Problems With the Cursor

[Digital Transfer]

So, whenever I enlarge my brush it seems that the area thats painted is much smaller than the brush cursor shows it should be. Is this a development in CS3 (though I see no practical purpose for it) or is it a setting I need to change?

[DigitalShade]

You might want to say what brush your using.
If it's a standard brush check the hardness setting, most likely it is set to soft. If it is a custom then your dab fades out at the edges and appears to be smaller when you paint.

Anything that's faded at the edges will be the size of the preview, but appear to be smaller when painting due to blending and fading into the canvas.

There are a few options under preferences for cursors that you can play with. And you can always hit caps lock to just make it a cross-hair if it's still bugging you.

[Datameister]

To expand on DigitalShade's reply, I suggest looking under Edit > Preferences > Cursors. If Full Size Brush Tip is selected instead of Normal Brush Tip, you'll get a rather large brush tip outline.

[bizarre]

Another factor- while your brush may be 300p wide, if you have pressure-related-size modification, i.e. shape dynamics, then you may find that you have to apply more pressure to get the brush to be full-sized.

the others have pretty much covered the rest.