Gregory-CJ

HI Josh, Greetings! I have tried the pixel moshpit smudge brushes... and they are okay but don't give me the immediate airbrush look that I am after but I find I have to "work" these moshpit brushes to get the airbrush look. Here is what works for me.... to achieve the polished airbrush look that I am after in my digital paintings. For painting and blending I use a basic brush with the following adjusted settings.... basically, I simply adjust the flow settings for 4 versions of the basic brush. both painting and blending.... The trick in blending with these brushes is to brush in a short circular motion.... works like a charm... Also, a hidden treasure with the painting brushes along with the eraser brushes is that the Opacity settings for each of the brushes is hardwired to the numbers above the letters on the keyboard. So #1 gives 10% opacity setting , #2 gives 20% opacity setting, etc all the way up to # 0 which gives you full 100% opacity on your chosen brush.... So working with the 4 basic brushes listed below and the keyboard shortcuts.... really gives me great flexibility in digital painting. Oh yes , I do use other brushes but mainly rely on these four basic brushes and their settings for the bulk of my painting. Good luck with your painting!

Got it, wow such a monstrous file size! Thanks Meb!

Brilliant !!!!!! Thanks Meb for your knowledge . The rasterize & trim function works wonderfully and the Layer>Merge Down works quickly. Question, though. With the file in question and selecting a layer and in the channels panel > either filling the alpha channel or creating a greyscale layer, where would I find the original file size indicated? (30412x38435 px) I noticed in the context tool bar with the move tool selected that the existing layer > 397 x 425 dpi and when rasterized & trim > 300 dpi. Is that it or is there another location for this original file size? Don't understand what the 397 x 425 dpi tells me... can you explain? Thanks Again!

Hi Meb, I have uploaded the afphoto file to you via the dropbox link. This file went through the transformations that I outlined at the top of this thread. After deleting all the layers except two... and applying the Layer>Merge Down function, it still takes at least 15-30 seconds to merge. Try this with the file I uploaded to you, ....select the top layer and move it around and then the Layer>Merge Down function. For me this merge function still takes too much time. Thanks for your help on this matter.

Looks like no tech support is going to touch this one. Well I am getting the same delay in Layer> Merge Down with a completely new file. Same thing, I am in the process of creating this new image and have added 20 layers over time and now attempting to Layer>Merge Down function and AP freezes completely... have to kill the app. So I reduced the layer count to ~ five layers and still the Layer>Merge Down function takes forever to complete itself It's obvious to me that I am reaching the upper limits of AP's layering /filters capacity.... too bad.... Any Comments from Serif Tech support would be nice.

Normally the Layer>Merge Down function works very quickly with new documents but I find that it slows down when working with a document that has had a lot of work done to it including adding layers, digital painting, adjustment filters, File> placement of images, etc. I generally work in this resolution of 16" x20" @300 dpi. In my workflow, I add new layers to the project as I develop the image. I can get up to 20+ layers before AP gets bogged down and doesn't respond as quickly as I would like. At this point the Layer>Merge Down function takes about ~15 seconds to complete its task . So, I collapse all the layers to one layer using the Layers panel>merge visible function. At this point I have two choices: I can delete all the existing layers except the newly created merged visible layer , save it out as a new file new and continue working with a smaller, more AP friendly file size. or copy this newly created merged visible layer to the clip board and transfer it to a new document. In both cases, I now have only one newly merged layer to work with . In both cases, I add a second layer and digitally paint on the second layer. In both cases, the Layer>Merge Down function takes at least 15 seconds to collapse a layer, which goes against logic. In an attempt to remedy the situation I have tried the following: 1. Applied every available option in the preferences> display options... ie.. metal , openGL etc. 2 Restarted AP several times holding down the control key and clearing user defaults., reset studio etc. But it still takes ~15 seconds for the Layer>Merge Down function to work with both newly created documents even having only two layers! It's like some memory from the initial 20+ layer document is being transferred and showing up in these newly created documents. When I create a completely new 16" x20" @ 300 Dpi file and add 10+ layers each having digital paint applied the Layer>Merge Down function works very fast and the way it was intended to perform. Thanks in advance for your help in this. I am running AP 1.8.3 on a 2019 iMac with lots of ram.

Version 1.8.2 for AP corrected the lost Context tool bar ie. through the " A" keyboard shortcut... good luck with finding a solution, Arlomedia.

sounds good.. looking forward to the update. All the best

So I guess the best approach for now until the dev team fixes this issue with the disappearing context toolbar is to disable the shortcut key "A" Toggle UI in preferences to prevent losing the context toolbar at all.

Toggle UI >A key

I think I have found the problem...... using the keyboard shortcut "a" while in separated mode. To start off with where everything is fine within separated mode and the UI panels including the context toolbar are displayed ; hitting the 'a" key hides the panels....this is good... but hitting the "a" a second time brings back all the UI panels with the exception of the context toolbar which doesn't come back...this is not good.. The context toolbar remains hidden. Solution Rather than having to close/open AP with control key selected and losing my custom panel arrangement, I found that if I go to the Mac display panel and choose another resolution option eg. default .... I usually work in scaled resolution (for larger UI) that the context toolbar appears then and I just go back to the scaled resolution and the context toolbar is there......It would be nice to have a very large font option in AP to choose from, though so that I could take advantage of the 5K monitor. Your thoughts.

Thanks Chris B for your input, much appreciated! I use a single monitor and as a digital painter I rely heavily on the separated mode and the context tool bar. --- changing brush parameters and modes. So it is highly unlikely that I move the context toolbar off the screen... hey but anything is possible . So I will keep an attentive eye open while using AP to what I am doing if and when the context toolbar doesn't appear again while in separated mode. You are probably aware that I'm not the only one experiencing this issue which ran through the 1.7 versions and sorry to say now showing up in 1.81 AP version. Here is the thread about this very issue. Thanks Greg CJ

Just using a single monitor and have attempted View>Show Context Toolbar while in separated mode but no luck in enabling /viewing the context toolbar while in separate mode. I did discover a work around which temporarily works in enabling the context toolbar viewing during separated mode but this is not a permanent fix. The fix is opening AP with the key board control button pressed which brings up a dialogue box to clear user data.. refer to screen shot.(control>restart. This resets all the panels back to the default layout and eliminating my custom panel layout but enables the context toolbar. By choosing this option because I want the context toolbar in the separate mode , I have to spend time in customizing the panel layout to my liking. As mentioned I don't find this work around to be permanent as after opening and closing AP several times over several days, the context toolbar does not show up in the separated mode. Thanks for your help on this matter. The first screen shot is single viewing with context toolbar enabled the second is separated mode with no context toolbar third is the clear user data forth is the result of clearing data with the context toolbar now showing up and default panel layouts and custom panel layout eliminated

Hi, With the context toolbar enabled View> Show Context tool, the context toolbar appears in single viewing mode before going into separated mode and again when I come out of separated mode back to single viewing mode but the context toolbar is not showing up when I 'm in separated mode viewing. Can you help fix this? Thanks GregCJ Running a new iMac, catalina OS , 32 GB ram., Radeon pro 580

I just now remedied the situation with the smudge brush acting as an eraser. I went through the four tabs, general, dynamics, textures and sub brushes and noticed that the only differences between my four smudge brushes is that the one is question had a sub brush adde to it....... By deleting this sub brush it set the smudge brush so that it doesn't eraser anymore. Everything is A-Okay.