How to make beautiful eyes in affinity pro.

[Alan Dickey]

Sorry but the video on YouTube just does not seem to work. 

I am following Affinity Revolution on YouTube and the video is called How to make beautiful eyes in affinity pro. I am at the point of selecting the paintbrush and have zoomed into the eyes. I am supposed to be seeing the paintbrush turn the iris white but it doesn't change them in any way.

If I select paintbrush and then the suboption of paintbrush that is for 'colour replacement' the cursor becomes a little crosshairs but in the video it is a little circle.  

I notice that on the right side the listings that included group then disappear completely. I now see a new listing altogether: Pixel, pixel, pixel and Background, instead of "Group, Mask Curves Adjustment and Background" that I had before I used the paintbrush colour replacement tool. 

I have tried every button I can think of but have no idea how to make the paintbrush actually work with the circle. I have spent 3 hours on this and the video instructions do not work.

I am using 1.8.3 on MacBook.

[Alan Dickey]

Additionally - at the top right mine moves to grayscale and loses the RGB colour sliders. There is no sign of curves adjustment any longer below that in the list of layers. If I open another curves adjustment box it makes no difference to the white bits on the iris. It simply affects the entire image. 

Is there anyone at Affinity that can do a screenshare? Or remake their video if the video relates to some previous generation of the software.

The video is only about 4 minutes long. After 3 hours of this there is clearly something very wrong and I now give up.

[smadell]

Not sure just how you got so deep in the weeds, but a couple of pointers...

1)  At the point where you are choosing the Paint Brush, you should be painting ON A MASK. If you are trying to follow that video, you should (i) select the Group in the Layers panel, and (ii) create a black mask by clicking on the Mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel while you hold down the Alt or Option key (Windows or Mac, respectively). Painting on the mask requires that you use the Paint Brush - NOT the Color Replacement brush.

2)  Make sure that the Paint Brush is selected in the Tools (on the left) and make sure that the Mask is selected on the Layers panel (and ONLY the mask layer - click right on the mask's thumbnail to select only that layer).

3)  The color you want to paint with should be White, since you will be painting on the mask to let the adjustments show through (they will show through the white areas, and will be concealed by the black areas).

4)  If you have chosen the Paint Brush and all you see are crosshairs instead of a circle, it probably means that the size of your brush is too small. Make it larger by hitting the right square bracket key (  ]  ) several times. You should see the circle once you do this enough times.

The most important suggestion: take a deep breath. This is not rocket science, but it's a brand new language and it doesn't always make a lot of sense the first time you drop yourself into it. You'll be fine!

[firstdefence]

 

[firstdefence]

My take on the video above, I used recolour to give a more dramatic effect.

[killzen]

Are you running this on windows 10? I cannot get any of this to work at all, selecting and paint brushing on the mask does absolutely nothing

[firstdefence]

8 hours ago, killzen said:

Are you running this on windows 10? I cannot get any of this to work at all, selecting and paint brushing on the mask does absolutely nothing

If you look at my sig I’m on Mac, if you look at the video the white apple top - left of the screen is a bit of a giveaway and the red, yellow and green icons that are top - left of the app screen are also indicative of Mac.

If a mask is created, painting white on it will do nothing, painting black will hide (whitewash) the area’s where black is painted, painting with white will effectively erase the black (whitewash) doing it this way allows you to see where you are painting, once you are happy with what you have painted you can invert the mask to reveal the eyes and only the eyes will be affected. 

general checks should be...

• Opacity is it 100%
• Brush hardness, you want it to have a soft edge, not 100% (To hard) and not 0% (too soft) I pitched this setting at 37% but it’s personal choice.
• Flow rate, generally this wants to be 100% any less than 100% and you will build colour layers up.
• Have you accidentally painted on the Adjustment layer?

Why not make a video showing what you are doing and we can see if you have errors in your workflow. 

[Alan Dickey]

I cant see any way to reply to the individuals replies I have had above. Thank you everyone for putting things forward. Am totally bewildered at this point, so all ideas are useful. The video is 4 mins long and I spent the whole afternoon going round in circles.

REPLY TO SMADELL

1. It doesn't let me select only mask on the right. It highlights group and mask together. Then they both disappear and I get a list of Pixels.

2. Is it paintbrush I need or paintbrush recolour?

3. I have selected white but nothing happens no matter how long I move the circle round.

4. Thank you for the tip on the crosshairs. I have now got a circle.

 

REPLY TO KILLZEN

No I am using Mac OS 10.15.4

 

REPLY TO FIRST DEFENCE

Thank you for this. I don't really understand much of what you wrote to be honest. All I was trying to do was do exactly what it says in the video with the hope that it would gradually all make sense and give me a context for learning something.

I will see if I can work out how to do a video of what my problems are, as you suggested, and try and post that.

The video must be for an older version of the app, is the only explanation I can think of but if they release a new version they should take down old videos that don't work. Then again it could be me. But I have checked that everything on the screen around where the presenter is working looks like his screen. And it does. Until I try to use the paintbrush and then it all goes awry.

 

Thanks everyone. Hopefully one more day on this will be enough to change eye colour!

[firstdefence]

39 minutes ago, Alan Dickey said:

1. It doesn't let me select only mask on the right. It highlights group and mask together. Then they both disappear and I get a list of Pixels.

2. Is it paintbrush I need or paintbrush recolour?

3. I have selected white but nothing happens no matter how long I move the circle round.

1. You have to click on the mask icon to select the mask layer.

2. It’s the paint brush you need to use to paint on the mask. 

3. Make sure you are not painting on the adjustment filter layer, see 1.

[smadell]

Alan...

Watch the video from 1:30 to 1:33. You’ll see the instructor select only the mask, and then start to paint on it. If you click on the words (where it says (Mask) in the Layers panel) you will select not only the mask, but the Group as well. If you start painting, well..., you’ve already seen how that screws things up. Click on the thumbnail (the little icon to the left of the word (Mask) in the Layers panel) so that only the Mask layer is selected. Now, using the Paint Brush will paint on the mask, as you’d like.

[killzen]

On 5/10/2020 at 3:22 PM, Alan Dickey said:

Additionally - at the top right mine moves to grayscale and loses the RGB colour sliders. There is no sign of curves adjustment any longer below that in the list of layers. If I open another curves adjustment box it makes no difference to the white bits on the iris. It simply affects the entire image. 

Is there anyone at Affinity that can do a screenshare? Or remake their video if the video relates to some previous generation of the software.

The video is only about 4 minutes long. After 3 hours of this there is clearly something very wrong and I now give up.

I had the same issue when watching the video, once I 'grouped' things together I could not select only the mask in order to 'paint' the eyes on it and get it to work

I eventually gave up and figured they were using an older version of Affinity and it has been modified from what the video shows. I was abble to load in an image, duplicate it, then select the bottom

image and alter it, then go back to the top image and create a mask and paint with the brush to reveal the changes I made to the image below,. let me know if you need a video and I will make

a simple video I can upload. I know how frustrating this can be but watch the Ritson videos and stay away from the Youtube stuff until you master the basics.

[smadell]

...

 

[killzen]

4 minutes ago, smadell said:

...

 

thanks for the help, I was misplacing the adjustment layer in reference to the mask...used your approach without grouping and managed to get it to work.

[smadell]

Here's a video with the salient portion of the Affinity Revolution edit. (Sorry about the last post - I screwed up the video.) And this is using the latest version of AP (version 1.8.3).