When I change a brush setting for 1 brush it changes settings for all brushes - WHY?

What version of photoshop and operating system are you using?

Are you using a tablet with pen pressure on in the brush settings?

If your using photoshop cs5/cs6 and a pressure tablet, then the override setings in the tool options bar when enabled

can make your brushes act in unexpected ways.

Also, if your just changing the brush tip shape and not the preset, then the settings will stay the same between brushes.

Are you changing the brushes using the Brush Tip Shape or from the Brush Presets panel?

Changing the tip shape will keep the same settings (not the same as changing presets) while locking the settings in the Brush panel will keep the lock settings between brush presets.

In older versions of photoshop 7 to cs4 the brush presets and brush tip shape were in the same panel.

Also, the photoshop manual explains the different settings:

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/topics/drawing-painting.html

Maybe if you post a screenshot(s) to show the issue it may be something else.

I've just come across this thread; I'm having the same problem. Essentially, the custom brush properties won't lock, but keep reverting to the settings of one specific custom brush. I have (let's say) two brushes, one textured and with opacity set to pen pressure, the other just a hard tip, no other settings enabled. when switching between them the textured brush settings always remain. Also the preview image for all the custom brushes are the same (the textured one). I have tried fiddling around with the lock settings, but am not quite sure if this is the problem…

This seems to happen only with custom brushes: switching from a custom to a standard ps brush doesn’t cause the standard brush to keep the custom qualities.

I'm on a samsung series 8 tablet, photoshop cs6 and windows 8. Any help or ideas would be welcome!

It is frustrating! Have you managed to find any information on why this might be happening at all? I did a fair bit of searching, and this was the only thread I found where the same problem was happening. As it is only the custom brushes where the problem is, rather than the standard brushes, I wonder if there is a way to save the brushes differently in some way?... I'm reaching, but I can't think of a way to sort it out!

I guess that's our hope for now! It seems as if there's a few kinks to work out before photoshop and tablets make the perfect partners (my particular pet hate is that when making short strokes, they often get interprted as 'hold for right click's' - grr.)

Not to discourage you, but I'm using CS6 myself; butI hope it works for you - good luck!

Hello again! I think I figured out the problem; previously,I'd been creating brushes from the brush preset screen (where the list of brushes with their profile pic is). Instead, I set up the brush I wanted on the 'edit' screen (the bit where there's the options to alter scattering,transfer etc), and THEN create a new brush from this screen (by clicking the 'create new brush' button at the bottom of the edit screen). By doing it this way, the brush settings stayed set between switching brushes.

Also, I don't think this is related to the brush problem, but wacom's new feel driver (7.1.1-12) solved every other problem I had in photoshop; good times!

The set up is certianly on the confusing side!

I think I figured out the problem, I too was having this absolutely horrible frustrating feature in photoshop. So essentially you have your brush window and the brush preset window.

Right now I have the "Hard Round" brush selected, what I would like to do is create a brush that applies pen pressure so that I can have a nice detailing brush and a brush that keeps the specified px size. So what you will do next is go to the brush window where you have the different presets, (shape dynamics, scattering etc.) and change them to what you would like.

I've changed the settings for this particular brush to have both pressure sensitive shape dynamics and a scattering preset. Now you must go to the top right corner of this window and click the drop down menu.

Now click "New Brush Preset", I have named this new version of the Hard Round brush as "Hard Round W/ Scatter & Shape Dynamics". Now this adds the new version of the brush to my presets library of brushes both with their own individual settings you have specified.

If I understand correctly you can change the brush settings individually for any quick changes you want but once you change to a new brush those applied settings will revert back to the original settings. After seeing this I understand this is so you can't potentially jack up brush settings that may have taken a lot of tweaking to get the perfect brush. I really hope this helps as I was about to go insane until I figured this out!

Cheers!