Any advise? I never really use it... but its there... it is so blurry no matter what I do... is it possible to make it crisper? Can the twirling be contoled to be more directional? I have tried to get dabs to align along the brush stokes but it hasn't worked... any one had success with this feature? What I wish is I could have my color sampled only at the start of the stroke but not there after... like I was letting the computer choose my color of paint rather than that I was revealing a photo throrogh displacement.

Make the brush smaller if you want a crisper look, but if you just want the computer to choose the color, you might want to try another tool or technique. How about the History Brush instead of the Art History Brush?

Its hard to explain what I want... Its like I want to smear but have the smear be a solid stroke not a smear? Like if I am painting an apple I want to be able to break the contour with a stroke but have the stroke color stay pure as it goes over what woud be say the banana in the image so as to give a painterly look.. but with the Art History brush or the smudger there is a smeared blurry look... what I want is a crisp stroke in a sampled color... but I guess alt-clicking is the only way to go... I wish cloning work by just sampling at the start of the stroke only.

Ah... I see. I'll have to let someone else answer then, as I don't go for the painterly look much.