I assume it could be an update that could come rapidly without waiting for a whole year.
Please contact me, and I could even put a team of very motivated highly professional painters together to help you with some ideas if needed.
I sincerely hope our voice will be heard, not ignored, and am looking forward to hear from your dev team.
Best regards,
David
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May i propose an elgant solution gentelmen?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/5074048/special-dedicated-editing-keyboard-for-photoshop
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Lapaev wrote:
May i propose an elgant solution gentelmen?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/5074048/special-dedicated-editing -keyboard-for-photoshop
Blimey, it's huge. If I was going to put something that big on my desk it would be a Cintiq, but I haven't got room forone of those. Where do you put your tablet? Where is all the money coming from for the taxi fares getting from one side of the special keyboard to the other?
Nice idea, and lovely to look at, but it wouldn't work for me.
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Blimey indeed.
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I agree, the current way brushes are organised in Photoshop are not very friendly for the digital painters. I would really like to see a better system. It's one of those things that can make the next update of PS CC a must have!
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Guys, it is a good idea to gather lots of users, but I think it would be more effective to post some broken down ideas/pain points in The feedback site, so that each person can vouch for one or all suggestions.
I love pie menus myself, I'd love to get something like the Wacom ring menus in Photoshop!
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OK, someone start a thread in Feedback and post a link here.
I like the idea of flyouts for brush sets so you don't have to Append the set to view its contents.
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Hi PECourtejoie
I love the pie menu idea, it serves exactly the same purpose, so I am totally up for it, whatever shape it would take pie, quads, frames, all sounds good to me actually.
It seems that there are very valuable inputs in this thread so I am not sure I see the value in creating yet another thread, although I am not a very savvy adobe forum community adept like you probably are. Navigating through the proper channels with your help would be very valuable.
Having managed forums myself, there are usually ways to move a whole thread when you are a moderator, would it be possible to do so? Just so we do not lose some of the interesting feedback here.
And regarding the piling up of people, I think it may be due to the fact that painters feel like this may be the only way to be heard. So far it seems we got no one interested on the adobe dev side, but I am sure adobe is a big company and it probably takes time.
We are also investigating on our own through other channels as we speak, we may have more chances on that side.
Anyway, thanks so much for caring! Sometimes it feels a little lonely being a photoshop painter...
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vyle art wrote:
It seems that there are very valuable inputs in this thread so I am not sure I see the value in creating yet another thread, [clip]
Photoshop.com feedback is not the same as this forum, and is the official place to pass on ideas and feature requests to the Development Team. I think you should have the honour of starting the thread.
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family
[EDIT] Be sure to post a link here if you do.
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Trevor>> got it, understood and thanks for the clarification. Will do asap.
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Done:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/custom_brushes_sub_menus?rfm=1
In the time being is there anyone from adobe actually working on this forum? And if not, if I understand this is more users helping each other here?
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Hey Vyle, what do you think of this potential UI mockup?
- Neil
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All the suggestions are good, but explaining your pain points, the breaks in the workflow are better. You know the Ford quote “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” It might help to show what would be useful, but they are paid to solve issues, not to implement one's idea, if you get the drift - but I know most of you guys are concept artist, so that how you "speak", I'm just warning you how your interlocutor will react
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Beautiful mockup, soulburn3d! In the meanwhile for those who didn't know, actions can record the selection of a specific brush or tool preset and actions can be asigned hotkeys (function keys w|w/o modifiers). Still, that's good for a handful of brushes only.
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Erik, yup, that's how I have my system setup, but it's a real pain to assign keyboard shortcuts this way. A more direct method would be appreciated
- Neil
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Yes, there are Photoshop engineers working here, but they cannot see every thread. I'll ping some of them, but as I said in Post 10, and Trevor restated later, the Feedback site is better suited to track, and weight how badly a feature is needed. (and you can also invite other members of your forum to vote )
Stunning work, BTW!
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The thread has five 'Likes' as I type this, so be sure to go add a 'me too' if you are in favour of a revamped brush panel:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/custom_brushes_sub_menus?rfm=1
Or add any ideas or thoughts you have about how it might work better.
[EDIT] Thinking about it, I'm wondering if a better brush panel might inevitably be a more complex brush panel, and not be welcomed by the Photographer only users of Photoshop?
Message was edited (link corrected) by: PECourtejoie
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Yes, to answer the question "is anyone watching the forums form Adobe or Photoshop."
Constantly!
Please respond to the Feedback form posted here! Myself and others on the team have been wanting to revamp this system for some time but we need validation from the community, a tidal wave of screams maybe...
Tweet it, share link and perhaps it will happen soon
Here is the link to feedback site:
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/custom_brushes_sub_menus?rfm=1
Here is my Tweet > just pile on if you like!
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Daniel, retweeted
- Neil
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Hey guys -
I made my own mock-up version of how I envision some of the changes for Photoshop; you can see the whole image set on my blog.
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Thanks Daniel! Very happy to see you guys answer!
By the way I will be eternally thankful for the custom brushes, you allowed a whole community of artists to see their work explode in wonderful different directions. I sometimes have my complaints about photoshop, but that one you really outdid yourself, amazing tool.
So there, a big thank you.
Gavriil, that is pretty much perfect. I want to use this today!!!
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I wouldn't want to a huge number of brushes in the panel at the same time, and I definitely wouldn't want to need to scroll. I am even reluctant to have the panel set to open full height as it blocks too much of the image. (we are talking right mouse click or bottom pen switch click, and not the F5 workspace panel)
I like the idea of an action to reset the brushes, and i like the idea of modifying the Standard brush set with a couple of favourites. There are also brushes in the Standard set I have almost never used, but they are handy for demonstrating to new users how Presets/shape dynamics etc. can work for them.
Remember I mentioned renaming brush sets to start with a meaningful name to place them in alphabetical order. This is working very well for me.
All of the above is doable now.
I am not sure if I'd get on with a search option. Not fast enough and you might be using the wrong parameters and get nowhere.
I definitely like the idea of brush sets with a context correct icon as well as a name. This icon should be user selectable from the brushes in the set.
Hovering over one of these set icons should open a flyout to show the set contents. The panel options should be user selectable between Append or Replace when double clicking a set to use it. (I hate having to make that choice every time!)
Or
...a single click would lock open the flyout so you could select a brush from that set without opening the entire set. Note, I said lock out, and not the usual clunky and oh so frustrating, put your cursor just slightly in the wrong place, and the fly out flies back in again. Grrr... that is so annoying. Double clicking or select and Enter would select a brush in that set (as now) and the flyout would close.
An easy, two key max, shortcut to reset back to the Standard set would be nice.
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Re-reading my last couple of paragraphs about how a flyout should work, I seem to have trapped myself with impossible logic. Unless a single click would be detected by the pause after it, and a double click by the short time period between clicks. I guess you know what I mean, and the Dev.Team would have the answers if allowed the time, by the powers that be, to work on it.
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Couldn't agree more.
I would add as well the possibility to preview brushsets before loading them.
Folder editability, drag and drop sorting capabilities.
The preset manager needs to adhere to criteria of usability first. Since it's a professional tool it needs to be well designed and be easy to use.
Will keep an eye on this thread.
Marco.Caradonna
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Hello folks,
Here is a workflow I use that works today, it's pretty fast and efficient and needs very little effort. You do need an inexpensive utility called Mystic Thumbs. Currently this solution only works in Windows but I am looking into a similar solution for OSX. Here is a short 8 min video of the process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa5duyA-QYc
Ara


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