Looking for a Lower Quality Brush

[glad perch]

Been asking around but havent had any luck findin anyone who knows one way or the other, is it possible to have or configure a Brush to Alias less?

At sizes 1-5 and at 100% hardness, the lines are way too thin, wispy, and smoothed out, to the point that stroking just once never produces a fully colored pixel (That is, you can't color pick to get the original color)
VS MSPaint or Clipstudio paint (as seen here) other programs whos lines at such small brush sizes are mostly solid with random and scattered aliasing in the brush or the edges have 1, MAYBE 2 pixels max in width of aliasing.

As i said ive tried messing with hardness, scattering the basic list of checkboxes, most sliders that seem intuitive for it in the brush settings, but no dice. Definitly not saying i've tried them all, or any combinations, though. RN The best way i can recreate what i want is lining something in the brush then going over it with the same size bianary tool, or vice versa, But as i dont know of a way to repeat identically a stroke through some tool (Art history? Brush history? Consider this a second question to be answered id love to know if its possible) it's a combersome solution. Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

Current version is PS 2024

[tacit loom]

use the pencil tool

[low rune]

I think you just need the **PENCIL **tool. - Or turn off anti-aliasing

[glad perch]

its my bad, i didnt specify in the post, but im not looking for the pencil tool or any togglable anti aliasing. ive been suggested that so many times i actually just assumed id auto put it in here, but im not looking for totally clean crisp pixels, im looking for a brush thats slightly bad

the best example i can give of what im looking for is my current workaround: i draw in whatever size i want between 1-5 with the brush, then i trace over that line a second time wtih the same sized bianary pencil. doing that is cumbersome, and i have not figured out how to repeat a stroke identically with some sort of tool, which even if i could would still be cumbersome as opposd to just a brush that works

screenshot of what ive already tried from a reddit post i made a while back that didnt get any replies

i actually used the pencil tool while making the example pic with the plus and the minus so im not sure how to more clearly state im not looking for pencil but rather a "harder" brush
Edit: ok i see how it could come across as that because i also never specified besides in the title and the picture im looking FOR the aliassing that comes with that. my gosh ive written this request so many times i just start forgetting what i have and havent included

[glad perch]

can you do that at a brush size 2 and 3?

thats where the problems arise, at brush sizes 1-5, like i said in the thread starter

[low rune]

I think the issue is either:

1. I'm misunderstanding
2. You're misunderstanding the fundamentals of painting with pixels in raster images...

---

Nobody can make a circle with a brush size of 3 ... because that's only 3 pixels across.

Try playing... I dunno... minecraft, and make a nice circle using only a 3x3 set of blocks...

I feel like if you started off with, and worked with a much larger canvas, can't you do your designs in a larger format? - What's the end goal?

[glad perch]

its definitly not the second option, as what im trying to do is recreate what ive seen other programs, like clip studio paint, have

heres 2 old examples i used when trying to ask this in the past (also with no replies, which leads me to beleive i really just do not do a good job explaining what im looking for)

[glad perch]

the "example from online" is an unknown art program where someone just stroked and made some lines. notice how the inside is mostly solid (solid in this case being the actual color which ill touch on more in a second)
the top lines are my stroke with the same size brush, and the lines under those are when i took those lines and duplicated them on a second layer, that is copy pasting them

same with this, where the lines marked "1" are ms paint lines, lines marked "2" are various sized brushes in photoshop, and lines marked "3" are the 2 lines but duped

the clearest way ive been able to illustrate the actual issue i have with these brushes is

these are the 5 smallest brush sizes in photoshop with settings closest to what i want (but not close enough of course)

they look mostly fine, sure

but on a transparent background it shows that they dont have a single pixel that color pics to the one i chose, in this case solid black

its nothing BUT antialiasing

and then 4 and five have a huge jump in "thickness" while still being extremely blurry

[glad perch]

where as here its almost as if its a pencil tool with some jpeg artifacting to make it aliased

[low rune]

pro

Yeah I think I understand @glad perch - See video above

[glad perch]

yeah, thats what i did to make those lines originally

[low rune]

you're saying that you can't replicate the examples online because your version looks too light and grainy, and only by duplicating, do you get the darker stroke you're after

[glad perch]

yeah

photoshops brushes at small sizes are whispy and faded and much too soft

for my purposes at least

[glad perch]

the big reason its an issue is that if i try to make outlines for anything putting color under them makes stuff blurry as the dickens

another example, where the left is drawn by someone else in a dif program and i at the same scale drew something similar, with the lines looking much blurrier and worse in my opinion

[tacit loom]

the real solution to this problem is to work on a higher resolution canvas - now the lines look soft and smudgy because of how little space they got to antialias (maybe brush antialiasing feature in Ps would be a good idea?). if you up the resolution of your canvas and use larger brushes with the same amount of hardness, they will appear more crisp. this all goes down to how brushes are antialiased - Paint has to use different methods than Ps hence the difference

[glad perch]

It’s not really a solution, sadly. As stated many times it’s just an issue with brush sizes 5 or less, so I’m aware anything bigger has no issue like this and if I switched to higher resolution it’d be fine.
But that’s not a solution to this problem, or a workaround, as my constraint IS working with low resolutions. When I don’t have this restriction, I have no issue, drawing or stroking or whatever and it all looks great on a much larger canvas.
This issue is still an issue, however, if I HAVE to work on a small canvas for whatever reason, which while it’s not 100% of the time it’s still enough that I wanna look into it

I’m getting the sense that assuming I can’t work on a larger canvas it’s just straight up impossible, though, which while not ideal would be good to know so I can settle for the duplication method knowing it’s the best I can do

[tacit loom]

would something like this work for you?

the antialiasing works as intended - it distributes the weight across in Ps case 4 nearest pixels making each tip look blurry. the texture here works as a contrast bump limiting this behavior

you can control it in many ways

[glad perch]

Is the line in the direct center the one your referring to?

And the 8 on the right in the last?

Cause if so that’s 90% if not exactly of what I’m looking for

[tacit loom]

then just copy my brush settings and play around with sliders

[glad perch]

It’s a default texture I’m guessing?