Saving to legacy format expands custom brush strokes

I don't ever recall ths happening. I have a CS5 file, and if I save it to CS2, CS3, or CS4, the custom brush strokes get expanded. They're very simple brushes, not Bristle brushes. I can understand it happening if I was trying to save to v. 8, but not a newer version. Is there some setting in my save dialog I'm missing?

It seems to be happening with Art Brushes I create, but not with ones that come with Illustrator. In the attached image, the top left object is what I used to make the brush. Undernesth that is a brush stroke. On the right is the Outline view after saving to CS3. The brush strokes below are made with a default Illustrator Art Brush.

Similar Messages

Custom brush strokes in AE?

I have ideas for animation with fancy brush strokes. Brush strokes i know i have in photoshop. But from what i have found thus far, I am not able to bring in Photoshop brush stokes into AE. Does anyone know the best solution to animate with brush strokes other than the default ones, or a great work around?
Thanks
john

Well alright then. Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I appreciate it. I'm off now to find a tutorial on Particle Systems
John

Need info about making brush strokes into objects

I have been using a Wacom graphics tablet and Freehand to create my illustrations for many years (since Freehand v.2). Since Freehand's days are obviously numbered, I have finally decided to make the switch. So far, it hasn't been that difficult, but I seem to get stuck on one problem, and for me, it is a pretty big one.
In Freehand, I select the "variable stroke" tool in order to make a variable width line. It actually doesn't make a stroke, though. It makes a shape. I can then select the points anywhere on the edge of the shape and make adjustments.
In Illustrator, I do basically the same thing. I make a stroke, and the more pressure I put on the tablet the thicker the line gets. So far, so good. But, I can't do any adjustments to the thickness, make the ends of the line taper to a point, etc. So in order to make that stroke into a shape (with points along the outside edge) that I can adjust, I have to select the stroke, go to Object, then Expand Appearance for each stroke I make. This is a tremendous timewaster for me.
My question: Is there any way to make the "Expand Appearance" function stay on so that every stroke I make is automatically converted to a shape? Or, is there another function in Illustrator CS1 that I can select that will make all of my strokes shapes as I draw them?
If it will help, you can look at some of my work to see how I use the Variable Stroke tool and how essential it is to my style of illustration at: http://www.norrishallstudio.com

Norris,
Illustrator 7 and earlier drew all brush strokes as filled shapes. (It only had calligraphic brushes.) The live centerline arrived in AI 8, along with the other brush types.
While Illustrator does not have any "auto Expand" option, and one could theoretically be added, I wonder if it might not instead be preferable to give direct user interface control over the data collected by the tablet.
For example, take the following brush stroke:
If expanded, it would look like this:
But even though the individual anchor points of the fill shape would then be editable, it would still not be convenient to do most kinds of editing. The centerline kind of edits would become very difficult. But even doing things that preserve the centerline, such as thickening the stroke or adjusting the apparent pen tilt, you would have to move anchor points on both sides, possibly adding some, adjusting handle lengths, etc.
What if there was an option, possibly available via a button on the Control Palette when a brush stroke was selected, to show control handles for the pressure and other tablet data, something like this:
The controls would have sensitive regions that activated different kinds of variation, similar to how the Bounding Box transform controls do. Possibly it would be workable to control them via the Direct Select tool, but if that turned out to interfere too much with other Direct Select tool operations (such as adjusting the direction handles of the centerline, which would be likely to often be near the pressure controls), then there could be a dedicated tool or mode for adjusting them.
There are up to 5 kinds of tablet data that are collected at each sample point: pressure, tilt, bearing, rotation, and stylus barrel pressure. But only at most four can have meaning for any brush stroke, since there are at most four brush options that can be assigned tablet data to vary by. (For calligraphic brushes, the options are angle, roundness and diameter. For scatter brushes, they are size, spacing, scatter and rotation.)
If the tablet data controls had the I-beam shape shown above, there are four easily distinguishable aspects of the control: its length, its angle relative to the centerline, the width of the crossbars, and the tilt of the crossbars relative to the I-beam vertical.
(One could imagine assigning more variation, such as controlling the two crossbars independently, or moving the I-beam offcenter, but the more variables one allows, the trickier it gets to manipulate.) One could say that the length controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the diameter or size of the brush, the I-beam angle controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the brush angle or rotation, the crossbar width controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the brush spacing or roundness, and the crossbar tilt controlled whichever tablet data point was attached to the scatter distance of a scatter brush. (One could also imagine calligraphic brushes having a symmetry setting, that controlled whether the brush shape was elliptical or squashed like a pear, and attach that to the crossbar tilt.)
Since there would be way too much visual clutter to show every sample point, I think it should be sufficient to show them at anchor points, and possibly at max and min values for the variable data. If the user wanted to gain control at a position where there was no marker displayed, they could always add an anchor point.
Although I am calling it "tablet data", a path drawn with a mouse or with one of the shape tools could still have the controls. It would start initally with all "average" values since no data was collected, and tablet data would be artificially constructed by moving the controls and then saved.
If controls like that were available for live brush strokes, would you still prefer to auto-expand your brush strokes on mouse up instead of leaving them live?
(For all I know, there may be some third-party plugin that already provides some such controls. The tablet data can be accessed and modified through the AITabletData suite in the public SDK.)

Custom brush issues

How can I make custom brushes stop doing this on corners and start looking more natural. (see image)
all 3 of these are a simple stroke

The ugly miters are just the way ArtBrushes work at cornerPoints. Should be cleaned up when you are done with your drawing, by Expanding the Brush strokes and applying the Merge Pathfinder.
The voids are due to the fact that the Even/Odd Fill Rule was applied to the path(s) used for the ArtBrush when it was created:
JET

Brush strokes disappear upon to Flash

I've created an Illustrator CS3 illustration that includes a few different art brush strokes at different line weights.
The brush strokes that appear small (small in size/shape/width) in the file disappear entirely when I import the file onto the stage in Flash. Thicker brush strokes look fine.
I tried expanding the brush strokes (turning them into polygons) before import but they still disappear when brought into Flash.
Does anyone know why this is or if there's a workaround?
Thanks,
Joe

Hi Wade,
Thanks for your quick response.
I tried importing it as a symbol into Flash but the small brush strokes still disappeared.
A hint to what might be causing the problem: When I enlarge the artwork in Illustrator by 500%, some of the smaller brush strokes that disappeared earlier suddenly appear successfully after importing to Flash. Not all of them. Enlarging the artwork even further adds a few more brush strokes but some of the tiny ones still drop out.
Can I e-mail you the file directly rather than posting it on the public forum?

Custom Brush; saving/retrieving

Hello Al!.
I just discovered CUSTOM BRUSHES in the newest vers. of Flash CC. Thanks, Adobe. Been waiting for 15 years for something like this!
QUESTION:
How do I save and retrieve my custom brush?
(I tried sync-ing through preferences, but upon reopening the program there is NO CUSTOM brush). This has to be a mistake, right? I mean there's NO WAY they'd implement this feature then not be able to retrieve the brush later in another "session".
Any guidance appreciated
Lippy

Hi Lippy,
The custom brushes are preserved for later use. The newly created custom brush shapes are getting added to the Brush Shape drop down and can be synced to the cloud based on your Sync Options in your application Preferences>Sync Settings>Sync Options > Custom Brushes
Please learn more about Creating / Editing / Syncing Custom Brushes at Flash Professional Help | Custom Brushes
Thanks!
Mohan

Setting up Custom Brushes and ToolSets

I created a custom panel using configurator. In that custom panel I created a pop-up panel button, but the pop-up panel button doesn't trigger a pop up panel ? I want the pop up panel to have two tabs one to save custom brushes and custom tool settings, and those panels which save custom tool brushes and custom tool settings, saved with the custom panel.
The results is the custom tool panel that I created with the custom pop-up can be loaded into photoshop as a extension with the custom tool brushes and custom tool settings along with it, so it's not tied directly within photoshop but rather with the extension, I hope I made myself clear.

Hi,
When you export Configurator panel to photoshop, it will generate a file named "untitle-1.mxi", this is the Extension Manager package template.
Open it with a text editor you will see this piece of XML
    <files>
        <file source="content" destination="$panels/untitled-1"/>
    </files>
I think you can add something like these:
<file source="mybrushes" destination="$brushes"/>
<file source="mytools" destination="$tools"/>
The full list of the predefined variables can be found in file c:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Configuration\XManConfig.xml
This is a list:
    <VariableForExMan>
        <Data key="EmStorePath">$SharedRibsDataFolder/Adobe/Extension Manager</Data>
        <Data key="$photoshopappfolder">$installfolder</Data>
        <Data key="$pluginsfolder">$photoshopappfolder/Plug-Ins</Data>
        <Data key="$presetsfolder">$photoshopappfolder/Presets</Data>
        <Data key="$platform">Win</Data>
        <Data key="$actions">$presetsfolder/Actions</Data>
        <Data key="$blackandwhite">$presetsfolder/Black and White</Data>
        <Data key="$brushes">$presetsfolder/Brushes</Data>
        <Data key="$channelmixer">$presetsfolder/Channel Mixer</Data>
        <Data key="$colorbooks">$presetsfolder/Color Books</Data>
        <Data key="$colorrange">$presetsfolder/Color Range</Data>
        <Data key="$colorswatches">$presetsfolder/Color Swatches</Data>
        <Data key="$contours">$presetsfolder/Contours</Data>
        <Data key="$curves">$presetsfolder/Curves</Data>
        <Data key="$customshapes">$presetsfolder/Custom Shapes</Data>
        <Data key="$duotones">$presetsfolder/Duotones</Data>
        <Data key="$exposure">$presetsfolder/Exposure</Data>
        <Data key="$gradients">$presetsfolder/Gradients</Data>
        <Data key="$huesat">$presetsfolder/Hue Sat</Data>
        <Data key="$imagestatistics">$presetsfolder/Image Statistics</Data>
        <Data key="$keyboardshortcuts">$presetsfolder/Keyboard Shortcuts</Data>
        <Data key="$layouts">$presetsfolder/Layouts</Data>
        <Data key="$lenscorrection">$presetsfolder/Lens Correction</Data>
        <Data key="$levels">$presetsfolder/Levels</Data>
        <Data key="$liquifymeshes">$presetsfolder/Liquify Meshes</Data>
        <Data key="$menucustomization">$presetsfolder/Menu Customization</Data>
        <Data key="$optimizedcolors">$presetsfolder/Optimized Colors</Data>
        <Data key="$optimizedoutputSettings">$presetsfolder/Optimized Output Settings</Data>
        <Data key="$optimizedsettings">$presetsfolder/Optimized Settings</Data>
        <Data key="$patterns">$presetsfolder/Patterns</Data>
        <Data key="$reducenoise">$presetsfolder/Reduce Noise</Data>
        <Data key="$replacecolor">$presetsfolder/Replace Color</Data>
        <Data key="$scripts">$presetsfolder/Scripts</Data>
        <Data key="$selectivecolor">$presetsfolder/Selective Color</Data>
        <Data key="$shadowhighlight">$presetsfolder/Shadow Highlight</Data>
        <Data key="$smartsharpen">$presetsfolder/Smart Sharpen</Data>
        <Data key="$styles">$presetsfolder/Styles</Data>
        <Data key="$textures">$presetsfolder/Textures</Data>
        <Data key="$tools">$presetsfolder/Tools</Data>
        <Data key="$variations">$presetsfolder/Variations</Data>
        <Data key="$webphotogallery">$presetsfolder/Web Photo Gallery</Data>
        <Data key="$workspaces">$presetsfolder/Workspaces</Data>
        <Data key="$zoomify">$presetsfolder/Zoomify</Data>
            <Data key="$hueandsaturation">$presetsfolder/Hue and Saturation</Data>
            <Data key="$lights">$presetsfolder/Lights</Data>
            <Data key="$materials">$presetsfolder/Materials</Data>
            <Data key="$meshes">$presetsfolder/Meshes</Data>
            <Data key="$rendersettings">$presetsfolder/Render Settings</Data>
            <Data key="$volumes">$presetsfolder/Volumes</Data>
            <Data key="$widgets">$presetsfolder/Widgets</Data>
        <Data key="$localesfolder">$photoshopappfolder/Locales</Data>
        <Data key="$additionalplugins">$localesfolder/$LOCALE/Additional Plug-ins</Data>
        <Data key="$additionalpresets">$localesfolder/$LOCALE/Additional Presets</Data>
        <Data key="$localeskeyboardshortcuts">$localesfolder/$LOCALE/Additional Presets/$platform/Keyboard Shortcuts</Data>
        <Data key="$localesmenucustomization">$localesfolder/$LOCALE/Additional Presets/$platform/Menu Customization</Data>
        <Data key="$localesworkspaces">$localesfolder/$LOCALE/Additional Presets/$platform/Workspaces</Data>
        <Data key="$automate">$pluginsfolder/Automate</Data>
        <Data key="$digimarc">$pluginsfolder/Digimarc</Data>
        <Data key="$displacementmaps">$pluginsfolder/Displacement Maps</Data>
        <Data key="$effects">$pluginsfolder/Effects</Data>
        <Data key="$extensions">$pluginsfolder/Extensions</Data>
        <Data key="$fileformats">$pluginsfolder/File Formats</Data>
        <Data key="$filters">$pluginsfolder/Filters</Data>
        <Data key="$imagestacks">$pluginsfolder/Image Stacks</Data>
        <Data key="$importexport">$pluginsfolder/Import-Export</Data>
        <Data key="$measurements">$pluginsfolder/Measurements</Data>
        <Data key="$panels">$pluginsfolder/Panels</Data>
        <Data key="$parser">$pluginsfolder/Parser</Data>
            <Data key="$3dengines">$pluginsfolder/3D Engines</Data>
        <Data key="$lightingstyles">$pluginsfolder/Filters/Lighting Styles</Data>
        <Data key="$matlab">$photoshopappfolder/MATLAB</Data>
        <Data key="UserExtensionFolder">$photoshopappfolder</Data>
        <Data key="$photoshop">$UserDataFolder/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS5/Configuration</Data>
        <Data key="DisplayName">Photoshop CS5 32</Data>
        <Data key="ProductName">Photoshop32</Data>
        <Data key="FamilyName">Photoshop</Data>
        <Data key="ProductVersion">12.0</Data>
        <Data key="IconPath">Configuration/PS_exman_24px.png</Data>
        <Data key="SupportedInSuite">CS5</Data>
        <Data key="HostNameForCSXS">PHSP</Data>
        <Data key="Bit">32</Data>
    </VariableForExMan>

Create a continuous brush stroke using a base image? (ex. barb wire, vines, etc )

Is it possible to create a brush that makes a stroke that's a continuous image and not just an instanced image as per usual?
I've seen brushes that do this already, I just can't find any information on how they do it.
Here is an Example
Any help is appreciated!

You could do it by stroking a path with a brush multiple times. Once for the body of the wire — you make the wire rough by using a small splatter brush with close spacing, lots of angle jitter, and a tiny amount of scatter jitter.
Then stroke again with the barbs or razors. For regular barbs just give your custom brush a loose spacing, and set angle jitter to Direction. You could make a multi-barbed brush, but not too long, or the angle jitter would move it off the wire. Still doable if wire and barbs are on different layers so you could nudge the barbs back into place with FT warp.
Layer Styles could give the wire depth and realism.
OK... money where your mouth is time... Two examples. I shaped the razer brush with the Pen tool and guides. The Barb brush was shaped from a DL'd image. The wire in both instances is an 80% hard round brush (the slight softening to give it a touch of anti-aliassing on the curves).
Spacing set wide, and Angle jitter to Direction. Those are the only brush dynamics I used. Bevel & Emboss layer style to give it depth, and Colour overlay because it is easier to experiment with layer styles. The barb brush looked a bit thin, so I duplicated the layer a couple of times. The look better on a black BG with the layer styles.
I _tried_ to get the affect in your example image, but couldn't do it convincingly. If I had a better mind's eye view of what I was trying to achieve, I think I'd have been able to do it. But once you have the brush presets made and saved, it's a very quick and easy to do.
If you do happen to have access to Illustrator, the Art Brush is pretty damn clever
Create an Art brush | Adobe Illustrator CC tutorials

Create Custom Brushes?

Hi,
How do I make custom brushes for the brush tool? I can't
even tell where the default brushes are kept in CS3. I have some
png's that I would like to use as brushes and the Styles assets
don't work the same was as the Fireworks CS3 brush tool.
Thanks,
Doug

CyberMartyr wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How do I make custom brushes for the brush tool? I can't
even tell where
> the default brushes are kept in CS3. I have some png's
that I would like to
> use as brushes and the Styles assets don't work the same
was as the Fireworks
> CS3 brush tool.
Fireworks doesn't use the bitmap brushes you have become
accustomed to
in other graphics programs. Instead, they are all "live
effects",
meaning that they remain fully editable. When you customize
one of the
native brush strokes, the resulting new style can be saved in
the Styles
panel.
Linda Rathgeber - Fireworks Community Expert
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/members/8.html

Enabling GPU in CS6 slows down brush strokes

Hello, I'm currently using Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended and I am experiencing a performance issue with the brush tool when the GPU option is enabled in the performance preferences.
When the GPU option is disabled I am able to draw lines and marks very quickly with all of the default brush tools available. Even when options such as scattering and dual brush are turned on simultaneously the brush strokes are rendered so quickly on the canvas it feels instantaneous. This is great for me because I use Photoshop and other programs for digital drawing and painting.
However with the GPU disabled I am unable to use functions such as canvas rotation, flick panning, scrubby zoom and so on - features that I find incredibly useful. Also at different zoom levels images become highly pixelated and smooth lines appear very jagged. This obviously makes images very difficult to work with!
As soon as I turn on the GPU option, even at the most basic setting the brush tool renders much slower across the canvas than when it was turned off. However other operations such as zooming, flick panning, saving etc appear to be very fast.
This is quite confusing (and disappointing) as the brush tool is by far the most important tool I use in Photoshop. I spend more time painting marks and drawing lines than anything else. My understanding is that the brush tool should be just as fast to use (if not faster?) when the graphics processor is enabled as when it is disabled.
Here is the setup I am using:
Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended (64 bit) with latest updates as of 28/11/14
Asus Geforce GTX 560 Direct CU with the latest driver 344.75
16GB available RAM
Intel i7 Quad Core CPU 3.07 GHz
As my GPU does not appear to be working hard at all when Photoshop is running even with advanced settings turned on, I can only guess that this is a problem with the Nvidia driver or Photoshop itself? It seems as if the opengl drawing mode is not communicating properly with the Nvidia driver. That's my guess so far as I'm no tech expert.
I have followed every step of the Photoshop CS6 GPU FAQ multiple times http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cs6-gpu-faq.html
But the problem always persists.
I have also followed the advice of others by turning brush spacing up to 10% or higher which does help a little bit but this obviously does not solve the problem!
I would be extremely grateful if anyone could help me to solve this problem - perhaps someone from Adobe can test this on a similar hardware and software setup? I would be very interested to learn what exactly is going on that is causing the slowdown.
I will also notify Nvidia and see if they are aware of the problem.
Many thanks,
Calum

Yes, it sounds like something is wrong with your video card driver.
Until Apple releases a fix, you can keep OpenGL drawing disabled.

How can I tell which custom brush I have applied to a line?

I've created some custom brushes in Illustrator CC 2014 and applied them to various lines.
Is it possible to know which brush I've applied to a line (like you can see what color a line is by viewing the Color or Swatches Palette). When I activate the stroke the Brushes Palette just sits there, not highlighting anything.

artracer,
Look at Stroke in the Appearance palette.

Which version of flash is best for brush strokes?

Hello,
I am just wondering which version of flash has the best brush strokes. I am using CS6, and it constantly edits my strokes. I heard the older versions of flash have better brush strokes.
I am an animator, and the brush tool is something I constantly use. I might have access to flash CS3 or CS4, and I heard CS3 is pretty close to the macromedia version.
I heard toon boom animate is amazing, but when I tried it, there's no vector lines. Or maybe I am doing something wrong, but my strokes in toon boom animate are pixelated.
I'm basically looking for a version of flash or different software, that has a brush tool that when I draw, it's what I wanted to draw, and doesn't edit my strokes. (By the way, I'm doing frame by frame animation)
Thanks,
Porter

If you are planning an upgrade, Flash Professional CC 2014.1 comes with custom brushes, using which you can custom-make a brush that suits your drawing needs. You can read more about it at:
Flash Professional Help | Custom Brushes
Cheers,
Subash

Custom Brushes

I've downloaded and installed a bunch of free custom brushes from the Internet along with a few brushes I made. It is often difficult to know what the free ones will look like until fully installed.
I am looking for a way to select a bunch of them and delete them from my brush list. So far, I am only able to delete one at a time. I tried shift-clicking and Control-clicking to get multiples, but no luck. Any suggestions?
I'd also like to reorganize them so my favorite texture brushes are in one group and all my rough brushes in one group of brushes. (not physically a "group", but just placed side by side in the list). Is there a way to click and drag them around inside the list?
Lastly, It would be nice to color code my favorite brushes or brush styles, similar to the way you can color code actions. Is this possible?
I am working towards cleaning my brush set up and saving them to a brush set I can save and recall. So far, I am selecting a brush I like, then clicking an open spot at the bottom of the list and letting PS add the new brush with a new name. At that point, I am deleting the old one out of the list.
Any advice would be appreciated.
M. Jackson

I have about 400 brushes sets in my Presets>Brushes folder.
When I go to Preset Manager in an attempt to install one of those sets, the resulting list only shows the set numbers through the letter B.
How can I see the rest of them?
I don't want to install all of them at one time, I just want to be able to choose all of the sets.
How can I do this? I already have Presets Viewer so I know which sets I want to load, I just can't see them in order to load them.
Thanks in advance!
Linda
Edit added 10/22
One workaround that I have considered is to load all of the ones that I can see, remove them from the presets>brushes folder, load another batch, remove those, and so on.
Will removing them from the presets>brushes folder cause them to disappear from the available brushes in Presets Manager?
The downside of this is, of course, having way too many brushes to look through.
Alternatively, perhaps I could creat subfolders in Presets>Brushes, one for brushes starting with numbers, one for brushes starting with A, etc?

Change codepage in OIM reports saved in CSV format (e.g. UTF8 - Win1251)

Hello guys.
I have OIM V.9.1 installed on WebLogic. For some reason my customer would like to have OIM reports saved in CSV format encoded with codepage differ from default UTF8 (actually desired codepage is Windows 1251 but it is doesn't matter). I think that there should be a way to change default codepage for OIM reports via OIM's settings.
There is no any information on it in the documentation.
Does anybody already met this problem? Any help would be highly appreciated.
Regards,
Ivan

Hello guys.
I have OIM V.9.1 installed on WebLogic. For some reason my customer would like to have OIM reports saved in CSV format encoded with codepage differ from default UTF8 (actually desired codepage is Windows 1251 but it is doesn't matter). I think that there should be a way to change default codepage for OIM reports via OIM's settings.
There is no any information on it in the documentation.
Does anybody already met this problem? Any help would be highly appreciated.
Regards,
Ivan

Scale Brush Stroke?

Hello... New to Illustrator...
I'd like to scale a brush stroke. How do I do this? Please see below.
Left is original stroke
Right is resized by pressing shift then pulling box to upper right.
I found on the forum to tick preferences - scale strokes & effects but still not working?
Thank you,
RF

This is the default behavior of brushes. They are "live" and are simply reapplied to your path as you adjust your path (scaling or otherwise). This has nothing to do with scaling strokes or effects -- this is a brush, not a stroke, and not an effect.
To get what I think you want, you will need to do one of the following before you scale the path:
- Select the path and choose Object > Expand Appearance. This will reduce the brush to actual art that will scale as you would expect.
- Turn the path into a Symbol. Then scale the symbol.
- Select the path and click the Options Of Selected Object button that appears at the bottom of the Brushes panel. In the dialog that appears, check the Proportional option.
- Double click the brush in the Brushes panel. In the dialog box that appears, choose the Scale Proportionately setting. This will change the behavior of the brush of course.
Mordy

Saving to legacy format expands custom brush strokes

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