Smee Again

Addicted. That's how one of my customers describes my relationship with AP First image multiple textures, blend modes, and a bit of "blend-if". Second image composite using blend-if and masking.

I keep reading that particleshop crashes Affinity Photo. Went to the plugins list, and yes athentech's perfectly clear is listed, but so is particleshop. I'm running a laptop with 4 gigs memory, an AMD A8 processor, and Win 10. It works as well with Affinity as it did with Corel's Paintshop Pro 2018. Bought Affinity after Corel started playing games with their licensing, and was hoping I could keep the plugins that were bundled with versions 6 - 2018. Some work, some don't. I had already used it on my desktop (8 gigs memory, AMD 4 core processor, Win 10) with the same results as above. You may want to recheck particleshop's compatibility with Affinity.

Thanks for the tip ... I seldom "paint" beyond working with masks so I've been using the basic brushes --- solid, 100% opacity, 100% flow (mostly), hardness 80-100% (depending on what I"m working on). I had just converted my daughter from using Serif PhotoPlus X4 to using Corel's Paintshop Pro 2018 before I purchased Affinity. She's been curious about the difference and may have tinkered with it while I was at work. At least I know now what I was seeing and can remedy it if I see it again. Thanks to everyone who helped.

That is how I use the tool ... opacity slider under the color panel 100% ... opacity slider for the brush 100% ... colors either 255,255,255 or 0,0,0 ... wet edges --- don't remember turning that on as I have no idea how to use it or when it would be of use, but it was turned on. Thanks.

Doing some masking for a project, but what I have noticed is that none of the brushes will give me an actual 100% fil when working with a mask. I have to paint the area multiple times even though the opacity is set to 100%, the flow is set to 100% and even the hardness is set to 100% When painting, there is always a halo in areas that I'm trying to mask out or a small bit of transparency to areas I'm trying to show. Have I missed a setting???

It's just me, but I would probably make a duplicate layer of the original image. Then I would sharpen that image using live filters (first "clarity", then "high pass") and fiddle with the adjustments until I got the best results I could. Next step, create a mask for the top layer. Make sure the mask is selected and press <CTRL>+I to invert the mask. This will make the duplicate layer invisible. Then I would grab a soft brush and, painting on the mask with white, I would paint on the faces that I wanted to sharpen. Remember to use a soft brush and reduce the flow to around 30 (or less). Paint only the areas you want to reveal ("White reveals, black conceals"). If you reveal too much, swap over to black and paint on the mask in the areas that you don't want seen.