Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: larkis on January 19, 2013, 02:49:13 pm

Title: Interactive brush scaling in lightroom
Post by: larkis on January 19, 2013, 02:49:13 pm
I'm using a wacom tablet as my input device and would like to scale my brush up and down interactively without using the [ ] keys like I can in photoshop. When using a touch pad on a MacBook it can be done so the functionality is somewhere in the software, but is there a keyboard shortcut/toggle to do this when using a mouse or stylus ?
Title: Re: Interactive brush scaling in lightroom
Post by: John Caldwell on January 22, 2013, 09:30:28 am
I would expect no problem assigning brush size to your rotary dial. With our Intuos5 Small and OSX 10.7, the rotary dial works quite nicely in the left hand to adjust brush diameter, while stylus pressure meters brush flow from zero to the maximum set in the Flow slider.

John Caldwell
Title: Re: Interactive brush scaling in lightroom
Post by: Rand47 on January 22, 2013, 01:25:50 pm
I'm using a wacom tablet as my input device and would like to scale my brush up and down interactively without using the [ ] keys like I can in photoshop. When using a touch pad on a MacBook it can be done so the functionality is somewhere in the software, but is there a keyboard shortcut/toggle to do this when using a mouse or stylus ?

I, too, am an Intuous 5 user.  And, while the brush scaling can be assigned to the ring, I have a better way (for me) to do on-the-fly scaling of the adjusmtent brush size.
I'm a PC person, and my normal mouse has a scroll wheel on it.  (Not sure if this will directly translate to Mac people.)  In normal operations the scroll wheel zooms the scale of the brush larger/smaller.
So, when using the pen for adjustment brushes, I "dock" my mouse on a nice thick "washcloth" size microfiber towel (so that the mouse doesn't "move" at all) and use the scroll wheel to make brush size adjustments while my other hand has the pen and is "drawing" the adjustment area.  I get very fluid changes in size "while drawing."  A good example of where this is helpful would be in using a highlight recovery brush on a highlight section of a tree branch that is getting progressively smaller.  Works GREAT.
Give it a try.  I find it much more precise than the somewhat fiddly ring control on the I-5 where the tactile touch is less certain, and certainly more fluid than the choppy action one gets using the bracket keys.

Another trick I've found useful is to assign the lower rocker switch on the pen to "precision mode."  This helps with not only very precise use of the adjustment brush, but when using the pen to adjust sliders I get "single digit" changes with "pen on slider" when I press the lower rocker.

Rand
Title: Re: Interactive brush scaling in lightroom
Post by: John Caldwell on January 23, 2013, 11:55:20 am
Why not email Adobe and put it on their features list.

I've asked for bezel masking.

Regards
David

What feature would we request, David? Brush scaling works now, and as we've seen above, a few different input devices permit scaling.

Can you elaborate on bezel masking and how you'd use it?

Thanks,

John Caldwell