[Help] Blending Problems

#1

Hello!

I’m having certain problems with Photoshop CS4 and haven’t been able to find the cause thus far.
Image

When I try to use a soft brush with a low opacity (I’ve been trying 30%) - it seems to scatter fully opaque pixels or draw fully opaque lines. This only happens when trying to blend different colours on the same layer.

It might also be related to the colour picker.

Additionally, you can see in the image around area “1” if I try to sample from one line and draw over the next one, it doesn’t do it. That is, it takes the colour but doesn’t paint. Painting works further away from the sampled area though.

What I’ve tried was resetting the tools, resetting the brush, reinstalling the program, painting with a mouse instead of the tablet…

I have been using the nVidia photoshop plugin for DDS files, if that has any bearing. This happened sometime recently but I can’t say it’s really connected to the plugin. Uninstalling it had no impact either.

Thanks for any suggestions!

cc

Edit: I thought I’d mention that this happens when I use the smudge tool as well. It’s almost as if the program is using a limited colour palette…

#2

I don’t see anything that looks like your description, but I’m guessing that what you are running up against is the limits of 24bit color and describing it differently. There’s lots of color banding, but that happens especially in the dim bluegreen range. You could work in a higher bit mode and the banding wouldn’t be there in the data, but you’d still see it on your screen.

#3

Try it with Paint Tool SAI, it’s a very small program and has great blending, this way it’s a quick way to pin down your problem.

#4

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