Anastasiy releases MagicSquire 2.7
Originally posted on 13 October 2017. Scroll down for news of the 2.7 update
Digital painting tools developer Anastasiy Safari has released MagicSquire 2.0, the latest version of his Photoshop brush organisation plugin.
The release adds support for Shapes and Tool Presets, new brush display options, and rewrites the plugin’s core code to make it more repsonsive when working very large number of brushes.
Create custom sub-palettes for your Photoshop brushes, with quick visual previews
First released in 2016, MagicSquire enables concept designers, illustrators and anyone else working with large numbers of custom Photoshop brushes to organise them in colour-coded sub-palettes.
The plugin automatically generates thumbnail images for each brush, with a wider choice of stroke types than Photoshop itself, helping to differentiate them visually.
Its users include some well-known concept artists, like Marc Simonetti and Craig Shoji.
New in MagicSquire 2.0: support for Shapes and Tool Presets
MagicSquire 2.0 adds the option to organise custom Shapes and Tool Presets in the same way as brushes.
There is also a new Tool History list, which is added to automatically whenever you select a new brush, shape or tool preset, making it posssible to navigate back to recent presets quickly.
New horizontal palette layout and option to resize brush previews
New display options include the ability to resize brush previews, making them easier to see on Hi-DPI monitors. The scale slider works globally, rather than on individual sub-palettes, but it also works in list views.
It is also now possible to switch between a standard vertical palette layout and a new horizontal layout, which you can see at 00:50 in the video above – it docks rather neatly at the foot of the screen.
The update also adds a ‘Pro’ mode, which hides many of the plugin’s interface elements, leaving more screen space for brush previews.
Beneath the hood, the core code has been rewritten to make the UI more responsive, particularly when handling very large sets of brushes – the website namechecks “1000+ brushes of size 4GB and higher”.
Updated 6 December 2017: MagicSquire 2.2 is now available. The update makes it possible to filter brushes or tool presets via text searches, then drag and drop the filtered brushes without clearing the search field.
Updated 13 June 2018: MagicSquire 2.7 is now available. It’s a performance-focused update, promising a “4-8x speed improvement on Photoshop CC”, particularly when scrolling through large numbers of brushes.
Loading of .abr and .tpl files, particularly multiple .tpl files, has also been improved.
Since we last covered the plugin, it has gained a ‘Magic Eraser’ system, which turns any brush or Tool Preset into an eraser – and which, in version 2.7, can be reverted to the original brush with a second click.
It is also now possible to change the standard double-click behaviour in the plugin’s settings.
Pricing and availability
MagicSquire 2.7 is available now for Photoshop CS5 and above on Windows and Mac OS X. It costs $19.
Read a full list of features in MagicSquire 2.7 on the product website