CS4 and possibly hard edge brush problem...

[canoflan]

In working in CS4 recently and needing to use a normal, 100% hard edged circular brush to paint on a mask, when I use my mouse, (or wacom pen for that matter but let's stick to the mouse for now) and click with black ink on the mask, using either the normal or full brush cursor in the preferences area, the ink doesn't go to the edge of the brush, but always leaves a buffer area between the edge of the ink and the edge of the brush.

Frankly, this is the way it works regardless whether I am painting on a mask or normal layer with some color.

Here is an example of where you need the ink to go to the edge of the brush. When you are retouching an eye and you need to make that pupil black, when you make the brush edge the size of the pupil you want and click with black ink with the brush on 100%, you need that pupil to be the size of the brush; not smaller. Currently, I have to move the brush around a bit or arbitrarily make the brush larger to match the size I need. This type of hunt and peck stuff in PS isn't acceptable and I am sure I am doing something wrong in the settings.

Now, I didn't have this issue in CS3 and am wondering if I have some setting(s) messed up somewhere.

As you can see, anyone using CS4 for graphics or other use will need to know that when they paint with ink and want a 100% hard edge to go to the edge of the brush, this would be a problem.

Anyone have any suggestions? Anyone experiencing this? Do you think it might be a setting I have in the mask area that affects all brush uses?

Thanks for any help.

[cricket1961]

try turning everyhing off in the brush panel and see what happens.
I am not seeing this issue at all in cs4.

Chris

[canoflan]

Originally Posted by cricket1961

try turning everyhing off in the brush panel and see what happens.
I am not seeing this issue at all in cs4.

Chris

I have done that already. In continuing to review posts to the Adobe forum on CS4, I have seen those with brush edge problems like mine and they have updated the driver on their video card since CS4 is much more interactive with the video card than any previous version.

I will let y'all know if this fixes the problem.

[Doug Nelson]

Is it only on masks, or does it also behave this way on a plain white document. You said to ignore the pen for now, but does the pen also behave this way? Have you tried resetting PS prefs? Is mouse mapping on or off in Wacom prefs?

I can see a slight vertical mispositioning at high brush sizes. The paint seems to drop a couple of pixels below where the cursor is. It could just be antialiasing, though.

[Peter S]

Okay I haven't got CS4, but I imagine its the same.
Check you preferences for Display and Cursors and see whether "Normal brush Tip" is checked or "Full size brush Tip" is checked, try swapping them about.

Peter

[mistermonday]

If you have the GPU option enabled, try turning it off. I recall reading a note from Adobe that an known issue with CS4 is that Brushes can be clipped if they are over 64 pixels in size.
Regards, Murray

[rogleale]

Hi Canoflan,
To get a hard edged brush hold the shift key down whilst you click on the 'right' bracket key. To make a brush softer hold down the shift again and use the 'left' bracket key.

Roger

[rogleale]

Your mention of eyes made me think again. A very useful tip for Windows users is to find the size of brush you need to fill an area, say a pupil. Put the brush cursor on the eye, right click and keep it pressed, press the Alt key, and drag the cursor. The brush tip will resize as you drag until you release the right click.
For a Mac user the right click is changed to Option plus shift I think!

Roger

[weshoot]

If you are still having problems in CS4, I have found that a lot of them can be cleared up by doing the same thing as with earlier versions on a PC (and I understand that Macs work the pretty much the same). Close Photoshop. Go to documents and settings>your user folder>Application Data>Adobe>Adobe Photoshop CS4>Adobe Photoshop CS4 settings>Adobe Photoshop CS4 pref.psp. Delete the Adobe Photoshop CS4 pref.psp file. Reopen Photoshop. This will force Photoshop to rewrite the preferences file again with the clean default. Another thing you might try is that once you have Photoshop set the way you want, and everything seems to be working fine, copy the preferences file elsewhere on your computer. Then, instead of having to start from scratch, you will have your preferences to copy back and overwrite the corrupt file. It works for me.

Gary Silverstein