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Brush cursor question


PegoMan

PegoMan

Well-Known Member
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When I use a brush for any procedure I use a circular cursor. My problem is that I can not get the working area of the cursor to fill the circle. It only fills a portion. It would be much easier to move the cursor circle along an edge when painting out a background if the working area filled the cursor. I've watched tutorials where the circle working area fills the entire circle. Maybe that's only in CS6 (I'm using CS5). Any suggestions would be appreciated.
John
 
Check to see if you have pen-pressure activated. (usually an icon on the top menu bar when you're using the brush tool) If you're using a tablet, you should check the tablet settings as well. If pen pressure is one, the pen/mouse will attempt to draw like a real brush/pen. If it's off, Photoshop should fill the entire circle with 100% opacity whenever you click.
 
If your brush 'Hardness' setting is anything lower than 100% then the cursor will denote that with transparency.

A 'Soft' brush will be of a 'Hardness' less than 100%, and most of the default brushes are set to be soft.

brush_hardness_MT_02.png



You can use keyboard shortcuts to change the brush 'Size' and 'Hardness' by holding down Ctrl + Alt and the RIGHT mouse button.

Moving left or right will change the Size, up and down will change the hardness....you'll get a 'Red' (default colour), indicator to show the hardness, but be aware that for some reason Adobe decided not to show the edge of the brush if its transparency is below 50%, so although your brush may LOOK smaller (with hardness turned down), it is in fact the same size as with 100% hardness.

Why Adobe do this I have no idea....but its annoying....and its the same for marquee's too.

brush_hardness_MT_01.png

I've shown the brush size to be equal here but if the transparency is below 50% it will be SHOWN smaller....ignore it.....go by the numbers, not the cursor.

Regards.
MrToM.
 
Thank you both for responding to my question. First of all I am using a wireless Apple mouse and not a graphics tablet. That might be my problem. I can not get the icons on the tool bar to make any difference. I believe they function with a tablet. I increase the opacity to 100%, but I still can't get the circle filled. It did seem to increase but not enough, see image.
If I have to get a graphics table which would you suggest? Is there anything under $100 that would work for basic photo editing? Thanks again, and I hope my image uploading works...this is my first try. - John

cursor2.jpgcursor.jpg

This as close to filling a circular cursor as I can get. I was hoping that I just didn't have a setting somewhere that wasn't turned on. but it looks like it's more than that.
Thanks again - John
 
Check the brush preset palette. There should be an icon on the right tool bar, with three paint brushes on it. You may have to change some settings there to get 100% fill.
 
Fantastic! I followed the thread that you posted and was able solve the problem. It was my Mac's system prefs. I went to System Preferences>Accessibility>Display and I had the cursor size set at one step above the "Normal" setting. I reset it to "Normal" and it works great!

My sincere thanks to all of you who helped!

John
 
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