Camera RAW Irritations

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I absolutely love working in Photoshop Camera RAW, when combined with Photo Mechanic it creates a dream team combo that can not be defeated. However, nothing is perfect and lately I have become fixated on a quirk in Photoshop Camera RAW (and Lightroom) that bothers me to no end.

Why oh why do the adjustment brush, graduated filter, and radial filter have their values interconnected? Meaning if I select the radial filter and set the exposure at minus -1 and then apply an adjustment, when I then go to the adjustment brush filter it starts with that -1 exposure value from when I was using the radial filter. This instead of starting at 0 or retaining it’s own values from when it was last used. If I then change the values, say raising the exposure by 1 to brush in a dark area that value will then be the starting value if I go back to the radial filter or over the graduated filter.

This behavior to me seem so incredibly counter intuitive. When working on multiple images it just serves to slow down the processing process. These filters while based on the same options have very different use cases. A radial filter will commonly by used to frame the subject and darken the surrounding scene. While an adjustment brush can be commonly used to adjust specific areas, like raising the exposure on a person in frame.

I struggle to find a reason as to why these 3 filters should not retain their own values separate of one another. To me this is the use case that makes the most sense especially since we are creatures of habit and built a routine with how we use these filters.

I made a post about this on Photoshop feedback forums, if you find this behavior bothers you please drop a message in support of changing the behavior and making each filter retain it’s own values.