Inpainting brush tool seems to have a bug

[Tahunga]

Hello Affinity Forum,

Let me start by saying "I am a complete newbie with Affinity Photo, but not with computers and/or photo editing apps".

I love the Inpainting brush tool as it should replace a tool I have used for years. HOWEVER, when I started to use the tool in a very basic way, I ran across what I would consider a bug:

Basic situation: I have many pictures which include a hydro-line going right across the image. (It's what I see when looking out the window from my apartment onto the Pacific).

Problem: when I use the Inpainting brush tool and track along one of several wires, the tool often (i.e. most of the time) does not remove the wire for the whole length of my track. The attached screen videos show what I mean.

Any idea why this is happening? I know there are several other ways I could remove the wires. But the Inpainting brush tool seemed to me to be the best approach ...except it doesn't work for me.

Thanks for any help anyone can give to me

[pruus]

Try to take a bigger brush-size and don’t’ try to edit all way over in once. Try the size to 3 lines you want to delete and take smaller portions.

[Chris B]

Hey Tahunga, 

Welcome to the Affinity Forums.

Another method is to use the Selection Brush Tool and select the areas you want to inpaint, then go to Edit > Inpaint. I personally find this works slightly better over bigger areas.

[Tahunga]

Hello pruus and Chris B,

Thanks for both your quick responses. I did try both your suggestions but still believe this is a bug which the developers should be able to fix. pruus' suggestion is a "work-around", and with enough tinkering I can see that your approach will provide better results. Not good results, just better than what I managed to get. So thanks for the suggestion.

With Chris' approach I had absolutely no success as the Selection Brush Tool kept picking larger portions of the image. I could not convince the tool that it should select "just the wire", and not all the surrounding areas. I can see that this approach would provide better results in some/many situations. It just did not seem to work for me.

Here is proof to both of you and the Affinity Developers that it should be possible to highlight the individual wires using the Inpainting brush tool and then remove those wires. For now I will not name "the other tool" which I have owned for a few years, and which seems to be able to do exactly what I was looking for with the Inpainting brush tool. The first attached screen shot shows how I highlighted the wires. Then I let the tool remove them as shown in the second attached picture.

One other work-around in Affinity might be to use the Clone Brush Tool and a lot of very careful moves.

By the way, the reason why I was hoping for better results with the Inpainting brush tool was that I just got Affinity Photo last week and was all excited to see the Inpainting brush tool which I was hoping could replace my "old, other tool", as that tool is no longer sold individually and therefore no longer supported.

Thanks again for helping.

 

[Chris B]

Hey Tahunga,

Apologies I should have mentioned that you ideally would need to uncheck the option for 'snap to edges' with the Selection Brush Tool—It still may not be any better for you, though. 

Can you attach a high-resolution version of the image you're editing so I can have a proper go?

[Tahunga]

Hi Chris B,

I guess that's what happens when you deal with Newbies 😁

But don't worry, I ordered the Affinity Photo Workbook, and if the Ad is correct, I will become an Affinity Photo Expert in no time .....

I did try to uncheck the option for 'snap to edges' as you suggested. And I did notice that it worked much better. But it still selected some areas which then caused issues. I believe that in the end, tracking along the wires using the Inpainting brush tool would be the best solution. I could track along the wires. Unfortunately the tool just did not work as I believe it should.

I tried to send you the full version of the last picture I used in this topic. However, I kept getting this error when I tried to upload it:

I take it this error wants to tell me that I went over the limit. Mind you, the image is only 8.3 MB and should easily fit in the total of 512MB as shown at the bottom. But maybe it's the total of all uploaded pix. So here is the link to the Pix in my Dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dfbeyd0jhx5lwds/IMGP0810.JPG?dl=0

Hope that works for you.

[Chris B]

Hey Tahunga,

I've just used the image and managed to get good results by shift+clicking in increments with the Inpainting Tool to keep a straight line. I had to release where the lines dipped but the shift+clicks worked well when incremented.

I then tried Photoshop's content aware tool and was seemingly getting similar results but both work in very different ways. In Photoshop, I was selecting the area and going to Shft+F5 to Fill using the content aware option. 

[Tahunga]

Hi Chris,

I did not know about the "shift+clicking in increments". And without that little trick, as you know, the Inpainting Tool immediately "does its thing" when you stop without letting you continue your tracking.

By the way, I received the Affinity Workbook a couple of days ago, and already learned a lot about the Inpainting and other tools. Very useful indeed. I am having fun going through this "Book of tricks" 😋

And one last thing: The "old, other tool" I mentioned earlier is not Photoshop but Snapheal CK created by macphun (now known as SKYLUM) the publisher of LUMINAR and Aurora HDR. The CK stands for Creative Kit which was a way for them to sell the individual pieces of their software. Today one has to buy the complete set (i.e. LUMINAR).

Thanks again for all your help.

[Chris B]

I'm glad you're enjoying the workbook  

Ah I assumed it was Photoshop. It was still worth me looking at to see how they did things. I'll see if I can find a trial for the other app then

[Tahunga]

Hi Chris,

By the way, here is the link to the web site which shows all the pieces of the Creative Kit I mentioned: https://skylum.com/getstarted#userguides

You can see the SnapHeal sub-app and read about it by clicking on its icon. But as I said, that individual app is no longer available. Its functionality only comes now as part of the Luminar application. And even though the Snapheal users guide page says "The standard version of Snapheal is available on the Mac App Store." that is no longer true.