Photoshop G Pen Brush
Ailene Goldhirsh
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 ?
Unfortunately Adobe don't provide information about planned improvements/updates, although sometimes they do provide a sneak peak of new features that will be available in a new release, you can of course post idea's on the feedback forum here
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.
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.
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
I have the Mr. Natural Brush by Kyle T Webster for Photoshop [ ] and would like to use it in toon boom, and I was wondering if I just had to import the brush texture, or if there was a way to get all the brush settings into toon boom to make its own brush preset.
Wierd, First off due to my removing my Settings folder yesterday, I lost my workspace setup, my own brushes, patterns, and apparently some settings. Good to have you back, tho. Anyway, when I click the brush icon on the top menu, the brush panel opens in one location and I can't move it soooooo it's blocking my screen. It's just stuck in place. There's no screenshot to show really, just the panel open.
In the steps we supply on the maual preset fix, it is suggested that you save the original on your desktop to replace if it doesn't work so you do in fact save your prefs and settings, if you did that you can drag them back in.
The upper left panel. The other panel is mobile but, the one on the left pops up when the icon is clicked. Kind of bummed about having to redo all this again but, the issue was mine yesterday. I also just realized I lost all my plugins in PS too so, I'll have to figure out how to reinstall them so they pop up in Lightroom when envoked.
Okay, I am doing my best NOT to pull my hair out. I have literally created two completely different brushes ( a scatter brush and a sketching brush) and when I go to save all the settings for one and THEN back just to use the other, the settings from the OTHER brush has now affected the brush (ex. the scatter is now on the sketch brush, so i uncheck it and it also affects the actual scatter on the scatter brush itself), even though I saved it WITHOUT those settings. What the heck is going on?
Hi did you ever find a solution for this? I'm having the same issue, and I've seen a few others ask similar questions, and it seems like not much help has been available. Do you have any tips of fixing this?
Hi, this is not helpful at all. The problem is that for example, brush A has NO "scattering". I then create a new brush preset, brush B, with "scattering". But when I select brush A again, the setting shows it has "scattering", even when the option is locked. Similarly, when I uncheck "scattering" for brush A, the "scattering" option gets unchecked as well for brush B. I did not change brush by clicking different brush tips as many other solutions mentioned.
Yes i think so, I just relized that locked means the setting won't be affected when switching between brushes, although my brush settings are still not stable, my problem is solved at the moment. Thanks!
I do, im ot OP but have been having the same problem and locked or unlocked doesnt make a difference, even when locked it still affects all other brushes. its as if something in the code for the settings lock is broken
On windows, when I start a brush stroke the stroke doesn't appear immediately. For example, if I hold still the pen on the screen it makes a mark only when I release the pen. If I make a stroke, it appears only when I'm few millimetres away from the starting point. That's very muddled but annoying, and it only happens in Photoshop. You can see it in the attached video.
Have you tried turning off Photoshop brush smoothing? Brush smoothing algorithm was introduced in 2018 and allows you to get a more polished look, but it can cause some delay too. Try tuning it down even to 0% as in the picture:
Thanks for the report @Pixium I'm not able to repro here on my Win10 machine with Cintiq. Do you have the latest Wacom Drivers (6.3.45-1)? Also try disable/enable Tip-Up Assist in the Wacom Tablet Properties > Options... Also, does this happen with one particular brush or all of them; try General Brushes > Hard Round.
floramc, I did try this option, that's what I thought first. It occurs with all brushes, even with the simplest ones, and also with the Lasso Tool, stamp tools... That's not really "lag" cause the brush flow is nice, it's just a delay : the stroke appears just after I start moving my pen. Once the stroke has appeared, everything goes normally.
chad.rolfs, i work mainly on my Huion, but both my Wacom and Huion are up to date Drivers&Frimware. Did your brushstroke apear immediatly on your windows 10 ? Like, you pen touch the sreen whithout moving, and a stroke apear or you have to move or release the pen to see the stroke ?
I just tried on a MacBook, and it does not occur. The stroke appears directly. I tried on 3 differents windows PC, and the delay occure on all of them. In fact this is a long term issue for me, that's why i finally decided to ask for help.
For the record, I'm a very professional user of Photoshop for years, and I'm also informatics engineer. So I tried lots of basic manipulation to fix this. I started to notice this issue about 2 years ago.
Thanks @Pixium! After fine tuning things a bit more, I am able to repro with a custom brush and other Kyle Webster brushes. I did notice that it does not occur on the computed brushes, i.e. the default General Brushes (Hard Round). Which of the solutions did you try from BoroCG's video that didn't work? Enable airbrush-style build-up effects or the PSUserConfig.txt (WinTab) one?
Thank you for your time @chad.rolfs , and you're right, it does not happen with default general brush ! I also tried to build a brush from it and the problem does not occur. But I occur with all brushes I tested from Kyle's Brushes and also on a few other brushback I downloaded. If I made a brush starting by one of those DL ones, the problem still occurs.
I tried the PSUserConfig.txt, and i miss the "Enable airbrush-style build-up effects" info (as English is not my mother tongue) So i just tried and it seems to work clean with it enabled. But I don't need/want this effect on all of my brushes.
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