What brush am I using?

[simonlayfield]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I think the biggest problem is not so much how the brush tools work now, which has some merits, but more the lack of any "show or reselect last preset brush" features.

From my point of view, if I select any path with a brush applied, it should contextually show me which brush was used. It doesn't have to select it, but if I use a variety of different brushes for some artwork, it's useful to keep track of what is being used where.

I also agree that if you switch tools from the brush tool, the selected brush setting remain sticky; returning to the brush tool should have everything as was previously shown and selected.

Those would be my preferences, at least.

[R C-R]

18 minutes ago, pixel-girl said:

Dear RCR, no, it isn't logical from a programing standpoint.

As long as the Paint Brush Tool is implemented as a method of painting pixels with a specific collection of pixel brush attributes, what other way could it be implemented logically?

It is not at all like adding or editing text objects -- once the pixels are painted they have no individually editable object attributes. They are just pixels, no different from any of the others in that pixel object, or any of the pixels in a rasterized text or vector object.

[R C-R]

45 minutes ago, simonlayfield said:

From my point of view, if I select any path with a brush applied, it should contextually show me which brush was used.

I agree that there should be some way of showing that when using the Vector Brush or Pencil tools, but that does not apply when painting with the Paint Brush Tool because that tool cannot create or modify vector curve objects that have paths. It can only create or modify pixels on rasterized pixel layers.

[pixel-girl]

Anyway. Looking at my profile pict: Three years ago it was a joke. Now it's real. Because of the 3 years.

[R C-R]

24 minutes ago, pixel-girl said:

Anyway. Looking at my profile pict: Three years ago it was a joke. Now it's real. Because of the 3 years.

OK, but what kind of programatic logic do you think could work to usefully answer the "what brush am I using?" question when using the Paint Brush Tool? Should it show you a raster brush that no longer matches the size, hardness, rotation or whatever of what you just painted because you changed one or more of those attributes on-the-fly while painted with it, or via the "More" contextual toolbar item?

The logic seems straightforward enough for vector brushes but not so much for pixel brushes because they are not applied to entire objects.

[IsabelAracama]

19 hours ago, R C-R said:

I think the biggest problem is not so much how the brush tools work now, which has some merits, but more the lack of any "show or reselect last preset brush" features.

Yeah, that's what I meant by working... In any case, and on another slightly different note, I sometimes really feel lost with some brushes, like I won't get them to do what I want and some are strangely lagging and impossible to use. Or maybe it's also some brushes that I seem not to understand how they're supposed to work and I feel overly clumsy using them and end up desisting. So I need to understand this, as I never had such an exhausting experience with Photoshop brushes. Overall they feel way more responsive in Photoshop... not to mention the above mentioned little nightmare about What efffng brush am I using.

[PCH101]

Why can't Photo/Designer just remember the last brush/eraser tool type used and keep them highlighted or at least show the name somewhere.

Note: Procreate remembers the last bush used, ( as well as the brush's size and opacity ) for every tool in every brush category and brush selected in that category, with a blue highlighted background or icon (even after the app has been closed and reopened.)  Affinity dudes, try their app, it demonstrates a great example of how to keep track of brushes.

Brush amnesia seems to occur on Mac, Windows and iPad versions with different levels of frustration. "Where oh where is the brush I just used?"

P.S. So much greatness spoiled by one really dumb problem.

[ronanski]

This is still a major issue in march 2020! surely by selecting any stroke, you should be able to see what brush is used (preferably next to the stroke and fill details in contextual toolbar). It is such a basic function and absolutely essential, yet 4 years later and this still hasn't been fixed! On mac and windows!

[acrazyobsession]

On 2/18/2020 at 8:33 AM, R C-R said:

I reasonably sure this happens because a brush is basically just a saved set of brush-related properties (size, hardness, flow, dynamics, etc.), so any change to any of them while using it effectively creates a new brush with a different set of properties. Thus, it is no longer the original 'parent' brush & the original is deselected to indicate that (& that if that brush was selected again it would revert to its default properties instead of whatever they are now).

This is all quite logical from a programing standpoint but of absolutely no help in determining which 'parent' brush was the last one selected. 

This makes absolute sense!  But yeah, it doesn't really help out much.

I am brand new to Affinity Photo and I glad that I am not the only one dealing with this. I am using on a Macbook. Even if the brush tab showed the name of the brush it would be helpful. At least then I could look at that to remember which one I am selecting. It takes too long to hover over the brush and wait for the name to pop up.

[Finrach]

I saved my brush I was using which I know is only useful in certain circumstances and not a fix for this issue in the main. I needed a rough edge border to match on images I was then placing in Publisher - mac desktop. Create New Category called favs or whatever from the brushes menu tab. Select the brush - right click/duplicate, select the duplicate - right click/Move Brush to Category, Edit it to change its width to a size that suits. Obviously it would be easier if it stayed highlighted but as soon as I change a brush's width, it is no longer highlighted and I quickly lose track of the brush I'm using. 'Brushes Last Used' above 'Basics' would be nice. 🤔

Edited May 21, 2020 by Finrach
typo

[Vosje]

Just adding my voice, it's a problem for me that whenever I use a brush and I like the effect and then I switch between the tools I cannot see anymore which brush was chosen. I would sometimes like to select that same brush as an eraser and it's impossible to tell which one it was. Once you have selected a certain brush, it should be highlighted once you go back to using the brush tool again, and that sadly doesn't happen.

[lineweight]

I'll add my name to the list of people who really struggle with how brushes work. It results in a constant level of background frustration/uncertainty in an application that I otherwise rather like.

Firstly, the difficulty of finding what you want when it's so difficult even to see the names of brushes. Secondly, the thing about knowing you can reliably return to the thing you were using 2 minutes ago.

It's especially anti-intuitive behaviour that you select a brush, change its width and then it becomes deselected and then you are somehow using another, unnamed version of it, with no way of finding out what its "parent" brush was, if you've forgotten.

[carrzi]

Hi everyone. This is my first post. Shame it's a negative one. I am fairly new to Photo and thought regarding this brushes issue I might be doing something wrong. Sadly it seems not. Speaking personally, using Photo for art/painting this is not a small thing. Fumbling around trying to work out my brush is a massive block to workflow and for me a deal breaker.

I think Photo is on the whole excellent and I will use it for photo based stuff and general image manipulation, but for art creation, sadly no. People may argue that that's not its prime purpose, but however you use it, the fact that such a large workflow issue has gone unaddressed in 3+ years I find frankly mind boggling.

[dylonfsk]

holy mother nature... i love affinity. i work with publisher, designer and photo and i prefer them over my CS-suite (i really do). it's fascinating how good these programs are - still, it's also mind blowing how frustrating some bugs are - like this one here! fix that affinity!!! fix it - hand it over to james ridson - a true genius! i'm sure he'll fix that in 2 minutes... come oooooon affinity!

[awakenedbyowls]

On 3/10/2017 at 10:14 PM, Alfred said:

 

It should already identify which brush is being used. The fact that it doesn't (on Windows) is a bug.

 

Has this been fixed yet?

I've noticed this before. I'm trying out different brushes to see what one I like, then I find one so I think - I'll just add that to my personal brush folder. Oh but what brush is it? I can't remember which one I just selected and it's not highlighting it 😒

It seems to deselect the brush when I change the brush size, unless I change it in the editing panel. I guess I'm just going to have to learn to live with this counter work-flow feature..

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, awakenedbyowls said:

It seems to deselect the brush when I change the brush size...

That is because the panel shows brush presets, so as soon as you change the size (or any other brush attribute) you are no longer using that brush preset, so it is deselected in the panel.

There must be a better way to handle this but so far they have not changed it. 

[carl123]

6 hours ago, awakenedbyowls said:

then I find one so I think - I'll just add that to my personal brush folder.

 

6 hours ago, awakenedbyowls said:

It seems to deselect the brush when I change the brush size

If you click on the More button, you will have a Duplicate button which will recreate the brush in the current brush category at the new brush size. You can then move that to your personal brush folder.

Alternatively, select your personal brush folder before clicking Duplicate and it will be created there.

[R C-R]

49 minutes ago, carl123 said:

If you click on the More button, you will have a Duplicate button which will recreate the brush in the current brush category at the new brush size. You can then move that to your personal brush folder.

Alternatively, select your personal brush folder before clicking Duplicate and it will be created there.

That is useful for some workflows but it can quickly result in so many different brush presets & categories that it becomes very difficult to manage them all, or even to give them all meaningful names.

And of course, if you don't want to create a new brush before changing any of the current brush attributes, & just want to return to the brush preset you were using before changing anything, there is currently no way to do that.

I think a possible fix for this might be to add a 'last brush' button to the brushes panel. It could toggle between using the current brush attributes & those of the last brush preset used, & automatically switch the panel to the brush category of the last used brush preset & highlight it.

Anybody think this would work?

[Old Bruce]

5 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I think a possible fix for this might be to add a 'last brush' button to the brushes panel. It could toggle between using the current brush attributes & those of the last brush preset used, & automatically switch the panel to the brush category of the last used brush preset & highlight it.

That is a great idea.

 

6 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Anybody think this would work?

Should be possible, we have to actually select a brush from the brushes panel, I don't know if the brush has information about its category though. But once I select a brush there could be stored information to be used with a toggle back. Doubt the toggle forward would be a simple job in that all the little changes would need to be stored as well.

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

But once I select a brush there could be stored information to be used with a toggle back. Doubt the toggle forward would be a simple job in that all the little changes would need to be stored as well.

I guess it is not absolutely necessary to include the toggle function (so the button would in effect be a one-way switch to go back to the last used brush preset) but I think it would be much more useful if it did.

Besides, it is already storing the state of every brush attribute after each brush stroke is completed (because the next stroke starts with those attributes) so all it needs to do is not discard that data ... I think.

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

I think it would be much more useful if it did.

As do I.

If we had this functionality I would be continuously wanting to go back just to double check which brush I started with. So I would hate to find that I have lost the little/big changes I made to it after I continue using my edited brush.

[awakenedbyowls]

I'm also experiencing really bad lag when changing brush size. Whether it's with the scroll wheel on my XP-Pen or using keyboard shortcuts - I have to sit and wait 5-10 seconds for it to respond. The pen shows the pattern on the screen, which is handy but so often I find myself playing around with the scroll wheel and it lags and I don't know which way is smaller or bigger and the next thing I'm sitting waiting and looking at three concentric circles because the brush size has expanded to bigger than my screen. I've just had to shut the software down several times using task manager because it just locks up.

I think this appears to be a problem with the XP-Pen though.

[NPriore]

I used to make a living as a programmer analyst and it's mind boggling that this is a problem that continues for years.
Every time I find myself looking at the brushes panel trying to figure out which brush I was using because it is no longer highlighted, I feel like I'm getting punked. 
I mean, why not just assign the name of the last brush selected to a variable and display that name on the status bar each time the brush tool is active?
Every other art application I have ever used, and I've used a bunch, always has some functionality that allows the user to see what brush was last selected.
How can Affinity be so good at so much, and yet so bad at something this miniscule?

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, NPriore said:

I mean, why not just assign the name of the last brush selected to a variable and display that name on the status bar each time the brush tool is selected?

Sounds like a good idea but since there can be hundreds of brush presets stored in dozens of different brush categories, just displaying the name may not be of much help if you want to reuse the same brush preset.

Worse, many brush parameters can be changed on the fly after a brush preset has been selected, so the name of the preset won't necessarily correspond to what the brush created the last time it was used.

Personally, I think they need to rethink the whole brush implementation, perhaps adding a separate Brush Manager feature of some sort.

[Old Bruce]

14 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Personally, I think they need to rethink the whole brush implementation, perhaps adding a separate Brush Manager feature of some sort.

I can support that idea.

Brush name, from which category and an indication if it has been altered to start with.