PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop it?

[skoobey]

So... um one of those silly questions.

I never really work with special brushes(I mean I do change scattering, pattern, transfer and shape dynamics, but all using the default round brush).

What keeps happening all day today is that PS switches between brushes while I am working and it is very frustrating to say the least. I just cant find the darn answer anywhere.

I guess I am hitting some button combo, I just can't figure out which one. I x my swatches and use brackets and shift+brackets to change the size and hardness (now I know PS has the hard and soft brush presets and when I change hardness it tends to jump form one to the other- how do i stop it from jumping from a default round brush to a sampled brush that is completely unrelated?).

So my questions are:

1. How do I only have one brush in the brush panel(those little thumbnails, I know how to add brushes and make new ones, but there are always 20 or so default ones between which the PS keeps swithcing without my control, you know because of the airbrush and those options, which I don't use btw, so any hack to lock them out?).

2. What is the actual shortcut that I may be hitting? Any ideas? (No I don't have actions of that sort).

I guess I'm just confused with the darn keys I must be hitting and then it goes between brushes, I am not a newbie in the brush panel lol. It's not the "." and ",", I am not pressing those at any point, and my computer language is English lol.

[klev]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

I'm not sure what shortcut you're accidentally hitting, but I also set my top pen button to right click. It brings up a brush palette by your cursor. Don't use the 3 click method to change size or hardness. It also works on mouse-over.

Photoshop has a preset manager. You'll see that you can load all kinds of brush sets. Make a brush set. Add only the brushes you want to it. Set that as the default brush set.

[skoobey]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

There is only one brush in my brush presets just for this reason, and I don't get what I'm hitting, either.

I don't use the 3 click method, in fact I have buttons on my pen disabled because I was pressing them accidentally way to often. I use brackets to change size (I only set hardness for masks etc). I've also went to default presets etc, it keeps randomizing it. Maybe i should just reinstall the darn thing.

[klev]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

Reinstalling isn't a sound way to fix preferences.

Back up preferences. I'm not sure how they're stored on windows. Trash the ones in the current location. Photoshop will recreate the file with default preferences. See if the problem persists. Otherwise I guess you could uninstall the other brushes. I would have to look up how to do that again.

[skoobey]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

Reinstalled it, and applied my saved workspace and actions and it's fine once again. However, I don't think this was a bug.

Anyone has any idea what shortcut combo may result in this? It's bound to happen again.

[lurch]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

I've found that, when Photoshop acts weird, closing and opening it fixes it often. At least that solves the problem most of the time. Then I start the ritual of starting (from scratch) the computer. I have a Mac.

[klev]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

Reinstalled it, and applied my saved workspace and actions and it's fine once again. However, I don't think this was a bug.

Anyone has any idea what shortcut combo may result in this? It's bound to happen again.

Of course. Reinstalling it does delete all preference files and caches. It's just less time consuming to remove those specific things rather than reinstall the entire application.

[skoobey]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

Of course. Reinstalling it does delete all preference files and caches. It's just less time consuming to remove those specific things rather than reinstall the entire application.

You don't say. I just can't fo the life of me recreate what it was that I enabled which initiated the whole ordeal. Seems to me like the brackets were both changing the size of the brush and going between brushes instead of "." and ",".

[klev]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

You don't say. I just can't fo the life of me recreate what it was that I enabled which initiated the whole ordeal. Seems to me like the brackets were both changing the size of the brush and going between brushes instead of "." and ",".

That sort of stuff is set by preferences, which can be recreated at runtime. You shouldn't have to reinstall an application to fix that. You should be able to just trash preferences if the problem ever returns. It takes a few seconds as opposed to possibly many minutes for all of the uninstaller scripts followed by installation scripts.

[lurch]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

Photoshop is a complicated program, and sometimes acts weird, as in the case of acting like the OPs post, and I find that opening and closing it solves the problem most times. No need to reinstall.

[skoobey]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

Yep, reset preferences (I have never done that, where is that? under settings?, or under window?). Or, alternatively, load my gun and just shoot the darn computer

[Doug Nelson]

Re: PS changing brushes mid-workflow.How do I stop

Hold down ctrl-opt-shift (or ctrl-alt-shift) before and during Photoshop startup. A menu will pop up asking if you really want to clear all settings. You can let go of the keys then.