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why do some brushes have concentric circles?


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Good question, and one that doesn't seem to be documented, from what I can work out, it's an indication/warning that the size of the tool is too large because it only seems to happen when the brush is bigger than the Interfaces workspace. This will happen on the Brush Tools; Vector and Pixel, Smudge Tool, Eraser Tool, Blur Tool, Sharpen Tool, Dodge and Burn Tools and the Inpaint Tool. 

 

On my iMac 27" it seems to hit critical mass; for want of a better phrase, at 408px and with Hardness set to 100% at this size it goes to the concentric circles, at 407px it remains a single circle. If you reduce the Hardness to less than 100% i.e. 99% it will drop back to a single circle.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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That's some pretty good sleuthing, but I think it's more complicated than that. Right now I still get a single circle at 2000 and 100%, and at 3000 I get concentric circles even with the hardness as low as about 35. And earlier today, when I left the message, I really think I was getting concentric circles at around 1200. I'm not absolutely sure of that, but I know I wasn't using a brush size of 2000, and I have to go larger than that right now to get the concentric circles.

...

Ah-ha! It depends on the brush! Using an "effects" brush, as I was doing earlier today, I do get concentric circles around 1200. But I still don't know what it means and how to use it. I understand your conclusion that it's a warning that the brush is too big, but it sure doesn't kick in soon enough; at 2000 that single circle is larger than my monitor screen.

 

I'm looking forward to getting an official explanation.

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Just done a 300dpi doc and sized a brush to 4096px with no concentric circles, 4096px appears to be the max size for a brush, so its definitely on smaller DPI docs that it happens. Might be different on other monitors, my screen res on the none retina iMac is 2560 x1440 on my Retina It's 5120 x 2880

 

@MEB will likely know or be able to find out.

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3 hours ago, ncJohn said:

3000 I get concentric circles even with the hardness as low as about 35

 

It's possible to display the hardness as a concentric circle - is there a connection?

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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7 minutes ago, IanSG said:

 

It's possible to display the hardness as a concentric circle - is there a connection?

 

I don’t think you can have a single concentric circle! That aside, you may be on to something.

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12 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

 

I don’t think you can have a single concentric circle! That aside, you may be on to something.

Excellent!!  A fellow pedant!  But yes, you can - it just has to be concentric with something (the fact that it's another circle is a mere coincidence :))

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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No its not the hardness setting.

 

To test, create a document at 72DPI then press the ] key until the circle gets soooooo big it suddenly pops to Concentric circles, depending on your screen res you can do the same thing with a 300DPI document and it won't do it because it looks like the upper limit for a brush or anything of an ilk is 4096px, so if I set my document to 300DPI I cannot get the concentric circles because the brush cannot go large enough.

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Document set to 192DPI

Brush size: 3403.px

Concentric circles: Appeared

5b0013bcd8737_ScreenShot1.thumb.png.9a9f20264acced4cd45f69b880cfc3f7.png

 

Document: 300DPI

Brush size Max: 4096px

Concentric Circles: Do not appear

5b001390b4869_ScreenShot.thumb.png.cb1f352304a2f7c702faed341abedd27.png

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

No its not the hardness setting.

Agreed, but the hardness setting has an effect on the largest brush size before the concentric circles appear.  Following your example, at 100% hardness it's 1398.1px, at 0% it's exactly twice the size at 2796.2px.  Neither of those values strikes me as being particularly significant, but they must mean something.

 

<edit>

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Document: 300DPI

Brush size Max: 4096px

Concentric Circles: Do not appear

Those values work for me all the way up to a 400DPI  document.

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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6 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

 

I don’t think you can have a single concentric circle! That aside, you may be on to something.

I don't know if it's still going on, but some years ago there was an Olympic category of "solo synchronized swimming." Kind of the same thing. :)

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