Customizing Photoshop’s Cursors
Last week a student in one of my workshops asked me how she could determine exactly which part of the image her Photoshop tool would affect when she clicked. The reason she was uncertain was because she was using Photoshop’s Standard cursor display.
The Brush tool with the Standard cursor.
The figure to the left shows the Brush tool with the Standard cursor that displays an icon of the active tool. When I clicked with it to paint this red dot, I had no way of previewing how large the dot would be. I also had to assume that the center of the dot would fall at the tip of the brush. The same thing happens when you’re using a selection tool and you need to click in an exact location to select something. (The student who asked about this was using the Patch tool.)
It might seem like a good idea to see an icon of your tool in the cursor, but I personally have never understood it. I usually know which tool I’ve selected so I don’t really need to see it displayed in the cursor. I would rather have a cursor that provides me with feedback about how the tool will affect my image.
Modifying the Cursors
To modify your cursors, choose Photoshop > Preferences > Cursors (Mac), or Edit > Preferences > Cursors (Windows). When you do, the dialog box shown below opens.
Photoshop's Cursor preferences allow you to customize your cursors.
This dialog box has two different areas. One is for the painting cursors (cursors that use a brush) and the second is for all other cursors. The Painting Cursors area has five settings. The Other Cursors area has only two settings that are the same as the first two Painting Cursors options.
Let’s look at the Painting Cursor options:
Standard - The default setting that displays the tool’s icon.
Precise - Displays a crosshair icon when painting. This is much more useful for knowing which part of the tool is the center of the action. However, it doesn’t provide any feedback about the size of the brush.
Normal Brush Tip - Uses 50% of the size of the brush size to give you an idea of the area affected by the brush. To be honest, I don’t know why you would only want to see 50%, but some people must prefer it.
Full Size Brush Tip - Uses the full size of the brush so that you can see exactly the size of the area being affected.
Show Crosshair in Brush Tip - When Normal or Full Size Brush Tip is selected, this additional option displays a crosshair in the center of the cursor so that you now only know how big the brush is, but where the center of the action is.
The customized cursor providing more useful feedback.
I recommend that you use Full Size Brush Tip and also select Show Crosshair in Brush Tip for your painting cursors, as shown to the left. That way you’ll always know what the brush is about to do before using it. (Note that the outer ring of the brush in the cursor display is larger than the dot I painted. That’s because I was using a medium hardness setting on the brush. The full sized tip display indicates the full extent of the paint as it fades away from the center of the stroke.) As for other cursors, I prefer to choose Precise for the same reason.
Now that you know how to quickly setup your cursors, you’ll find that you can work faster because you won’t need to guess what your Photoshop tool is about to do before you use it - saving you from wasting time with trial-and-error.
