Question: In Designer Brushes Panel, what is the Brush icon next to some brushes?

[nwhit]

Just digging into Designer's brushes and noticed that some have a brush icon to the right of the stroke example, but for the life of me, I cannot find in the Help or online what that icon means and why it is only shown with some of the raster brushes. Could someone explain what it means? Thanks.

 

[R C-R]

From the Photo (not Designer!!!) Modifying Brushes help topic, there is this:

Quote

• Associated Tool — sets the tool which is automatically selected when the brush is selected. Select from the pop-up menu. The associated tool's icon will appear next to the brush on the Brushes panel.

If you import the Designer "Watercolors" brushes into Photo, & in Photo edit one of those brushes, for example the "Fine to Wide Spongy" you will see an "Associated Tool" setting absent from editing the same brush in Designer:

That explains why the icon is there -- but at least for me this feature does not work as the help topic suggests it should in either app: instead of automatically selecting (in this case) the Paint Brush Tool when I click on that brush in the Brushes panel, it either does nothing if no brush tool is currently selected or if another brush tool is currently selected, just sets its attributes to that of the associated  brush.

Of course, maybe I have misunderstood how it it is supposed to work. If so, I hope one of the staff or another user will clue me in about that.

EDIT: No sooner did I write the above about it not working, I noticed that when I had a different brush tool selected in Photo, sometimes the tool did change to the Paint Brush Tool if I selected one of the Watercolor brushes associated with that brush tool ... but only for some of the brush tools & not always for them. 

[nwhit]

11 hours ago, R C-R said:

That explains why the icon is there --

I checked one of the Designer brushes that is also (apparently, since it has the same name) in Photo and it does not have that option selected (no associated tool is selected). Yet in Designer, that brush has a "Brush" icon next to it. Of course, there is no option to select an "associated tool" in Designer, so still not clear why some brushes in Designer's Raster brush panel have that little icon and others don't. And I have not at this point imported any Designer brushes into Photo.

As an aside, where is Serif storing brushes, etc.? I'm not seeing anything in the typical Application Support directory.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, nwhit said:

Of course, there is no option to select an "associated tool" in Designer, so still not clear why some brushes in Designer's Raster brush panel have that little icon and others don't.

As I understand it, it is up to the designer of the brush whether to associate it with a particular brush tool or not.

2 hours ago, nwhit said:

As an aside, where is Serif storing brushes, etc.? I'm not seeing anything in the typical Application Support directory.

Where brushes are stored varies by OS & which store the app was purchased from, but for all of them it is in a per user & per app location -- IOW, each user account on the computer has their own set of support files that are not linked to other user accounts or to the other apps. There are two files, one named "raster_brushes.propcol" & the other "vector_brushes.propcol," where (I assume) "propcol" stands for property collection. Propcol files are encoded in a way that makes them easy for the app to use but almost impossible for users to understand, so there is not much point in opening them with a suitable app that can show their contents.

[nwhit]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

As I understand it, it is up to the designer of the brush whether to associate it with a particular brush tool or not.

Do I understand correctly then that the brush icon means nothing and was simply added to the brush example graphic by Serif when they designed some of the stock raster brushes for Designer? It does not automatically select the brush tool when I select a brush with that icon (Designer/Raster brushes), so still wonder if it serves any purpose.

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Where brushes are stored varies by OS & which store the app was purchased from

Understood. As a long-time Apple hardware/software trainer/consultant, I'm familiar with "normal" pref locations. Typically in the past few years, the Application Support folder contained most of these (and still does for Affinity Publisher). But I do see the newer trend in using the Containers directory, then burying things way deep down. So thanks for giving me the file name(s). At least now I know where they are stored in case of emergency! 

Still a mystery as to what that stupid little brush icon is on some stock brushes in Designer/Raster brushes panel! Hopefully Affinity staff can answer this mystery! 

[R C-R]

27 minutes ago, nwhit said:

Do I understand correctly then that the brush icon means nothing and was simply added to the brush example graphic by Serif when they designed some of the stock raster brushes for Designer?

Just my guess but I think those brushes are supposed to switch to the Paint Brush tool in both Photo & Designer when selected, but something is broken & (from what I can tell) the "Associated Tool" feature doesn't work at all in Designer & is hit or miss in Photo.

Regarding the differing pref file locations, I think part of it has to do with sandboxing & simplifying granting permissions to apps to access items outside their sandbox. For those in ~/Library/Containers/ that I checked, somewhere in their sometimes deeply nested subfolders I see a number of aliases to folders they need access to. I hope that makes sense.

[nwhit]

20 hours ago, R C-R said:

Just my guess but I think those brushes are supposed to switch to the Paint Brush tool in both Photo & Designer when selected, but something is broken & (from what I can tell) the "Associated Tool" feature doesn't work at all in Designer & is hit or miss in Photo.

Aha! I think you are correct! I just downloaded a purchased set of raster brushes and a couple of them have a "smudge tool" icon next to them. When I select one of those, it does auto-select the Smudge Tool in both Photo and Designer. That said, still in Designer Brush Editing, there is no option for setting or changing the Associated Tool like there is in Photo. Curious! But at least answers my main question I guess. Unless Affinity Staff can shed further light on this issue????